Senior rabbis called before abuse inquiry

By Danny Rose
7 News
February 12, 2015

https://au.news.yahoo.com/vic/a/26269632/senior-rabbis-called-before-abuse-inquiry/

A rabbi who was principal of a Melbourne Jewish college when some students were sexually abused admits mistakes were made in the handling of abuse cases.

But responsibility for this fell to another senior figure at Yeshivah College, the now deceased Rabbi Dovid Groner, says Rabbi Abraham Glick, who was principal from 1986 to 2007.

Rabbi Glick told the royal commission into child sex abuse that Rabbi Groner never told him about such cases, because he handled them in "strict confidence".

"I'm prepared to say that if he were alive today, I believe he would agree that that was a mistake. A big mistake," Rabbi Glick told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Thursday.

The commission was told David Cyprys - a locksmith and martial arts instructor at the school - abused several children in the early 1980s, and that Rabbi Groner was aware of this in 1984.

Counsel assisting the commission, Maria Gerace, also said Cyprys abused more students up to 1986, when Rabbi Groner told a victim's mother: "I thought we had cured him."

Cyprys continued to have access to students, and there were further cases of abuse up to 1992.

Cyprys is now in jail after being convicted in 2013 of molesting nine boys, as young as seven years, over almost a decade.

"All I can say is Rabbi Groner dealt with many sensitive issues," said Rabbi Glick, who has repeatedly denied being aware of the abuse at the time it was occurring.

"I can't say why he didn't tell me, other than that."

Rabbi Glick was principal at the school when another now-convicted child abuser, Rabbi David Kramer, a former teacher, left Australia for Israel in 1992 when facing abuse claims.

Earlier this week another rabbi, Yosef Feldman, apologised in a statement after telling the commission pedophiles who can show they have not offended in decades deserve more leniency from the courts.

Rabbi Feldman also resigned as a director of The Yeshiva Centre.

There are Yeshiva schools in Melbourne and Sydney, and the royal commission is investigating their response to the sexual abuse of several students in the 1980s and 1990s.