AUSTRALIA
Macleay Argus
By Richard Baker and Nick McKenzie June 24, 2013
A prominent Australian rabbi has apologised for extraordinary comments he made about child sexual abuse and reporting paedophiles to police.
Former senior Sydney rabbi Boruch Dov Lesches, who is now one of New York’s leading ultra-Orthodox figures, made his remarks in a recent conversation with a person familiar with a series of alleged child rapes and molestation carried out by one man associated with Sydney’s Yeshiva community in the 1980s.
In a legally recorded telephone conversation obtained by Fairfax Media and provided to NSW police investigating the Yeshiva cases, Rabbi Lesches revealed he knew about the alleged abuse of one boy but did not go to police, instead warning the alleged perpetrator that if he did not stop both he and the boy would be sent away from the community.
Rabbi Lesches also suggested the boy may have consented to sexual relations.
“We are speaking about very young boys … everybody says about the other one that ‘he agreed to this’,” he said.
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