Not only Catholic Priests - Rabbinic sex abuse of minors

[MikeWB]

Not only Catholic Priests - Rabbinic sex abuse of minors


http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/110329.html

Psychologist quits task force after threats Published: 09/11/2008

Benzion Twerski, Ph.D., graduated with a Ph.D. in psychology from University of Pittsburgh in 1985. He studied in Yeshivos in Scranton, PA, Baltimore, and Jerusalem. He has been one of the leading professionals in youth-at-risk and addictions in the Jewish community.

Threats forced a prominent psychologist to resign from a task force on sexual abuse in the Orthodox Jewish community.

Dr. Benzion Twerski, who is also an Orthodox rabbi, resigned after receiving the threats, The New York Jewish Week reported. The task force had been established recently by New York state Assemblyman Dov Hikind.

According to a statement published on the Orthodox Web site Vos Iz Neias, Twerski quit out of fear for his family. http://www.vosizneias.com/20212/2008/09 ... from-post/

"For several days, I was approached by individuals, some stating that they would cross the street if they were to meet me while walking with their children," Twerski said. "Others told me that they would not accept my child into their class if assigned. Others used euphemisms that I refuse to repeat. Family members were likewise confronted by all sorts of comments and phone calls.

"My married children had been told to fear ever getting shidduchim for their children. Basically, I was left to choose between abandoning my family for this mission or to take the painful step that I did."

Hikind has made combating sexual abuse in the Orthodox community a priority following several high-profile cases of abuse by Orthodox rabbis. The Brooklyn lawmaker says he has compiled a dossier detailing "hundreds" of cases of abuse and has threatened to name names if community leaders do not act on his information. ==

http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticl ... _York.html

Top Doc Scared Off Panel On Rabbinic Sex Molesters

Tapped by Hikind, Twerski cites threats; pol ready to 'name names' of alleged abusers.

"He was basically forced to resign," said Assemblyman Dov Hikind, above, of Dr. Benzion Twerski. "He was literally put against the wall, and he felt he had no choice...the point is, they got to him, they threatened him."

by Hella Winston

Special To The Jewish Week

A prominent Orthodox rabbi and psychologist has been intimidated into quitting as head of a just-formed task force dealing with rabbinic sex abuse of minors, organized by Assemblyman Dov Hikind this week.

Dr. Benzion Twerski told The Jewish Week Wednesday that he was quitting the task force because "I was prosecuted in the street for daring to join such a venture."

"To protect myself, my family, and reputation, I decided to withdraw from this project," he wrote in an e-mail as the paper was going to press with a story announcing Hikind's formation of the task force. "From this point, I am avoiding participation in any forms of public service. Public life is not for me."

Hikind, a Brooklyn Democrat who represents Borough Park and Flatbush, deplored Twerski's abrupt departure from his new panel.

"He was basically forced to resign," said Hikind. "He was literally put against the wall, and he felt he had no choice. We'll get somebody else who's very respected. But that's not the point. The point is they got to him, they threatened him."

Twerski's dramatic departure came just as Hikind was rolling out the new panel, planned as the next step in a personal crusade against child sex abuse in the Orthodox community that he has come to view as an epidemic.

Hikind said he had amassed a dossier with the cases of "hundreds" of individuals who say they have been sexually molested by rabbis and other Orthodox community members during their childhood. And he threatened to broadcast the names of their abusers if community leaders do not respond to his call for action against them.

"Let me tell you," he said in an interview last week, "when there's a person who we have confirmed through a variety of people has been doing terrible things" and those who know refuse to go to the authorities, "I am prepared to name names. I am prepared to be sued by those pedophiles. If they're innocent, let them sue me."

Speaking after a rash of highly publicized sexual molestation cases in the Orthodox community, Hikind said, "I have been learning that a lot of people out there know who the bad guys are. Where have I been? How come no one talked to me, how come no one came to me?"

Now, Hikind says, he is more determined than ever to establish a community task force to address the issue. Though vague on the panel's broader makeup and specific plans, Hikind ultimately seeks to develop a list of sexual molesters in Orthodox schools to keep them away from children.

Neither man would specify the nature of the threats made against Twerski to force his departure. But Hikind called them "pathetic and sad."

"My heart goes out to him," he said. "I don't know if I should laugh or cry. Things are opening up, people are coming forward, but we are still so far away."

Hikind's new crusade follows several cases in which individuals — often adults now — have gone public with accounts of sexual abuse they experienced at the hands of respected yeshiva teachers when they were children. The alleged victims have spoken, too, of the rejection or even intimidation they experienced from their yeshivas and rabbinic leaders when they tried to report what had happened to them.

In one of the few cases in which victims went to the secular court system, Rabbi Yehuda Kolko of Yeshiva Torah Temimah in Flatbush was convicted on two counts of child endangerment last April. Another alleged abuser, Rabbi Avrohom Mondrowitz, now awaits extradition from Israel to Brooklyn, where he has been charged with sexual abuse of children.

More recently Joel Engelman, a former student at the Satmar chasidic sect's United Talmudical Academy in Williamsburg, has alleged he was abused when he eight years old by Rabbi Avrohom Reichman. Engelman, now 23, has filed suit against Rabbi Reichman and UTA, which, he says, violated its promise to him to dismiss Rabbi Reichman in exchange for his not going public. UTA has yet to respond to the suit.

Hikind, who began broadcasting radio shows addressing the issue bluntly about a month ago said, "For a couple of weeks now, so many people have been coming forward. It's made me absolutely sick, to have to listen to this, to be so shocked, to see so much pain, so much suffering. ... I actually feel that [this] may be the most important thing I've done in 26 years. Because you're talking about saving lives." ...