Today's
New York Times carries a long front-page story on the pressures within New York's insular Hasidic Jewish communities against victims' families reporting child sexual abuse to civil authorities. The Times reports:
There have been glimmers of change as a small number of ultra-Orthodox Jews, taking on longstanding religious and cultural norms, have begun to report child sexual abuse accusations against members of their own communities. But those who come forward often encounter intense intimidation from their neighbors and from rabbinical authorities, aimed at pressuring them to drop their cases.
Abuse victims and their families have been expelled from religious schools and synagogues, shunned by fellow ultra-Orthodox Jews and targeted for harassment intended to destroy their businesses. Some victims’ families have been offered money, ostensibly to help pay for therapy for the victims, but also to stop pursuing charges, victims and victims’ advocates said.
The situation varies among different Hasidic communities. Last year a Chabad-Lubavitch religious court in Crown Heights ruled that where there is evidence of abuse, "one is forbidden to remain silent." And recently in Williamsburg, Satmar Hasidic authorities posted Yiddish-language signs in synagogues warning adults and children to stay away from a specific named individual who was molesting young men.
