The Times of Israel has posted a long article on the alleged London haredi rape and sex abuse scandal.
The problem is that the Times of Israel fails to cite the two bloggers who broke the story along with the Jewish Chronicle.
Ifyoutickleus published a very veiled account that was unintelligible except to haredi insiders, and even then what the rabbi was accused of doing was unclear even to many insiders.
Ifyoutickleus also posted a scan of a Jewish Chronicle news brief not then online that garbled some of the story and left the rest unsaid.
I posted that JC news brief and explained what the scandal was actually about, but I still withheld the rabbi's name because the alleged victims had not yet come forward. (To be clear, I had details on the scandal for days before posting. I was waiting for victims to come forward or for supporting evidence to be presented before publishing. The JC published its story without any of that evidence and without the victims.)
When I posted, ifyoutickleus removed his post (he feared being outed and retaliated against).
That meant that the only published report that explained the scandal was mine. It was published three weeks ago.
But even though the Times of Israel's report has this line near the top of its article, "Over the past few weeks, he has been accused in blogs and on the street of a variety of sexual misdeeds with at least one woman…," it does not actually cite or link to ifyoutickleus or failedmessiah.com – a sadly typical ethical breech for today's journalists.
The Times of Israel's report was posted three weeks after the JC's, mine and ifyoutickleus.
Only my brief report explained the context and type of the alleged abuse.
Even so, the Times of Israel tells me it feels no need to cite any of us or link to any of us.
Make of that what you will.
Here are a few details the Times of Israel missed:
1. The Times of Israel says that Kedassia, the haredi organization involved, is trying not to repeat the mistakes made by Satmar and Agudath Israel of America in the US. But Kedassia-linked rabbis have allegedly been threatening victims and their families, threatening advocates, and trying desperately to cover up the alleged crimes.
2. This behavior only became problematic for Kedassia when it became clear to them (as it is absolutely crystal clear to me) that police now knew about the alleged crimes and the alleged coverup.
3. Rabbi Padwa and other senior Kedassia rabbis have not been helpful to the alleged victims – in fact, quite the opposite appears to be true.
4. Neither Rabbi Padwa or Kedassia has told alleged victims to call police – in fact, the opposite is allegedly true.
5. Kedassia, Rabbi Pdwa and the other rabbis involved have allegedly committed what we call in the United States the crimes of obstruction of justice and witness tampering.
All these alleged facts were fairly easy to ascertain. Shame the Times of Israel and the JC both missed them.
Related Post: London Haredi Rabbi Rape And Sex Scandal?