AUSTRALIA
International Business Times
By Anne Lu | June 24, 2013
Rabbi Baruch Dov Lesches is sorry after saying that some of an alleged paedophile’s victims from a Sydney Jewish school might have consented to the affair. The former senior rabbi was recorded in a phone conversation, saying that it’s best not to report the sexual abuses to the authorities.
Lesches was a senior leader at a Yeshiva centre in Sydney in the 1980s when a man has allegedly sexually abused at least four boys. He was apparently told of the crime, but he opted not to report it to the authorities, even claiming that some victims might have given their consent.
Fairfax Media has obtained a legally recorded telephone conversation between the rabbi and a person familiar with the series of alleged child rapes and molestations. Lesches has been heard in the phone call to counselling the alleged paedophile after learning that he had sexually abused a boy ten years younger than him.
He said in the conversation that he had told the man that he and the boy would be forced out of the Yeshiva community if he could not control his urges.
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