Case of Several Child Sex Offenders in
Har Nof
Jerusalem, Israel
Police succeeded in arresting two long-time known alleged
sex offencers in the winter of 2002-2003. In early January, a 17-year-old
haredi Har Nof resident admitted to sexually abusing young boys. The police
said he had raped and sodomized 15 to 20 children from the ages of five to
10 in a local synagogue. And one month later, a 27-year-old non-haredi man
from Har Nof admitted to committing over 25 acts of molestation on girls
aged six to 11 over the past three years, according to Jerusalem Police Spokesman
Shmuel Ben-Ruby.
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Fear and loathing in Har Nof
(03/07/2003)
By Stuart Winer, Additional reporting by Hilary Leila
Krieger
Jerusalem Post - March 7, 2003
Edition; In Jerusalem, Section: Features, Page: 01
Friday, March 7, 2003 -- In the last two months, public revelations
of child molestation have caused fear and shock in the predominantly haredi
neighborhood of Har Nof. As police try to combat the incidents of abuse,
the community must combat a code of silence which has traditionally pushed
such abuse below the surface.
"The haredi community is not used to talking to strangers
on any subject, " said Dov Bernstein, supervisor for the Jerusalem area
investigators of the Child Investigation Service at the Labor and Social
Affairs Ministry. "Add to that the problem of them being victims of sexual
attacks and it can be very difficult."
Yet police succeeded in arresting two long-time abusers
this winter. In early January, a 17-year-old haredi Har Nof resident admitted
to sexually abusing young boys. The police said he had raped and sodomized
15 to 20 children from the ages of five to 10 in a local synagogue. And one
month later, a 27-year-old non-haredi man from Har Nof admitted to committing
over 25 acts of molestation on girls aged six to 11 over the past three years,
according to Jerusalem Police Spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby.
But there are scores of other cases in the neighborhood
that go unprosecuted for lack of evidence; in many instances they are not
even reported. Now that the topic has been brought to the public's attention,
everyone seems to know someone who has been affected by the phenomena.
"No one knows names," said Bertha Goldstein as she
watched a group of children playing on Rehov Kaplan in Har Nof. "But there
are men approaching children."
Over the past months local Har Nof newsletters have
carried numerous appeals for parents to remain alert after children were
accosted in the northern Jerusalem neighborhood.
"I recently heard of a guy who tried to stop a 12-
year-old girl from leaving a building. She way lucky because some other girls
walked in and she managed to run for it," Goldstein said. "Everyone thought
these were isolated incidents but now they are beginning to piece things
together."
"People are now very cautious about letting their children
walk around alone," Goldstein said. "Even 12 and 13-year-old girls are not
allowed out by themselves."
When victims do go to the authorities, they often find
there's not much that can be done. One Har Nof mother recounted that after
her 18-year-old daughter was fondled by an unknown haredi man in the elevator
of their apartment complex one afternoon last summer, she filed a complaint
with the police.
She said the complaint was a means of taking action,
"[But] I don' t know if it does any good."
She noted that no arrest was ever made but didn't blame
the police.
"I don't think the police can really do anything,"
she said, explaining, "he [the perpetrator] looks like the rest of the
population. What would he do to stand out? It has to be residents, who know
he's different and doesn't belong."
That's one of the reasons she said she believes speaking
out about incidents of abuse is important. "If everybody called [attention
to potential abusers], maybe we could do something about these weirdos."
Once she and her daughter began to talk about what
had happened, they found that several friends and neighbors had experienced
similar traumas.
"There's a lot of stuff going on in Har Nof," the mother
said, noting that her daughter's experience "wasn't such an isolated case
... Frequently I've found out that people have gone through this."
While she said the women whom she told about the
molestation were supportive and as a result felt freer to talk about their
own similar experiences, she expressed some annoyance that no one had shared
these incidents with her before.
"They weren't common knowledge. I didn't know I should
be worried and alert."
Even so, she said her daughter thought twice about
entering the elevator when she saw a strange man inside. When she noticed
a second-grader also in the lift, she decided it was safe to enter.
"As soon as the doors closed he began to handle [fondle]
my daughter, to grope her," the mother described. "She yelled at him and
he got out and ran."
Afterwards, the mother recollected how her daughter
"was very shaken, " as was the young girl who witnessed the attack.
But her daughter told her, "I have to go out now or
I won't be able to go out."
The alternative would have been that "she would get
crippled by fear, " the mother added. "It strikes your security. You don't
trust anybody."
The sense of mistrust applies to the community as a
whole, the mother explained.
"One would think that ostensibly in a religious
neighborhood, people behave better," she said. "I think that we assume a
certain kind of [safety]. We don't play around. We live by the Torah. Guys
don't bother girls. Men stay married. It's not a free-for-all in terms of
morality ... One individual can wreak a lot of havoc. "
But experts contacted by In Jerusalem said they didn't
have any statistics to track whether rates of sexual abuse are higher or
lower in haredi communities than in the public at large.
But Haim Walder, manager of the Center for the Child
and Family in Bnei Brak, an organization that deals with child abuse in the
haredi community, said that while "petty crime is almost unheard of in the
haredi community, sexual crime is more common and more of a problem. People
don't even think about it going on."
Walder, himself haredi, added, "The biggest problem
is closure. People don't want to report it or talk about it."
"We found in Har Nof that we knew a lot of information
but parents were not prepared to talk. We knew things were going on but people
would not come forward," Bernstein said.
Yifat Boyer, an attorney at the National Council for
the Child, an organization that provides legal aid for children, agreed that
the lack of openness makes tackling child abuse in communities like Har Nof
difficult.
"Even the people who are trying to address the issue
in the haredi community don't talk about sex, or sexuality, or even use words
like that."
"You don't want to overexpose the specifics of the
threat the way a lot of media tends to go into graphic detail," Walder said.
"On the other hand we don't want to ignore it."
Walder said that community leaders face the dilemma
of how to warn children without exposing them to things that they don't want
them to know about. The solution, in his opinion, is to give over the message
in a way that is acceptable to community sensitivities.
"For example, there is a kid's book with a story that
explains it is important to keep away from strangers without explaining what
the danger is," Walder explained. He added that the idea is to encourage
children to talk more about what happens to them.
At the same time he noted, "In some ways it is better
not to scare the children" about concepts such as incest, inicidents of which
he claimed is rare.
Boyer said educating children about incest in the haredi
community can be a real problem due to the absolute authority wielded by
haredi parents.
"You can't tell haredi children not to do what their
father tells them to do," Boyer said.
Bernstein said that in some cases it can take years
for children to realize that something happened to them.
Bernstein theorized that the dogma of benevolence and
generosity on which haredi youth is raised may make them easy targets.
"There is a method to seducing children, of getting
close to them. Child molesters know just how to talk to children to gain
their confidence, " Bernstein said. "Since haredi youth are educated to believe
in helping people whenever they can, they are easier to seduce."
Bernstein suggested that in some cases the hospitality
inherent in haredi communities can result in predators being invited right
into victims' homes.
"They also want to help each other and to help ba'alei
tshuva (the newly observant), Bernstein added. "So it is confusing to the
children who see their parents inviting these people into their homes and
then they are not sure if there is something wrong when they interfere with
them."
And the unwillingness to challenge authority extends
to the means of dealing with cases, which Boyer said often revolve around
the rabbis.
"Even when a rabbi knows about a case in his community
he is less likely to report it to the authorities but will try to deal with
it himself," he said. "That could be because they don't recognize the authorities
and they also don't want the story to get out."
Additionally, Walder said, "Sometimes the victim suffers
at the expense of the public and the media who have a field day, and that
is something that the rabbis did not want to happen.The idea is to help the
victim and the community."
Bernstein said that all victims of sexual abuse need
to receive treatment. If denied it, the results can be dire. Studies have
shown that victims of child sexual abuse who are not treated are prone to
become abusers themselves as adults.
"The more serious the initial attack, the more intensive
the treatment must be," Bernstein said. "It takes time, sometimes even up
to three years of treatment, but it is critical."
Bernstein said some rabbinic leaders are taking special
training and there are additional courses for religious women to help them
to deal with these situations.
"People who do try to deal with incidents by intuition
or from the Holy Scriptures can do even more damage," Bernstein said. "I
know of cases in which rabbis said, 'It's not so bad,' or they drove families
out of the community instead of trying to deal with the problem."
Har Nof resident and school principal Yizhak Soffer,
said he feels that community leaders could be doing more.
"The cover-up attitude is stupid," he said. "The correct
attitude is to be on the offensive. They should be supervising education,
be much more aware of strangers, teach basic self-defense so that the kids
know what to do if something happens."
Because of the difficulties in breaking into the closed
community on a subject that is not only intimate, but also taboo, Bernstein
said the investigators apply a method known as "joining."
He explained, "We often investigate in stages. First
we build confidence by getting to know the children, and talking about neutral
subjects."
"We are really in early days with dealing with it,"
Boyer said. "We are trying to hold a meeting with the people in the haredi
community to try and make in-roads."
"It all starts with the rabbi," Bernstein said. "The
more the rabbis are involved, the more likely the community is to involve
outsiders in the process. I know one rabbi who managed to persuade some families
to go to the police although they didn't want to at first."
Bernstein sees the first stage to tackling the problem
in gaining the support of the community leaders.
"The more the rabbis are prepared to listen to us,
even if they have suspicions, they will understand that we have the same
interests: to protect the children."
The process of apprehending and punishing pedophiles
in this country is a long and complicated one that can continue for years.
First the perpetrator must be identified and subsequently arrested. The 27-year-
old arrested in Har Nof last month carried out attacks for three years before
being apprehended after a girl came forward with details of how he had molested
her in a residential building. After police began investing the case, other
victims spoke out.
There are many instances when the accused is released
until the case comes to court. The 17-year-old arrested in January is currently
under house arrest at his brother's.
Prosecution procedures begin when police receive a
complaint from a victim. If, on the basis of initial evidence, the state
attorney' s office decides to prosecute, then the child investigators take
over. According to the law, children under the age of 14 are forbidden from
providing testimony in court in order to protect them from difficult questioning.
Instead of the child, the investigator who handled the case gives
testimony.
All investigations with the children are videotaped
from the first interview until the end of the investigation. The tape is
then submitted to the court, where the judges watch all the footage and the
investigator give testimony in place of the victim. Child abuse investigator
Dov Bernstein said that in some cases the investigator decides that the victim
can give evidence if the child seems confident and strong enough to do so.
Usually, however, it is the investigator who speaks in the name of the child,
a circumstance that Bernstein says is unique in the whole world.
By law, anyone who knows of a case and doesn't report
it to the authorities can be sentenced to six months in prison.
"There is a legal requirement to report incidents that
apply not just to community leaders or educators but all members of the public
too, " Bernstein said. "There have been cases in the past when rabbis were
investigated."
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Last Updated: 09/06/2004
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