ISRAEL
Haaretz
Yair Ettinger Aug 08, 2016
The multiplicity of investigations and indictments against sex offenders in recent weeks, primarily involving the ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) community, has spurred Israel’s chief Ashkenazi rabbi, David Lau, to take the unusual step of speaking out on the issue.
Lau issued a call to Haredi parents and educators to take seriously any stories of sexual assaults of children and to increase awareness of and vocal opposition to any such incidents.
“It is absolutely forbidden to sweep these things under the rug and to evade dealing with these difficult phenomena which, if they are not stopped, could cause numerous other souls to be hurt,” Lau wrote, in a letter to a conference of Haredi teachers.
The letter was written during an especially turbulent time, during which every few days a new horrifying story has emerged or an indictment filed on suspicion of sex crimes against women or minors in family frameworks and educational institutions alike.
Among other developments, charges have been filed against six teachers in a Talmud Torah school in central Tel Aviv; a man from a famous rabbinical family has been indicted for allegedly abusing his daughters; and charges have been filed as well against a senior rabbi at a Jerusalem yeshiva, who is accused of serious sexual assaults, including rape, over a period of years, of members of his family since they were young girls – a case that may mark a turning point in the Haredi public’s approach to sex crimes.
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