An unsettling relationship unfolds when a man confronts the person who sexually abused him when he was a student at a haredi yeshiva.
Update 1:50 pm CDT 7-15-2012 – Ha'aretz has a long, facinating piece on the filmmaker, Menachem Roth, who comes from a wealthy but disfunctional haredi family and was born with learning disorders that were left untreated by haredi schools.
Roth bounced from one school to another, one yeshiva and framework for troubled kids to another, neglected, physically abused by his father and emotinally abused by both of his parents, until they enrol him in a haredi yeshiva he says was run by a known pedophile. There, the physical and emotional abuse he suffered was added to – Roth was repeatedly raped.
Four years and several more haredi schools later, Roth left haredism. He eventually enrolled in Bezalel School for the Arts where he was a top student. He teaches film at the Charles E. Smith High School of the Arts in Jerusalem. There are eight children in Roth's family. Six, including Roth, are no longer haredi or Orthodox.
Twenty years after leaving haredi life, Roth made this documentary about his sexual abuse to try to help others trapped in situations like he was:
"I'm not claiming that there are more pedophiles in Haredi society," [Roth told Ha'aretz]. "I'm saying that the children are less protected, and that's why it happens more. And I know what I'm talking about, because it happened to me. Why? Because they didn't pay attention to me. I'm saying that children are hit and raped because they [adults] don't know how to protect them. A pedophile can walk around all his life and not get what he wants. But when he is in a yeshiva, it's much easier for him to operate, because there are neglected children there. It doesn't take much to notice them: a dirty shirt, a depressed mood, a child who is withdrawn and has behavioral problems."