Rabbi Stood down by School over Rape Claims

By Barmey Zwartz
The Age
December 9, 2013

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/rabbi-stood-down-by-school-over-rape-claims-20131209-2z1p0.html

Rabbi Abraham Glick.

One of Australia's most respected rabbis has been stood down from Melbourne's prestigious Yeshivah College over allegations that he repeatedly raped a student in the 1970s.

Rabbi Avrohom Glick was then deputy principal, later principal and now head of religious studies.

A police spokeswoman said a 67-year-old man from Balaclava was arrested and interviewed on Monday and released pending further inquiries.

Two former Yeshivah employees were jailed in Melbourne this year over separate child sex offences.

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Yeshivah College principal Yehoshua Smukler, who recently wrote to the ultra-Orthodox Yeshivah community to reassure them that police had said no staff members were under investigation, said in a statement that the centre learnt of the allegations only late last week.

He said although "Rabbi Glick is a highly respected staff member and community figure", he was immediately stood down. He had not attended the campus or had contact with students since.

The victim told police he was lured to the worship centre when he was eight and raped "in front of the Sefer Torah", the scroll of the Torah, Judaism's sacred text. "I have a clear memory of the pain and grunting."

He said he was raped several times and forced to perform oral sex, and that the man also abused another victim.

"After I was raped I was in shock and I went to the office and I was shivering and crying.

"I didn't know what rape was because I was eight years old. I didn't know what sex was, so I didn't have the words to say what happened," the man said.

The police spokeswoman said the arrest was made by Task Force Sano, set up to work with the Victorian inquiry into how religious organisations responded to child sexual abuse.

According to the inquiry's report last month, the taskforce opened 135 new investigations.