UNITED STATES
Algemeiner
Eric Allen
Six weeks ago, I emailed Rabbi Mark Dratch, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), and published a detailed letter expressing my concern that the RCA was not doing nearly enough to protect Orthodox children from sexual assault.
The 2,000-word letter pointed out how the RCA hasn’t implemented or enforced four separate sets of child-safety resolutions that it has adopted over the last 23 years. I asked him to require that all RCA rabbis publicly prohibit from their synagogues, schools and yeshivas anyone convicted of a child sex crime. I wrote this letter in part because, in a phone call that I had with Rabbi Dratch 7 months ago, he told me that he wouldn’t commit to enforcing the RCA child protection resolutions or require rabbis to ban child sex offenders from Orthodox institutions.
He also told me in that phone call that publicizing the identities of convicted Orthodox child molesters was a “no-brainer” — yet the RCA still doesn’t do it.
I cited an essay that Rabbi Dratch wrote 10 years ago that advocates for abusive rabbis to be excommunicated and defrocked, yet the RCA, to my knowledge has never done so to an abusive rabbi.
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