Rabbi Mordecai Gafni's Teachings to a Teenage
Girl
By Secoya (The anonymous girl in Gary
Rosenblatt's article in the New York Jewish Week)
Rabbi Winiarz (AKA: Marc Gafni) |
After our first lesson, he walked me home, and proceeded
to tell me how "special" I was, and that he really liked me. I got a weird
feeling about this, but being completely inexperienced with adult men, I
didn't have a clue about how to respond to this. I was a very sheltered religious
girl. I wore long skirts and long sleeves, had told boys in 8th grade that
I would not touch them as I believed in "negiah". I had no experience with
boys, or men, for that matter, except for a few wonderful teachers I had
in school.
Also, there was a lot going on for me and my family at the time.
My mom was just getting over breast cancer, having gone through a year of
chemotherapy. She was very sick and we were all frightened. My rather large
family was in crisis due to this, and I would say that due to this trauma,
not a lot of attention or attentiveness was being sent my way. Considering
the circumstances, my family was doing the best they could. Mordechai asked
if I would like to "learn" with him, and I said OK.
Over the next month, he continued to tell me how much
he liked me and how "special" I was, but told me that I must not tell any
one that he felt this way. He told me that if my parents knew about it, they
would blame me for associating with him, and that I would be shamed in my
community. He told me that we had to keep it a secret, because most people
just wouldn't understand. As far as I understood at that point, we had a
friendship, and I was getting some extra attention from an adult at a time
when there wasn't a lot adult attention to go around in my family. My Dad
was overworked, and my mom was recovering from cancer. I didn't quiet understand
why I should be silent about the things Mordechai told me. He hadn't touched
me yet, but was doing a fine job of "grooming me" into being silent and fearful.
He convinced me that I had to be loyal to him, and "not tell" about how he
felt about me. I believed everything he told me. In retrospect, he calculatedly
brainwashed me into silence, hooked me into an emotional trap, ensuring that
I wouldn't tell my parents.
Then he asked my parents if he could stay at our house
over shabbat, because he wanted to be able to walk to a synagogue in our
part of the city. They said OK. (My parents had no idea that they should
suspect him of anything. After all, he was a religious guy from Yeshiva University.) It was
then that he started coming into my room after I had fallen asleep, and waking
me up. I remember clearly that when he tried to touch me, I pushed him away
repeatedly. I remember saying, "no, no, no!" I knew intuitively that it just
wasn't OK with me. But he was larger and stronger than me, and after a huge
struggle, he overcame me. Week after week, he would come into my bedroom
and woke me up in the middle of the night, and I would fight to keep him
from touching me. Every time, I was overcome by him physically. He had already
done the job of convincing me that if I told one I would be shamed by my
family and my community, so I kept silent about what was going on. I hated
it, was disgusted by it, and I was terrified, but there was no place I could
talk about it or get help. I also had no words for what was happening to
me, it was horrible and indescribable. I think of myself back then as a 13
year old girl who had to become disconnected from the world around her, it
was full of contradiction and betrayal, and I had been trapped in this horrible
situation with, as far as I could see, no way out. I walked around my
neighborhood, a place that had always been familiar and safe for me, and
I no longer felt connected to anything.
Rabbi Dovid Winiarz |
He told me that she stuck their heads in the kitchen oven. There was a very clear message that because of what had happened to him, he couldn't help but doing what he was doing to me, and he pleaded with me to understand that, have compassion with him, and comply. More than once, he told me what he was doing was because of the way I looked, or because he just couldn't control himself. He described the world to me as he saw it, full of boys and men who just could not control their sexual impulses, and like them, he really couldn't help himself- he just had to do what he was doing to me. He just had no choice. He added, as part of his rationalization, that the guys at YU were always masturbating, but no one talked about it.
But he was tormented by the fact that he had no control
over himself. Each morning after the molestation experience, I would wake
up and walk into the living room, and see him shuckling wildly, beating his
chest, doing "teshuva" for what he had done the night before. He told me
that I should join him in doing teshuva too! Amazingly, he really believed
that I was a partner in sin. Of course, I didn't "daven" or do "teshuva",
but just stared at him in disbelief. And even after this fervent bout of
repentance, he would wake me up in the middle of the night the next
week.
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin |
The abuse went on through the year I was in 9th grade.
The school year was almost over, I remember it was warm out. He called me
on the phone one day to tell me that he would no longer be coming over. He
realized that what he really needed was to get married soon, and he explained
that this would give him a proper outlet for his sexuality. Its hard to describe
how I felt at that moment, because it is complex. My molester finally decided
to stop abusing me, to leave me alone, to move on. You would imagine I would
feel great relief, but actually the full weight of the abuse I had endured
in silence came crashing down on me. Here I was, left with this horrible
experience, still with no one to talk to about it, and no language for it
anyway. And he wasn't retreating because I had some how managed to make him
stop, but because he decided it just wasn't worth the risk any more. He was
terrified that he would do more and make me pregnant- then there would be
no way to keep his secret. Until then, his abuse included exposing my body
against my will, forcibly touching my breast, grabbing my hand and forcing
me to touch his penis, and forced digital vaginal penetration. All were the
most horrifying, degrading and painful experiences for me. All this only
a year or so after my bat mitzvah.
After his phone call, I knew that I no longer had to
endure his abuse, but now I had to figure out how to survive it, and what
I really wanted to do was escape the world that had allowed this to happen
to me. I understand that what I was going through is called post-traumatic
stress these days. But in those days, and in my community, the words sexual
violence, sexual abuse, or molestation, sexual trauma, were just not house-hold
concepts. I knew there was no way any one would believe my story, and if
anything, what happened would be misunderstood or minimized and
dismissed.
After a while, I figured the best thing to do was to
"put the experience away" until I could figure out how to deal with it. During
the abuse, I had, out of necessity, become pretty good at compartmentalizing
myself, and leaving my body when something was happening to it that I hated,
but couldn't control. I was also good at "putting away" the things that were
just too complex and painful to deal with at the time. This is how I survived
the rest of high school.
I tried to escape the trauma I had endured by spending
the next school year in Israel, doing my best to push it out of my immediate
reality. Upon returning from Israel for the 11th grade, I began to withdraw
from the Orthodox world. I made it to college and embraced college life.
My twenties were about getting as far away from what had happened to me as
possible. I was determined to be free of a world that had betrayed me, and
to embrace the world as a secular Jewish college kid. It wasn't until much
later that I was really able to deal with the trauma of what had
happened.
While in high school, I had told some of my siblings,
who were shocked. No one knew what to do with my story. I told a male NCSY
counselor, who had no response, except to look very uncomfortable. When I
was 18, I told my parents, who were also shocked, and enraged. But no one
knew how to deal with he information I was sharing.
It wasn't until about 10 years ago, that I began to
speak out more widely about what had happened to me. In 1994, I wrote a letter
to Rabbi Riskin, and told him my story. I never received a response from
him. I continue to tell the story to any one who wants to know about it.
Many people have contacted me over the years. People who had a "creepy" feeling
about Mordechai, or who had heard rumors, but wanted to hear a first hand
account.
I tell my story for the following reasons:
If there is any way I can protect another girl or woman
from going through what I went through, I will do it. If there is any way
I can protect a parent from having their child victimized, and having to
deal with the pain and guilt of not having known enough to protect their
child, I will do it.
Unfortunately, I knew Mordechai very well. He told
me a lot about himself, and I knew him as a sexually compulsive, sexually
violent man. After talking with counselors, lawyers, and professionals who
advise and counsel sexual perpetrators, I learned that in 99% of cases, people
who compulsively sexually abuse girls or women, especially those who were
abused themselves as children, don't stop. These are dangerous people. The
more we are silent about them, the more they have the freedom to act out
their sexual compulsions. Further first hand accounts show that Mordechai
continued to molest young women after he was married. Unfortunately, marriage
did not solve his problems. There is no reason for me to assume he is not
still victimizing girls and women. Back when I knew him, he was a refined
manipulator, "groomer", "brain-washer", and he used those skills in order
to victimize girls and young women. I have no doubt that, years later, he
has honed his skills as a predator.
A couple of years ago, Mordechai asked one of his
supporters to contact me, to see if we could meet. I was told that he wanted
to make peace with me. I read a letter that he wrote, stating that he regretted
that our "relationship" didn't work out, and that he wished he had waited
for me to come of age and had married me. He really thought that we had a
mutually consenting relationship, and that I was hoping that he would take
me as his bride! There was no acknowledgment that he did anything against
my will, and certainly no recognition of the gravity of his actions. He was
trying to contact me because he knew I was telling my story, and he wanted
to stop the bad PR, not because he wanted to make amends, do "teshuva", or
own up in any way to what he did. His statements to Gary Rosenblatt, "I never
forced her...she was 14 going on 35" are the farthest from the truth. Anyway,
I expected that he would be smarter than to make these transparently self
incriminating statements.
Like your classic pedophile, he claimed that the
child was consenting, loved him back, and really liked what was going on.
There is no reason for me to believe that Gafni has reformed his ways. There
is every reason for me to speak out and protect others from him.
Of all people, Mordechai should not be teaching people
about Judaism - any "variety of Judaism" - Orthodox or Jewish Renewal, or
any other Jewish trend. Yes, he is smart, charismatic, knows how to excite
people, bring people in. Are we that desperate for someone to attract wayward
Jews to Judaism, that we condone a sexual predator doing it?
Should Judaism be taught to spiritual seekers by someone
who has molested minors and attacked young women? If we want a formula for
misrepresentation...and turning people off to Judaism for good - we've got
one.
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