Pedophile scandal in orthodox
Jewish community of Brooklyn -
but have you read about it?
by Andrea Tornielli
Translated from
December 14, 2011
117 boys and adolescent males were victims of sexual abuse by at least 85 Orthodox Jews in the Hasidic community of Brooklyn, New York, who have been arrested in the past three years.
[Hasidics are among the most strict and orthodox of the Jewish denominations.]
The community sought in vain to resolve the problem internally before having to call in the police but the Brooklyn district attorney continues his investigation, and more developments may result.
The DA's anti-pedophile campaign, Kol Tzedek (meaning 'the vocie of justice'), has found it difficult to convince victims to come forward, and to overcome the 'cushion' of omerta-like silence that had been laid over the scandal.
The authoritative Torah Agudath Israel of America, a body of sholars of rabinnical law, says complainants must first speak with their rabbi before talking to anyone else, and that the rabbi would decide which complaints would be passed on to the police.
A third report on pedophilia in the United States by the John Jay Criminal College of New York [which undertook the now much-cited investigation commissioned by the US Bishops into abuses committed by Catholic priests in the US from 1950 to 2002] states that the widespread impression that Catholic priests constitute a 'high-risk' group for pedophilia is false.
The report shows that all religious communities are affected by the problem (especially Protestants, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons and Jews) but even more are public schools, sports aasociations and gymnasiums, and adults in charge of Boy Scouts.
Sociologist and commentator Massimo Introvigne, who wrote a book entitled
Preti pedofili, commented to
Vatican Insider: "What would have happened if in Brooklyn, 85 Catholic priests and sacristans had been arrested for sexual abuse of minors? It would be a far different story whereas the Brooklyn case has hardly been reported in the media - because it would cast question on the media's anti-Catholic dogma that claims pedophilia is far more widespread among Catholic clergy than in any other sector of society. Of cours,e unfortunately, some pedophile priests have infested parishes and Catholic schools, but statistics show that these places are 16 times more safe for children than they are in society at large".
But Introvigne also warns against criminalizing the entire Jewish orthodox community because of the Brooklyn abuses.
"It is not about transferring the moral lynching by the media and public opinion from Catholic priests to the orthodox Jews, whose communities are now the target of the more liberal Jewish denominations for their opposition to gay marriage.
"But it is an occasion to point out that priests are hardly a greater risk for pedophilia than others, and that priestly celibacy has nothing to do with this problem. It's just that anti-Catholic prejudice has kept the media
[and therefore, the public at large] from seeing the global dimension of the pedohile tragedy."
Here's the New York Post story on the Brooklyn bust from a few days ago. The story's emphasis is on a layman, but it does not say how many of the other 84 persons arrested are religious.
Orthodox sex abuse scandal:
117 kid victims and
85 arrests in Jewish enclave
By SUSAN EDELMAN
December 11, 2011
He looks like a movie star, but many members of Brooklyn’s Jewish community believe he is a monster.
Andrew Goodman, 27, who worked for Jewish social-service agencies, is charged with sexually abusing two Orthodox boys for years in Flatbush — one from age 11 to 15, the other from age 13 to 16.
Goodman filmed sex acts with the youngsters on a Web cam, according to the 144-count indictment, which alleges numerous violations since 2006. He has pleaded not guilty.
The handsome Goodman, who held parties in his home with liquor and child porn, also “threatened the life” of a boy who reported him to authorities, court papers and sources say.
He’s one of an astounding 85 accused Orthodox child molesters that Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes’ office says it has busted in the past three years in an initiative called Kol Tzedek, Hebrew for “voice of justice.”
The cases involve 117 victims — a number that has the community reeling from the extent of the horrors of pedophilia.
Launched amid complaints that Hynes was soft on Orthodox child predators, Kol Tzedek aims to coax victims to come forward, despite strong pressure in the insular religious community to cover up such crimes.
All but two of the suspects are men, and more than half the victims are male, said Assistant DA Rhonnie Jaus, chief of the sex abuse and crimes against children division.
Of the 38 cases closed so far, 14 perps got jail time, ranging from a month to 10-to-20 years for crimes that included sex abuse, attempted kidnapping, and sodomy, Jaus said.
The other 24 have walked free. They got probation, pleaded to minor charges, or saw their cases dismissed — often because victims or their parents backed out under community pressure.
Agudath Israel of America, a prominent body of Torah sages, requires anyone alleging sex abuse by a fellow observant Jew to first report to its rabbis, who decide whether the case should go to secular authorities.
Goodman’s case, which Hynes’s office hasn’t publicized, shows how the community’s response has started to change. Rather than keeping it among the Orthodox, some alleged victims turned to sympathetic religious leaders and outside authorities to help lock up a menace.
“Andrew Goodman is known in our community as a lifelong molester who preys on young boys and ruins their lives,” a Talmudic scholar at Congregation Bais Torah wrote to Brooklyn Judge Martin Murphy, who is hearing the case.
[The rest of the story is about Goodman's background and the opportunities he had to molest minors as a volunteer for a Jewish agency that helps disabled children. I must admit I do not follow or look up crime news at all, especially now that I no longer buy newspapers but simply go online to find news that interests me, or get my local news headlines from TV. All I can say is that the news apparently has not made it to the TV newsrooms either....]
It may be pertinent to bring up this item, which Tornielli refers to in his report, because I only posted the USCCB-John Jay College side in May when the report came out - but the critics seem to have a valid point that the study may have chosen to misread its own data....
Critics say 2011 study misses
real reason for priests' abuses:
Homophilia is the major offense
in US cases, not pedophilia
By Marianne Medlin
Washington D.C., May 18, 2011 (CNA/EWTN News) - A $2 million study commissioned by the U.S. bishops is not likely to put to rest questions about the causes of the sexual abuse crisis in the priesthood.
Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons, a top psychiatrist and authority on treating sexually abusive priests, told CNA that he is “very critical” of the findings because they avoid discussing important causal factors in clerical sex abuse cases, namely homosexuality.
The study began to receive criticism on May 17, the day before it was released, in both the secular press and from Catholic experts who have studied the issues involved closely.
The study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York cites the sexual permissiveness of the 1960s and poor seminary training as the root causes of the crisis. The report is the third commissioned by the U.S. bishops since the break of the scandal in 2002 and was intended to address the patterns and pathologies behind the abuse.
Despite the report showing that
nearly 80 percent of victims were post-pubescent and adolescent males [which means that the crime was not pedophilia, which refers to sexual abuse of children before they turn adolescent], the study concludes that clinical data “do not support the hypothesis that priests with a homosexual identity ... are significantly more likely to sexually abuse.”
Fitzgibbons disputed that conclusion, saying that
“analysis of the research demonstrates clearly that the major cause of the crisis was the homosexual abuse of males.” This, he underscored in a May 18 phone interview, “was the heart of the crisis.”
Statistics from the recent John Jay report show that
less than 5 percent of abuse took place with prepubescent children, making pedophilia a fraction of the core issue and sexual activity with adolescent males the primary occurrence.
“One can conclude that these priests have strong same-sex attraction,” he said. “When an adult is involved with homosexual behavior with an adolescent male, he clearly has a major problem in the area of homosexuality.”
“Priests and seminarians with deep seated homosexuality have a serious responsibility to seek appropriate help to protect adolescents,” he emphasized.
Fitzsgibbons praised the John Jay Criminal College for their work in previous studies, which he said gave “accurate” statistics on sex abuse. However, he was critical of the college being chosen for the third study analyzing underlying factors, saying that criminologists “lack the professional expertise to comment on causes of sexual abuse.”
“The earlier conclusions were very accurate, but the present analysis – the attempt to identify causes and context – I would completely disagree with.”
“If the (U.S. bishops) conference wanted an analysis of the causes of complex sexual behavior with adolescents,” he said, “don't turn to criminologists.”
“They are not trained to understand those causes – that training is given to mental health professionals.”
“They can report on the statistical analysis of the behavior but in terms of causes, they've crossed a line, in my view.”
The John Jay researchers also clarified in their study that priestly celibacy was not a factor in clerical sex abuse and said that the offenders chose to victimize boys because clergy had greater access to them.
Bill Donohue, president of The Catholic League for Religious Liberty, reacted to the notion of accessibility to boys over girls, saying the “there are so few incidents of abuse these days – an average of 8.3 per year since 2005 – that it makes no sense to compare the percentage of male victims at the peak of the scandal to what has happened since altar girls were allowed.”
“The latest study on abuse notes that 83 percent of the allegations made in 2010 were by males, and the bulk of incidents took place in the early 1970s,” he said.
“Besides, priests had nothing but access to male altar servers before the 1960s, and the report notes that sexual abuse was not a problem then. That’s because there were fewer gay priests then,” Donohue argued.
The report “says that 81 percent of the victims were male and 78 percent were post-pubescent,” he reiterated. “Since 100 percent of the abusers were male, that's called homosexuality, not pedophilia or heterosexuality.”
“A homosexual is defined by his actions, not his identity,” he said.
Despite the disagreement incited over the particulars of the report, the numbers ultimately show a drastic decline in sex abuse occurrences within the Church over time.
The “peak of the crisis has passed,” the report noted. Because the Church “responded,” abuse cases decreased and sexual abuse of minors “continues to remain low.”
Researchers said data show that abuse incidents were “highest between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s.”
“Ninety-four percent of the abuse incidents reported to the Catholic Church from 1950 through 2009 took place before 1990,” the study said, adding that currently, “fewer new reports are brought forward” each year.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/12/2011 06:26]