Top rabbi quits after calling sex assault victim’s father a ‘lunatic’

By Shannon Deery
Herald Sun
February 16, 2015

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/top-rabbi-quits-after-calling-sex-assault-victims-father-a-lunatic/story-fni0fee2-1227221462277

Rabbi Meir Shlomo Kluwgant is a member of the Victoria Police multi-faith council.

Rabbi Kluwgant has resigned as president of the Organisation of Rabbis of Australasia.

AUSTRALIA’s most senior rabbi has stepped down just days after he admitted intimidating and vilifying victims of child sexual abuse.

Meir Shlomo Kluwgant this morning resigned as president of the Organisation of Rabbis of Australasia, less than 12 months after he was elevated to the role.

Now the Herald Sun can reveal Rabbi Kluwgant has also lost his position on Victoria Police’s Multi-Faith Advisory Committee, a position he has held since 2011.

The former long-serving police chaplain now has no ties to Victoria Police.

There is now mounting pressure for Rabbi Kluwgant to be stood down from his role with community services organisation Jewish Care.

He is the second rabbi to resign from senior roles after giving evidence to the child abuse royal commission.

In an email, Rabbi Kluwgant said he had decided to resign immediately “in the best interest of victims”.

“I have always had the best interests of the individual and the community at heart, and my track record speaks for itself,” he said.

Victoria Police today said in a statement he was no longera member of the multi faith adbisory committee,but it is not known if he was sacked or stood down voluntarily.

On taking up the ORA post in May last year, Rabbi Kluwgant had vowed to make sexual abuse and family violence his top priorities.

But he was publicly embarrassed on Friday when he was forced to admit that he had labelled the father of a sexual assault victim a “lunatic”.

Rabbi Kluwgant made the admission after the text was read to the royal commission.

He sent the message while Zephania Waks, father of prominent victim Manny, was giving evidence to the hearing.

“Zephania is killing us. Zephania is attacking Chabad, he is a lunatic on the fringe, guilty of neglect of his own children,” he wrote.

“Where was he when all this was happening?”

In his evidence to the commission, Zephaniah Waks said three of his 17 children had been abused while students at Yeshivah college.

He said that after eldest son Manny went public with his story, he and his wife were vilified and shunned from their ultra-orthodox community.

Rabbi Kluwgant also apologised for intimidating a victim who called on Jewish leaders to confront the child sexual abuse crisis by telling him to “remain silent”.

The victim, known only as AVB, told the royal commission he was told he had no right to speak up over the abuse crisis.

Rabbi Kluwgant is the nephew of community leader Abraham Glick, who has been blamed for covering up decades of abuse while principal of Yeshivah College.

Last week controversial Sydney Rabbi Yosef Feldman stood down from the board of the Yeshiva Centre after sparking widespread criticism with his views on child sexual abuse.

In his evidence to the commission, Rabbi Feldman admitted he was unfamiliar with child abuse laws, said he didn’t know it was illegal to touch the genitals of a child and called for leniency for reformed paedophiles.

“I apologise to anyone in the Rabbinate, the Jewish community and the wider Australian community who may have been embarrassed or ashamed by my views, words, understandings, recordings or emails about child sexual abuse or any other matter,” he said.