NEW YORK (NY)
The NY Jewish Week
December 6, 2017
By Gary Rosenblatt
Robert D. Fisher admitted to “improper behavior” with at least three USY teenage boys in his charge in the late 1980s.
The sleepover invitations seemed almost innocent, at least from the vantage point of the late 1980s.
At the time, Robert D. Fisher was the highly popular and charismatic leader of the Pacific Southwest Region of United Synagogue Youth, the Conservative movement’s youth arm. Two top youth leaders, David Benkof, then 18 and the international president of USY, and Ben (who asked that his full name not be used), then 16, were inspired by Fisher, and each — on separate occasions — took the older, single man up on his invitation to sleep over at his house in Los Angeles.
In a series of telephone and email interviews with The Jewish Week in recent days, Benkof, now 47, said, “He told me to sleep in his bed with him and even tried to shame me into undressing while he watched, saying ‘I’ve never known an international president to be shy.’” He did on one occasion but no physical contact took place, Benkof said.
About a year earlier, Ben, who was 16 at the time, had driven an hour from his home to Los Angeles to help plan a USY bus tour later that summer. He had slept over at Fisher’s house several other times — even in his bed, though he thought it was strange — without incident. One morning, though, Ben recounted to The Jewish Week, he woke up to find Fisher massaging his legs and slowly working his way up with his hands.
“I was on my stomach, and when he reached the top of my buttocks, I got very scared and froze, and then started to shake uncontrollably. Then he stopped.”
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