"…I am the woman [Marc] Gafni molested when she was 13 years old. This is the first time I am telling my story in my own name. If …[abused] children are lucky, someone will notice there is something wrong. But too often, the police are not involved, and these children are unlikely to be protected. I wasn’t.…"
In the Forward, for the first time Sara Kabakov writes publicly under her real name about the sexual abuse she allegedly suffered at the hands of (now ex-rabbi) Marc Gafni when she was a young child:
…I am the woman [Marc] Gafni molested when she was 13 years old. This is the first time I am telling my story in my own name.
If …[abused] children are lucky, someone will notice there is something wrong. But too often, the police are not involved, and these children are unlikely to be protected.
I wasn’t.…
Each morning after being molested, I would wake up and walk into the living room, and see him wildly shuckling, rocking back and forth while beating his chest. He said he was doing teshuvah, repenting for what he had done the night before, and he told me that I should join him in doing teshuvah, too. I didn’t pray or do teshuvah, but just stared at him in disbelief. He really believed that I was a partner in sin. And then it would happen again: After every fervent bout of repentance, he would wake me up in the middle of the night the following week.…
…Over the years, when I told people about the abuse I endured at Gafni’s hands, many asked, “Why didn’t you tell anyone?” That’s a good question. But a better question is what happened when I did tell. It was almost as if I had told no one. People in the Jewish community who had the power and stature to make the abuse stop did not step up.…
In 1994, I wrote a letter to Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, who had ordained Gafni, and told him my story. I never received a response. (Riskin since rescinded Gafni’s ordination.)…
[I]n 2004, Gary Rosenblatt. editor and publisher of The Jewish Week of New York, interviewed me for an article in his newspaper. The subhead above the section where I was quoted anonymously was, “In Love or Abusive?” To him, it was a question to ponder. The cost of telling my story was to have it subtly discredited.…
Read it all here.
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