New York – Mandated Reporting

New York – It is an issue stuck inside a larger issue. The larger issue is the fact that the scourge of abuse of young children exists at all within our community. Ours is a community that holds itself to a higher standard because of who we are and also because the world around us—sometimes for its own slanted reasons—expects more from us.

On Sunday I listened to a recording of my old friend Zev Brenner’s Saturday-night radio show, ( here the full interview) which focused on the matter of sexual abuse in the Orthodox Jewish community. Well, I’d like to say Orthodox Jewish community, and that was the contention of one of the guests on the program. The guest, Ami Magazine publisher Yitzchok Frankfurter, took umbrage at the fact that the focus was almost exclusively directed at the chareidi element, which constitutes one segment of the larger Orthodox community.

I listened intently to the guests, including Mr. Frankfurter and Dr. Michael Salamon, psychologist from Woodmere and author of the newly published “Abuse in the Jewish Community,” whose work in treating victims of this kind is widely recognized. In the back-and-forth on the program, Frankfurter accused Dr. Salamon of singling out the chareidi community as affected most by such aberrant behavior even though it is something that today has impacted all communities—Jewish and non-Jewish—across the broad public spectrum.

Frankly, it hurt to listen to the program because, unlike any other people, most of us have been raised and taught to understand that, partly because of our history, Jews tend to look out for one another, naturally protect each other, and work toward a common and positive good more than other peoples do. To hear us verbally attacking, accusing, or ripping at one another was, to say the least, disheartening. You heard stories about lurid and deviant behavior in the mikveh and unconscionable activity in some classrooms in some yeshivas.

These are horrible situations that ruin lives and frequently send a young man or woman’s existence spiraling out of control.

The debate was not about whether the stories that are retold are true or not. The discussion today focuses on the need to publicly expose these types of deviant occurrences in the hope that predators with a disposition to resort to this behavior will be additionally dissuaded by the public spectacle that will result when they are identified.

The Jewish community is very often held to a higher account than any other. The result is that while in this day and age the frum community might be considered as being not dissimilar to any other “normal” community, media reporting and talking about this type of news among us becomes greatly exaggerated and blown wildly out of proportion.

Which leads us to the most emotional and indeed controversial aspect of the issue, which is the fashion in which information about these sordid episodes should be shared with law enforcement. Clearly, if a crime is witnessed or if one has reliable knowledge of a crime taking place, there is both a legal and moral obligation to report the crime to the authorities.

However, as a result of some mostly misunderstood pronouncements, many have been led to the impression that halachic decisors were instructing their community members who have information about the commission of such acts to first consult a rabbinic authority about whether what he or she witnessed or became aware of should be reported to the authorities. This point has people up in arms and extremely exercised.

I cannot help feeling that if people are predisposed to discuss the actions of a pedophile or a molester with a rabbi instead of the police, it is not because they want to cover anything up or just want to help a member of the community by keeping him out of trouble with law enforcement. I’d like to suggest that this type of behavior is about being embarrassed by such action and the notoriety that inevitably results. It’s embarrassing for us as individuals as well as members of an upstanding and otherwise model community.

Additionally, there is a legitimate fear that there are occasions when the reporting of such an incident may indeed be false, with the intent being to further a vendetta or grudge unrelated to this type of behavior. It is a concern, because it unfortunately has happened. Being innocent and struck with that kind of an aspersion can certainly effectively ruin someone’s life. Reporting someone takes a few minutes; establishing innocence can take years.

So we hear the bad and disturbing news, but we really just want it to disappear. We want to delude ourselves into thinking that it is a rare exception and if we just dismiss it then perhaps it will cease to exist.

There are people out there, however, who cannot let these situations just dissolve or dissipate. For them it’s not just disturbing news that arrives and then departs once they get busy with something else.

Two of those people who have made these situations their life’s work are Tzvi Gluck of Queens and Mark Meyer Appel, who splits his time between New York and Florida. Gluck said in a phone conversation the other night as well as in his appearance on the Brenner show on Saturday night that it is a serious mistake to believe these things occurs in a vacuum. Such incidents have a lasting impact on the victims and alter their lives. Appel says that all he wants is that the plight of the victims be highlighted and that they get the help they need.

Gluck, the son of longtime Orthodox Jewish community activist Rabbi Edgar Gluck, says that there is a connection here that is being neglected. “The program the other night on the radio focused on how big or small a problem sex abuse and molestation is in the community,” he said. “I am concerned with the flip side of that equation, and that is that there are victims, many victims out there, and they are not being reached, not being offered the support or the help that they desperately need.” Gluck says that statistically 80% of those who are victims of molestation will eventually become molesters themselves.

“People are in pain, they are suffering, and their families are suffering, and we are busy debating whether or not there is a problem of any considerable magnitude,” Tzvi Gluck says. Gluck works with the Our Place organization in Brooklyn that is a drop-in center for what is commonly referred to as “at risk” youth and describes his work as “crisis management.”

He says that if he had the funding and he had his way, he would create an organization that provides counseling, support, and direction for those who have suffered any of the multi-tiered levels of abuse. He says that the funding is not there because as a community we are in denial on the matter of how pervasive this problem is.

On the issue of when one learns of such a situation that is taking place, the latest phrase being bandied about is whether or not the information has “raglayim l’davar.” Literally that means that the story or the information has a leg to stand on, so to speak. Gluck says that he was present at a meeting in Jerusalem with Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, the 101-year-old poseik of a considerable part of the yeshiva world, when this issue was discussed. Gluck says—and there were others present to confirm this—that Rav Elyashiv said that if someone has information about a child being molested or abused, it must be reported to the police directly without any other intervention. He said that someone in the group asked what if the information provided to the police is wrong. To this Gluck says that Rav Elyashiv indicated that in that case the police will investigate and will find it not to be true.

Indeed, there are legitimate conflicting concerns here that really do not exist in other circles. Primarily, when this type of information hits the news it creates a colossal and staggering chillul Hashem, and that sets us all back. On the other hand, however, people are being hurt and lives are being ruined by our not being open about the issue and educating the public in how to confront these issues.

It’s true that stories of abuse have been circulating for decades. But it is only today that we as a community are beginning to come to grips with the reality of the situation and that it has to be seriously dealt with.

Comments for Larry Gordon are welcome at [email protected].