Case of Rabbi Yehuda Kolko

Case of Rabbi Yehuda Kolko

(AKA: Joel Kolko, Yehudah Kolko, Yudi Kolko)

Yeshiva Torah Temimah - (Flatbush) Brooklyn, NY

• December 7, 2006 -- Rabbi Yehuda Kolko was arrested in New York City following a long-term investigation, police said.  He was charged with four counts of sexual abuse, including two felony counts, and endangering the welfare of a child. The alleged victim was in the first grade during the 2002-03 school year.  Video
  
  
• May 5, 2006 Rabbi Yudi Kolko and Yeshiva Torah Temimah were hit with a $20 million civil lawsuit accusing him of molesting two students more than 25 years ago.One of the alleged victims said Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, 60, sexually assaulted him when he was a seventh-grade student.
  
  
• September 12, 2007 -- Rabbi Yehuda Kolko was re-arrested on new charges for allegedly molesting another boy at at Yeshiva Torah Temimah. Rabbi Kolko's wife was able to raise the bail to $50,000 bond, $25,000 cash within the hour and he was released in time to pray at evening Rosh Hashanah services. 
  
  
• April 2, 2008 - Another civil suit is filed against Rabbi Yehuda Kolko and Yeshiva Torah Temimah.  The latest case involves the alleged sexual abuse of a minor, identified as John Doe No. 6, was enrolled at the school when they were between the ages of 11 and 13.

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Table of Contents:

2006 

1. Multiple Postings - The Unorthodox Jew 
2. Request from attorney Jeffrey Herman (02/18/2006) 
3. A Survivor Speaks Out  (02/01/2006) 
4. Rabbi Yehuda Kolko's 5th Grade Class of 1970 
5. Rabbi Yehuda Kolko's 1st Grade Class of 1973 
6. A Survivors Story (02/16/2006) 
7. John Doe No. 1 and John Doe No. 2 V. Rabbi Yehuda Kolko; Yeshiva & Mesivta Torah Temimah, Inc. (05/02/2006) 
8. Rabbi in sex suit - Ex-students seek $20M (05/06/2006) 
9. Suit claims rabbi molested male students (05/06/2006) 
10. Kiddie Sex Scandal Rocks Yeshiva Torah Temimah (05/11/2006) 
11. On the Rabbi's Knee (05/15/2006) 
12. Letters To The Editor (05/31/2006) 
13. Yeshiva In Sex Scandal Pledges More Protection (06/14/2006) 
14. Yeshiva Dustup (07/13/2006) 
15. `He Took My Innocence Away'  (08/09/2006) 
16. An open letter to Rabbi Matisyahu Salomon, mashgiach, Bais Medrash Govoha, Lakewood, New Jersey (12/05/2006) 
17. JOHN DOE NO.4, by and through his natural parents and guardians, and by his MOTHER and FATHER individually (12/06/2006) 
18. Police: Brooklyn Rabbi Charged With Sexual Abuse On Child  (12/07/2006) 
19. Brooklyn school rabbi accused of molesting boy (12/07/2006) 
20. Brooklyn rabbi charged with sexual abuse (12/07/2006) 
21. Rabbi Charged With Sexually Abusing 9-Year-Old (12/08/2006) 
22. Brooklyn Rabbi Arrested On Sexual Assault Charges (12/08/2006) 
23. Sex-rap rabbi is busted in Brooklyn (12/08/2006) 
24. Brooklyn School Rabbi Accused of Molesting Boy (12/08/2006) 
25. NYC rabbi charged with sex abuse of 9-year-old boy (12/08/2006) 
26. Brooklyn Rabbi In Perv Bust (12/08/2006) 
27. Yeshiva Denies Knowledge Of Alleged Sexual Abuse (12/08/2006) 
28. Rabbi Pleads Not Guilty To Molestation Charges (12/08/2006) 
29. Orthodox Rabbi Arrested for Sex Abuse (12/08/2006) 
30. NYC Rabbi Arrested For "Decades Of Alleged Sexual Abuse" (12/08/2006) 
31. Rabbi Charged With Sexually Abusing 9-Year-Old (12/08/2006) 
32. 'Perv' Rabbi In Shul Shocker (12/09/2006) 
33. Tip of iceberg feared in rabbi child sex rap (12/09/2006) 
34. Brooklyn Rabbi Is Arraigned on Charges of Sexual Abuse (12/09/2006) 
35. Bail Set for Brooklyn Rabbi Accused of Sex Abuse (12/09/2006) 
36. We Need To Be Honoring The Survivors of Rabbi Yehuda Kolko As Heros! (12/09/2006) 
37. Rabbi Perv-Bust 'Justice' (12/10/2006) 
38. Brooklyn rabbi charged with molestation (12/12/2006) 
39. Kolko Arrested on Sexual Abuse Charges (12/13/2006) 
40. Midwood Rabbi Faces Kiddie Sex Charges - Cops Say Joel Kolko Sexually Assaulted Yeshiva Students (12/14/2006) 
41. Kolko Scandal Now Criminal (12/15/2006) 

2007

1. 4TH Sex-Abuse Suit VS. Yeshiva (01/05/2007) 
2. Clergy sexual misconduct: What´s being done to squelch it? (01/10/2007) 
• Correction: Marci Hamilton on JTA clergy abuse series (01/10/2007)
3. So Many Rules, So Little Protection, Sex & Suppression Among Ultra Orthodox Jews  (01/10/2007) 
4. Inside the eruv: Are some Orthodox discreet or closing their eyes? (01/10/2007) 
5. Rabbi faces more charges of sex abuse (01/11/2007) 
6. Is molestation being swept underneath the Eruv? (01/12/2007) 
7. Arrested, charged, sued for $10 million (01/12/2007) 
8. Rabbi Yehuda Kolko accused of molesting boy (09/13/2007) 
9. Rabbi Hit With New Perv Rap (09/13/2007) 
10. Brooklyn Rabbi Faces Sexual Abuse Charges (09/13/2007) 

2008

1. BREAKING: Lawyers Against Kolko Seek Additional Victims; Trial Set For March 31  (03/14/2008) 
2. Letter from Attorney Jeffrey M. Herman (03/14/2008) 
3. NY yeshiva sued over 'sexual abuse' (04/02/2008) 
4. Yeshiva Fired, Then Paid, Rabbi Charged With Abuse (04/02/2008) 
5. Fifth Sex Suit Filed Against N.Y. Yeshiva (04/02/2008) 
6. Rabbi avoids jail on molest rap (04/05/2008) 
7. No Sex Charge For Kolko; Boys' Parents Foiled By DA (04/17/2008)

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Request from attorney Jeffrey Herman

Unorthodox Jews Blog - Saturday, February 18, 2006

My name is Jeffrey Herman and I am an attorney who represents victims of sexual abuse who were abused by Yudi Kolko. I am currently investigating these claims.

If anyone has information about this case, please contact me via email at jherman@hermanlaw.com or via telephone at (305) 931-2200.

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A Survivor Speaks Out

By (Name Removed)

Unorthodox Jew - February 1, 2006

"I too was molested by Rabbi Yidi Kolko, both while a student in 7th and 8th grades in Yeshiva Torah V'daas and during those same summers whilst a camper in Camp Agudah.

I used to get rides to school in the mornings with Yidi whether in his old blue car or in his brand new brown car. At that time he lived on 56th Street between 14th & 15th Avenue, whilst I lived on 57th Street, between 15th and 16th Avenues. He was newly married at that time and his first child, a daughter, was also just born then.

Once we got to the Yeshiva on Ocean Parkway, which then was just off of Caton Road, he would park the car (either down the block from the Yeshiva, on the Ocean Parkway service road, or around the corner, I think it was East 5th Street, and ask me to come over and either sit beside him or sit on his lap. Sometimes he would move over to the passenger seat and would then sit me on his lap.

That's when he went fishing. He would insert his hands down the front of my pants and would begin to "search around" to say the least. At the same time he would pull me closer to himself, or would push himself forward againt myself, sometimes even pushing me into the stearing wheel, to the point that it hurt.

Unfortunately I didn't react or complain. The winters were cold and these rides saved on not having to walk all the way to 13th Avenue to wait for the bus (especially on Sunday mornings), you were able to leave your house later since you could always make the ride, and you saved a couple of cents, which was a lot in those days.

During one of those Sunday mornings whilst we were driving on Caton Avenue, whilst I was sitting in the front passenger seat - I almost always sat in the front passenger seat - we were involved in a terrible traffic accident where a car went through a red light and slammed into Yidi's car. B"H we all got out without a scratch.

In Camp Aguda it was the same, whether if he took me into the trees, or into his cabin, or even would take me out for a drive. FYI, during the summer of 1970 I had my bar mitzva in the camp.

I of course told my parents and tried on several times to explain to them what I was going through, but they didn't want to believe me and my "stories", etc. My father at that time was a very well known and respected person in the Boro Park & Midwood communities and within the Yeshiva world. So I just shut up and let the molestation and perversion continue.

I also think that Yidi Kolko is a danger to the students, past and present in Yeshiva Tora Temimah and I feel that it is about time that the wall of silence be torn down.

Did I suffer as a result, probably. But I have made a life for myself and today am very happily married with 4 wonderful children".

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Rabbi Yehuda Kolko's 5th Grade Class of 1970

Note: The faces of children has been removed to protect the identity of any and all survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

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Rabbi Yehuda Kolko's 1st Grade Class of 1973

Note: The faces of children has been removed to protect the identity of any and all survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

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A Survivors Story

By (Name Removed)

Unorthodox Jew - Thursday, February 16, 2006

"It is time for Yidi Kolko to pay the price for what he did to me and to others".

I Am (Name Removed)

I have spent the past few days reading all of the comments that have been posted to this blog and would like to comment.

It was not easy for me to finally open up and put in writing and post on this blog some of the things that Yidi Kolko did to me so many years ago at Yeshiva Torah Vodaas of Flatbush and at camp Agudah.

Yes, I've been carrying it for all of these years and no matter how hard I tried to forget about it, it always seems to be there. Always there. And with every case of child abuse or molestation that gets publicized, it's always there. Even today, even when I'm happily married with 4 wonderful children.

I recommend that each one of you look at your sons, or brothers and ask: can they possibly be a victim of sexual molestation by a rebbe, a teacher, a camp counselor, etc?

And if he/they were, would he be strong enough to tell you about it?

And then the question I ask is: Would you at all believe him?

For you would ask: how could it be that such an outstanding rebbe, teacher, counselor, etc., who everyone loves and raves about, how could he do something like this?

And your immediate response would automatically be: No, my son, for some reason, isn't telling the truth, he must be lying . . .

As I said before, I've lived with this for a very long time and it is time for Yidi Kolko to pay the price for what he did to me and to others.

What this price is I'll let others decide.

They say that time has a way of healing - from my own experience, it doesn't ever go away.

In order to survive and remain normal, one must be strong... and always and continuously believe in Hashem.

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United States District Court Eastern  

John Doe No. 1 and John Doe No. 2 V. Rabbi Yehuda Kolko; Yeshiva & Mesivta Torah Temimah, Inc.

John Doe Number 1 and John Doe Number 2 V. Rabbi Yehuda Kolko (PDF)

Page 1

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

EASTERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK

JOHN DOE NO. 1 and JOHN DOE NO. 2,

Plaintiffs,

CASE NO.: 06-2096

v.

COMPLAINT

RABBI YEHUDA KOLKO; YESHIVA &

MESIVTA TORAH TEMIMAH, INC. F/K/A

YESHIVA TORAH VODAATH OF

FLATBUSH, INC.; and CAMP AGUDAH, INC.,

Defendants.

Plaintiffs, JOHN DOE NO. 1 and JOHN DOE NO. 2, by and through their

attorneys, HERMAN & MERMELSTEIN, P.A., hereby file this Complaint against

Defendants, RABBI YEHUDA KOLKO, YESHIVA & MESIVTA TORAH TEMIMAH,

INC. F/K/A YESHIVA TORAH VODAATH OF FLATBUSH, INC. and CAMP

AGUDAH, INC., and state as follows:

INTRODUCTION

1. Plaintiff, JOHN DOE NO. 1, is an adult male who is a citizen and resident of Israel. He is identified in this lawsuit by the pseudonym JOHN DOE NO. 1 in that this case involves horrific acts of childhood sexual abuse perpetrated on the Plaintiff

by RABBI YEHUDA KOLKO ("RABBI KOLKO").

2. Plaintiff, JOHN DOE NO. 2, is an adult male who is a citizen of the United States, with his permanent residence outside the State of New York. He is identified in this lawsuit by the pseudonym JOHN DOE NO. 2 in that this case involves horrific acts of childhood sexual abuse perpetrated on the Plaintiff by RABBI KOLKO.

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3. Each Plaintiff is seeking in excess of $10,000,000.00 in damages in this lawsuit.

4. At all material times, Defendant, YESHIVA & MESIVTA TORAH TEMIMAH, INC. F/K/A YESHIVA TORAH VODAATH OF FLATBUSH, INC. ("TORAH TEMIMAH") was a New York not-for-profit religious corporation organized and existing pursuant to the Religious Corporation Law of the State of New York. At all material times, TORAH TEMIMAH was a Jewish day school with its principal place of business in Brooklyn, New York. At all material times, Defendant RABBI KOLKO was an agent, employee, or appointee of TORAH TEMIMAH in his capacities as rabbi, teacher, and/or counselor at the school.

5.  At all material times, Defendant, CAMP AGUDAH, was a New York not- for-profit corporation based in Kings County, New York. CAMP AGUDAH is a children's summer camp located in Ferndale, New York. At all material times, RABBI KOLKO was an agent, employee, or appointee of CAMP AGUDAH in his capacities as rabbi, teacher, and/or counselor at the camp.

JURISDICTION AND VENUE

6. This Court has jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §1332(a)(3) in that the matter in controversy exceeds the sum or value of $75,000, exclusive of interests and costs, and is between citizens of different states and a citizen of a foreign state is an additional party.

7. Venue is proper in this District pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §§1391(b) and (c) because all or a substantial part of the events or omissions giving rise to the claims occurred in the State of New York within this District.

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SEXUAL ABUSE BY RABBI KOLKO

8. JOHN DOE NO. 1 and JOHN DOE NO. 2 spent all or part of their childhoods in a tight-knit Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn, New York. One of the more important and revered institutions within this community is TORAH TEMIMAH. The leader of TORAH TEMIMAH is Rabbi Lipa Margulies, in whom the community has placed its utmost trust and confidence.

9. JOHN DOE NO. 1 enrolled in TORAH TEMIMAH for the seventh grade. RABBI KOLKO was a teacher at TORAH TEMIMAH under the supervision of Rabbi Lipa Margulies. He was also one of JOHN DOE NO. 1's neighbors.

10. RABBI KOLKO frequently drove JOHN DOE NO. 1 to school at TORAH TEMIMAH. On one occasion while JOHN DOE NO. 1 was in the seventh grade, RABBI KOLKO parked his car down the street from TORAH TEMIMAH and instructed JOHN DOE NO. 1 to sit on his lap and hold the steering wheel. JOHN DOE NO. 1 did as instructed as he could not fathom saying no to a Rabbi. RABBI KOLKO began to grind his erect penis against JOHN DOE NO. 1 while placing his hands in JOHN DOE NO. 1's pants and fondling his genitals. JOHN DOE NO. 1 felt frozen and helpless while the abuse occurred.

11. Following this incident, RABBI KOLKO abused JOHN DOE NO. 1 on at least fifteen other occasions at TORAH TEMIMAH or while driving JOHN DOE NO. 1 to or from TORAH TEMIMAH. On multiple occasions, RABBI KOLKO abused JOHN DOE NO. 1 following recess at TORAH TEMIMAH. RABBI KOLKO told JOHN DOE NO. 1 to face a wall while RABBI KOLKO reached his hand around and molested JOHN

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DOE NO. 1 and fondled his genitals. The abuse continued until JOHN DOE NO. 1 graduated from the yeshiva in the eighth grade.

12. RABBI KOLKO also abused JOHN DOE NO. 1 during the summer following seventh and eighth grade at CAMP AGUDAH in Ferndale, New York. At the summer camp, RABBI KOLKO engaged in a similar pattern of abuse. RABBI KOLKO pulled JOHN DOE NO. 1 out of camp to go driving around town. While in the car, RABBI KOLKO would invariably molest JOHN DOE NO. 1 after placing him on his lap so RABBI KOLKO could grind his penis against JOHN DOE NO. 1's buttocks.

13. JOHN DOE NO. 2 also enrolled in TORAH TEMIMAH beginning in the seventh grade. Over the next three years, RABBI KOLKO sexually abused JOHN DOE NO. 2 on repeated occasions. The abuse, which began when JOHN DOE NO. 2 was in the seventh grade, generally occurred in the book room of the basement of TORAH TEMIMAH. RABBI KOLKO would fondle JOHN DOE NO. 2 and rub his own erect penis against him.

14. JOHN DOE NO. 1 and JOHN DOE NO. 2, and their respective families, placed their trust in the Defendants' institutions. In particular, the Plaintiffs reposed trust and confidence in the fidelity and integrity of RABBI KOLKO. With the authorization and knowledge of the Defendants, RABBI KOLKO accepted this trust and confidence and used it gain influence with the Plaintiffs, as well as assume control and responsibility over them.

15. RABBI KOLKO seized this opportunity to sexually abuse JOHN DOE NO. 1 and JOHN DOE NO. 2. RABBI KOLKO's position of trust and confidence, together

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with his unfettered access to JOHN DOE NO. 1 and JOHN DOE NO. 2, facilitated him in committing the heinous abuse on numerous occasions over a period of years.

16. The Defendants received multiple, credible reports that RABBI KOLKO was sexually abusing other young boys whom he came into contact with as a result of his employment with TORAH TEMIMAH and CAMP AGUDAH. Instead of accepting responsibility or at a minimum conducting a good faith investigation, Rabbi Lipa Margulies, as director and managing agent of TORAH TEMIMAH, and in concert with Rabbi Kolko, willfully engaged in a campaign of intimidation, concealment and misrepresentations designed to prevent victims from filing civil lawsuits and/or obtaining facts necessary to bring civil claims. These tactics included, but were not limited to, the following:

a. Rabbi Margulies directed Rabbi Pinchus Scheinberg to contact victims, and tell them they were not actually abused and have no claim to bring;

b. Rabbi Margulies contacted family members of victims and told them that if they pursued claims, or even investigated the allegations of abuse, other children in their families would be expelled from the yeshiva and prevented from attending other yeshivas in the New York area; and

c. Rabbi Margulies threatened RABBI KOLKO's victims with retaliation and ostracism from their Orthodox Jewish community if they pursued their claims.

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17. Rabbi Lipa Margulies, in concert with Defendants and in his capacity as their agent, willfully made the following material misrepresentations:

a. Rabbi Margulies stated that a Rabbinical Court cleared RABBI KOLKO of allegations of sexual abuse by other victims, knowing that there was credible evidence that RABBI KOLKO had committed acts of child sexual abuse;

b. Rabbi Margulies stated that he was not aware of any other allegations of sexual abuse, when in fact he had knowledge that there were allegations of abuse by RABBI KOLKO;

c. Rabbi Margulies said he had no knowledge of any inappropriate sexual activities or inappropriate sexual predisposition by RABBI KOLKO, when in fact he knew that RABBI KOLKO was acting in a sexually inappropriate manner;

d. Rabbi Margulies informed Rabbi Scheinberg about the nature of the sexual abuse being perpetrated by RABBI KOLKO, with the instruction that Rabbi Scheinberg was to advise the victims of RABBI KOLKO that what occurred did not constitute abuse, and that therefore there was nothing they could do about it.

18. The Defendants actively and fraudulently concealed information pertinent and relevant to claims relating to the sexual abuse in this matter for the purpose of protecting themselves from civil liability and evading same.

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COUNT I – NEGLIGENCE

19.Plaintiffs repeat and re-allege, as if fully set forth herein, each and every allegation contained in the above Paragraphs 1 through 18.

20. At all material times, the Defendants owed a duty to Plaintiffs to use reasonable care to ensure the safety, care, well-being and health of the Plaintiffs while they were under their care, custody or in the presence of their agents or employees. The Defendants' duties encompassed the hiring, appointment, retention and/or supervision of RABBI KOLKO and otherwise providing a safe environment for the Plaintiffs.

21. At all material times, Defendants knew or should have known that RABBI KOLKO sexually abused young male students and/or campers under his supervision or control. Defendants knew or should have known of RABBI KOLKO's dangerous sexual predisposition and/or that he was otherwise unfit, dangerous and a threat to the health, safety and welfare of the minors entrusted to his counsel, care and protection in course of his duties at TORAH TEMIMAH and CAMP AGUDAH.

22. The Defendants breached their duty of care by failing to protect the minor Plaintiffs from sexual assault and lewd and lascivious acts committed by their agent and/or employee, RABBI KOLKO. Despite their knowledge regarding RABBI KOLKO's dangerous propensities, Defendants failed to take any remedial action, conduct a good faith investigation, and/or place restrictions on RABBI KOLKO's duties and interactions with minors.

23.At all relevant times, the Defendants had grossly inadequate policies and procedures to protect children they were entrusted to care for and protect, including JOHN DOE NO. 1 and JOHN DOE NO. 2.

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24. As a direct and proximate cause of Defendants' failure to remove RABBI KOLKO from his duties and/or otherwise take remedial action upon receiving allegations of sexual abuse by RABBI KOLKO, JOHN DOE NO. 1 and JOHN DOE NO. 2 were sexually abused.

25. The sexual abuse has caused JOHN DOE NO. 1 and JOHN DOE NO. 2 to suffer severe and permanent psychological, emotional and physical injuries and the inability to lead a normal life, as well as attendant economic losses. Plaintiffs' injuries are persistent, permanent, and debilitating in nature. WHEREFORE, Plaintiffs, JOHN DOE NO. 1 and JOHN DOE NO. 2, pray that judgment be entered in their favor and against the Defendants, YESHIVA & MESIVTA TORAH TEMIMAH, INC. F/K/A YESHIVA TORAH VODAATH OF FLATBUSH, INC. and CAMP AGUDAH. COUNT II - BREACH OF FIDUCIARY DUTY

26. Plaintiffs repeat and re-allege, as if fully set forth herein, each and every allegation contained in the above Paragraphs 1-18.

27. At all relevant times, RABBI KOLKO occupied and accepted a position as fiduciary to JOHN DOE NO. 1 and JOHN DOE NO. 2 as their counselor and advisor, in a relationship of trust and confidence.

28.Defendants knew that RABBI KOLKO had a fiduciary relationship with JOHN DOE NO. 1 and JOHN DOE NO. 2, and in fact authorized RABBI KOLKO to act as their agent in counseling and advising JOHN DOE NO. 1 and JOHN DOE NO.

2. Accordingly, Defendants were also in a fiduciary relationship with Plaintiffs.

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29. Defendants breached their fiduciary duty to Plaintiffs by allowing RABBI KOLKO to serve as Plaintiffs' rabbi, teacher, counselor, and advisor despite knowledge of his dangerous sexual propensities.

30. As a direct and proximate cause of Defendants' failure to remove RABBI KOLKO from his duties and/or otherwise take remedial action upon receiving allegations of sexual abuse by RABBI KOLKO, JOHN DOE NO. 1 and JOHN DOE NO. 2 were sexually abused.

31. The sexual abuse has caused JOHN DOE NO. 1 and JOHN DOE NO. 2 to suffer severe and permanent psychological, emotional and physical injuries and the inability to lead a normal life, as well as attendant economic losses. Plaintiff's injuries are persistent, permanent, and debilitating in nature. WHEREFORE, Plaintiffs, JOHN DOE NO. 1 and JOHN DOE NO. 2, pray that judgment be entered in their favor and against the Defendants, YESHIVA & MESIVTA TORAH TEMIMAH, INC. F/K/A YESHIVA TORAH VODAATH OF FLATBUSH, INC. and CAMP AGUDAH. COUNT III – SEXUAL ASSAULT

32.Plaintiffs repeat and re-allege, as if fully set forth herein, each and every allegation contained in the above Paragraphs 1-18.

33. RABBI KOLKO tortiously assaulted, molested, and otherwise sexually abused JOHN DOE NO. 1 and JOHN DOE NO. 2 on multiple occasions during their childhood.

34. RABBI KOLKO, in concert with Rabbi Marguilies, engaged in, participated in, and/or authorized, active concealment, intimidation, and

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misrepresentations designed to prevent victims from coming forward and pursuing their claims.

35. The sexual abuse has caused JOHN DOE NO. 1 and JOHN DOE NO. 2 to suffer severe and permanent psychological, emotional and physical injuries and the inability to lead a normal life, as well as attendant economic losses. Plaintiffs' injuries are persistent, permanent, and debilitating in nature. WHEREFORE, Plaintiffs, JOHN DOE NO. 1 and JOHN DOE NO. 2, respectfully demand judgment in their favor and against Defendant, RABBI YEHUDA KOLKO.

DEMAND FOR JURY TRIAL

Plaintiffs hereby demands a trial of their claims by jury.

Dated: May 2, 2006

Respectfully submitted,

HERMAN & MERMELSTEIN, P.A.

JEFFREY M. HERMAN, ESQ.

STUART S. MERMELSTEIN, ESQ.

ADAM D. HOROWITZ, ESQ.

18205 Biscayne Boulevard, Suite 2218

Miami, Florida 33160

Telephone: (305) 931-2200

Facsimile: (305) 931-0877

By: /s/ Stuart S. Mermelstein .

Stuart S. Mermelstein (SM1461)

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Rabbi in sex suit - Ex-students seek $20M

BY AUSTIN FENNER

New York Daily News - May 6, 2006

A Brooklyn rabbi and his yeshiva were hit with a $20 million civil lawsuit yesterday, accusing him of molesting two students more than 25 years ago.

One of the alleged victims said Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, 60, sexually assaulted him when he was a seventh-grade student attending Yeshiva-Mesivta Torah Temimah, an Ocean Parkway, Brooklyn, religious school.

"It happened in his car on the way to school and at recess during summer camp," the 48-year-old man said at a press conference.

The plaintiff, identified by his Miami lawyer, Jeffrey Herman, only as John Doe No. 1, was allegedly molested during the early 1970s over a two-year period, Herman said.

The alleged victim charges that Kolko had instructed him to sit on his lap and hold the steering wheel while they were in Kolko's car on the way to school as the rabbi molested him.

Herman, who claims there are at least 15 victims, charges that school officials waged a campaign of intimidation and concealment against victims and their families to bury the accusations against the rabbi.

School officials could not be reached for comment.

Kolko, who lives in Midwood in a red-brick house on E. 22nd St., could not be reached for comment.

The other plaintiff, who was not present, was identified as a 38-year-old man who was allegedly sexually abused when he was also a seventh-grader in the 1980s.

The alleged offenses exceed New York's three-year statute of limitations.

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Suit claims rabbi molested male students

Political Gateway, FL - May 6, 2006

NEW YORK, May 6 (UPI) -- A New York rabbi and his religious school are being sued by two men who claim they were sexually abused as children more than a quarter-century ago.

One man, identified as John Doe No. 1, says Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, 60, molested him when he was in the seventh-grade at Yeshiva-Mesivta Torah Temimah in Brooklyn in the 1970s, the Daily News reported. The man, now 48, said at a news conference that Kolko had him sit on his lap while the rabbi was driving him to school and also abused him at a summer camp.

The second man says he was molested 10 years later when he was a seventh grader.

Jeffrey Herman, a Miami lawyer representing John Doe No. 1, accuses the school of protecting the rabbi by intimidating boys who had been abused.

Kolko cannot face criminal charges under New York law because of a three-year statute of limitations.

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Kiddie Sex Scandal Rocks Yeshiva Torah Temimah

By Thomas Tracy

Flatbush Life - May 11, 2006

  

A graduate of Yeshiva Torah Temimah on Ocean Parkway said that a rabbi at the school abused him when he was a student there.  

Two former students at a Flatbush yeshiva filed a civil lawsuit against their school last week, claiming that the administration had "covered up" allegations that one of their educators was sexually abusing young boys.

According to a federal court papers filed on May 5, both Yeshiva Torah Temimah, 555 Ocean Parkway, and Midwood Rabbi Yidi Kolko were each facing a $10 million lawsuit from two men who claim that they were sexually abused as children.

Both children, only identified as John Doe #1 and John Doe #2 in court papers, allege that they were sexually assaulted by Kolko during the 1980s. When the alleged abuse was reported to the school, yeshiva administrators shot down the complaints, stating that the students "were not actually abused," according to the lawsuit.

Parents were warned that if they continued with their complaints or had the authorities investigate the complaints, "other children in their families would be expelled from the yeshiva and preventing from attending other yeshivas in the New York area," according to the suit filed by Jeffrey Herman of the Miami-based law firm Herman and Mermelstein.

One of the victims, now 48 and living in Israel, joined Herman as he outlined the alleged abuse during a press conference in front of the yeshiva on Friday afternoon.

The complainant, John Doe #1, said that as a child he was his family were happy that he was enrolled in Yeshiva Torah Termimah, which was at the time considered "one of the more important and revered institutions" in his community.

Rabbi Lipa Margulies, the leader of Torah Temimah, was one of his neighbors.

Another neighbor was Rabbi Kolko, who would offer to drive the child to school each morning, according to the complaint.

When John Doe #1 was in the seventh grade, Rabbi Kolko took him to school, but would first park down the block from the school, where he would allegedly instruct the child to sit on his lap and hold the steering wheel as he began to "grind his erect penis" against the plaintiff, who also alleged that, on occasion, Kolko would put his hands in his pants to touch the victim's genitals.

John Doe #1 said that this alleged abuse happened on 15 other occasions, both on the way to the school and after-school recess at Torah Temimah when Kolko told John Doe #1 to face a wall while he allegedly molested him.

The alleged abuse continued until John Doe #1 graduated from the school and continued on to high school, according to the complaint.

The summer between the seventh and eighth grade posed no relief for the child, who Kolko allegedly abused during a stay at Camp Agudah in upstate New York.

The lawsuit claims that Kolko would pull the child out of camp for a "drive around town" where the child was allegedly abused.

John Doe #2 allegedly suffered the same abuse at the hands of Rabbi Kolko, Herman stated.

But, when members at Torah Temimah received word that one of their teachers was allegedly abusing students, they immediately put the kibosh on all complaints, the lawsuit alleges.

"[Yeshiva Torah Temimah] received multiple, credible reports that Rabbi Kolko was sexually abusing other young boys who he came into contact with," Herman states in his suit. "But instead of accepting responsibility or at a minimum conducting a good faith investigation, Rabbi Lipa Margulies with Rabbi Kolko willfully engaged in a campaign of intimidation, concealment and misrepresentations designed to prevent victims from filing civil lawsuits."

The alleged intimidation included warning parents that if they continued with their complaints, their other children would be blackballed from any yeshivas in the borough, as well as "retaliation and ostracism from their Orthodox Jewish community," Herman claimed.

Margulies, according to the suit, allegedly told parents bringing forth their complaints that Rabbi Kolko had already been cleared by a Rabbinical Court, which allegedly encouraged some to drop their charges.

Calls to both the yeshiva and Rabbi Kolko's Midwood home were not returned as this paper went to press.

Herman admitted that both his client's complaints come upwards of a decade after the statute of limitations on sexual abuse charges had expired, so neither Rabbi Kolko nor the school could be charged criminally.

_________________________________________________________________________________

On the Rabbi's Knee

Do the Orthodox Jews have a Catholic-priest problem?

by Robert Kolker

New York Magazine - May 15, 2006

For the full impact of the story and for photos that are not available on-line, it is suggest that you buy the magazine at your local news stand.

'Does it hurt?"

The boy and his teacher were in the front seat of the teacher's blue Plymouth sedan. The boy was 12 years old, pale and shy, and new to Brooklyn—plucked out of another life in Toronto after his mother remarried. He'd lost his father when he was 7, and the promise of a fresh start had appealed to him—a new family, a new world to explore. But a few months had passed, and the boy was lonely. His new stepsisters ignored him; he had trouble making friends at his new school. So when a popular teacher who lived nearby took an interest in him, it seemed like welcome news.

The teacher was in his early twenties—closer in age to many of his students than to his colleagues—tall and athletic, with a shock of red hair, and the kids liked him: He wasn't the type who'd shake his fist at the heavens if he'd heard someone had gone to see a movie. The teacher taught first grade, and the boy was too old to be in his class, but they were neighbors. On the way to the bus stop, the boy would spot the teacher walking from his modest ground-floor newlywed apartment, coffee mug in hand, to his car. And on many days, the teacher was happy to offer the boy and a few other neighborhood kids a lift.

The teacher would usually park on the access road alongside Ocean Parkway, and they'd all walk into school together. But on this cold autumn morning, a few months into the school year, the boy would later remember, the teacher didn't leave the car right away. As the boy and his friends began emptying out of the backseat, the boy remembers the teacher turning to him.

"Stay a few minutes. I want to talk to you."

The other kids left.

"Come to the front," the boy remembers the teacher saying. "Come sit beside me."

Was he in trouble? Had he done something wrong? He couldn't think of anything, but he did as he was told.

The Plymouth had a wide bench seat up front, with no split down the middle.

"Come sit on my lap," said the teacher.

Then the teacher picked him up, the boy remembers, and put him on his lap. The teacher's penis was erect.

The boy's mind flooded. Should I scream? Run? He looked toward Ocean Parkway—Isn't somebody watching?

The teacher unfastened the boy's belt, reached around, and slipped his hand into the boy's pants, the boy says.

He couldn't see the teacher's face. But he could hear him.

"Does it hurt?" the boy recalls the teacher saying, over and over. His voice was urgent but also oddly indifferent, as if he were asking about the weather. "Does it hurt?"

The boy was panicked now, desperate to open the car door and run into the school for help. But he was 12 years old, and the teacher was older and stronger, and, after all, he was a teacher.

All the boy wanted was to fit into his new world. The sooner this ended, he thought, the sooner he could forget it ever happened.

The ordeal lasted just minutes, the boy remembers. Then the teacher told him to go. "I don't remember the exact words, but he said something like `Don't tell anyone,' " the boy says.

So into the school the boy went, wondering if he was the only Orthodox Jewish boy who had ever been molested by a rabbi.

For decades, David Framowitz, 48 years old now and living in Israel, tried to forget about Rabbi Yehuda Kolko. But he couldn't put the memories behind him. A few years ago, prompted by a visit to his old neighborhood, Framowitz found himself impulsively Googling the rabbi's name. He had to know what had become of him. What he found was at once comforting and devastating: a link to a blog with the rabbi's name and the words known pedophile. For the first time in 35 years, Framowitz had reason to believe that Kolko was not just his private tormentor.

On May 4, Framowitz filed a $20 million federal lawsuit against Kolko and Yeshiva Torah Temimah of Flatbush, Brooklyn, for what Framowitz says happened on at least fifteen occasions over two years, from 1969 to 1971—in the front seat of the Plymouth, and at the yeshiva at the end of recess, and at Camp Agudah in the Catskills, where Kolko worked for several summers. Framowitz was listed as a John Doe plaintiff in the legal filing, but he now has decided that putting a name and a face on the case will strengthen its credibility.

Framowitz is far from the rabbi's only accuser. A second plaintiff, who wishes to maintain his anonymity, claims to have been fondled and rubbed up against by Kolko in the eighties, most often in the basement book room of the yeshiva. And on Friday, Framowitz's attorney, Jeffrey Herman, was expected to file a separate, $10 million suit on behalf of an unnamed plaintiff who says he was abused by Kolko in the late eighties. All told, Herman says he knows of as many as twenty victims between the ages of 19 and 50 who say they were abused by Kolko. There's the seventh-grader whom Kolko allegedly pulled into a closet in the seventies and held against his erection until that boy broke free. The dozen campers who came forward in the eighties, only to be rebuffed. And one boy who, twenty years later, is said to have punched Kolko at a Bris they were both attending, because of what he said Kolko had done to him years earlier. "It particularly haunted them," Herman says, "that Kolko was still at the school and children were still being exposed to him."

One rabbi molesting twenty students over several decades would be disturbing enough, but Framowitz's lawsuit alleges that there was also a conspiracy among powerful members of the ultra-Orthodox community to cover up Kolko's actions. The suit names not just Kolko but his yeshiva—accusing Kolko's boss, Rabbi Lipa Margulies, of orchestrating "a campaign of intimidation, concealment and misrepresentations designed to prevent victims from filing lawsuits." According to the complaint, Margulies, a pillar of the Borough Park community, took extraordinary measures to derail a rabbinical court action, or beit din, against Kolko in the eighties—telling family members of a dozen alleged victims that if they came forward, they'd be shunned by the ultra-Orthodox world and their other children would be expelled from his respected yeshiva and kept from enrolling elsewhere (Margulies is named in the suit but not as a defendant). The suit also alleges that Margulies had a revered ultra-Orthodox rabbi, Pinchus Scheinberg (also not a defendant), tell the victims that as a matter of Jewish law, Kolko would have had to have more than just fondled them for the acts to qualify as sexual abuse.

The yeshiva—then called Torah Vodaath, now called Torah Temimah—is known today as the Harvard of the Jewish world, educating 1,000 boys at a time in a complex of modern buildings on Ocean Parkway. Kolko is no longer just a first-grade Hebrew teacher but also a school administrator and active in the school's summer camp, Camp Silver Lake. In the past six months, as Framowitz's attorney and other community members attempted to bring Kolko to a beit din, Margulies permitted Kolko to keep teaching. He even stayed on for two days after the lawsuit was announced—until last week, when, as New York was preparing this story, the yeshiva placed him on administrative leave and issued a statement denying "that anyone acting on its behalf took any steps to prevent alleged victims of sexual abuse from seeking redress in rabbinical or civil courts." (Kolko and Margulies would not respond to requests for comment. Scheinberg, 93 and living in Israel, could not be reached.)

What is perhaps most troubling about Framowitz's case is the idea that Kolko, if culpable, could just be the tip of the iceberg. Rabbi-on-child molestation is a widespread problem in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, and one that has long been covered up, according to rabbis, former students, parents, social-service workers, sociologists, psychologists, victims' rights advocates, and survivors of abuse interviewed for this story. They argue that sexual repression, the resistance to modernity, and the barriers to outsiders foster an atmosphere conducive to abuse and silence. The most outspoken advocates believe that the secular authorities—the police and the Brooklyn district attorney's office—are intimidated by rabbinic authorities who don't want their community's issues aired publicly and who wield considerable political influence. They are hoping Framowitz's lawsuit—one of just a few of its kind ever filed and the first to allege a high-level cover-up—could be a signal event, encouraging scores of molestation victims to come forward. Already, the Kolko case is said to have influenced plans for an unrelated case against a prominent Jewish summer camp.

The echoes of another insular religious community—one with its own particular set of sexual restrictions and a proven capacity for institutional denial—are, of course, impossible to miss. "This reminds me of where the Catholic Church was fifteen or twenty years ago," says Herman, who just before taking on the Kolko case won a $5 million judgment for abuse victims of a Catholic priest. "What I see are some members of the community turning a blind eye to what's going on in their backyards."

Even before David Framowitz first found himself alone with Rabbi Kolko, the outlines of his young life had seemed like something out of Dickens. His father, Alfred Szmuk, a public-school teacher, had died when David was 7, leaving his mother, Naomi, not yet 30, to care for him and his younger brother, Jeffrey. For a few years, the family stayed in Toronto; Naomi supported them by teaching Hebrew school. Then Naomi was introduced to Saul Framowitz, a highly Orthodox Borough Park man who had recently lost his wife and only son in a traffic accident and was left with three teenage daughters to raise alone. Within months, there was a courtship and a small wedding, and the widow and her two boys moved in with the widower and his three girls, sharing a three-bedroom, third-floor walk-up in Borough Park.

It was the autumn of 1969, and as the rest of the world seemed to be hurtling headlong into the future, 12-year-old David felt as if he'd been flung back in time. He was taken aback by the bobbing sea of black hats, the women with wigs and long, dark dresses, the way the whole place screeched to a halt on Friday night. It was here that thousands of Hasidic refugees from Europe had chosen to repopulate the people, steadfastly preserving the shtetl life that had almost been destroyed. Any sense of the modern world was ferociously held at bay—no movies or TV or pop music, even newspapers were suspect. The community's views on sex were perhaps most jarring. Boys were trained never to lock eyes with a woman who wasn't related; some were taught not to touch their genitals when they washed.

David and his brother were sent to school at a strict Hasidic yeshiva where everyone spoke Yiddish. David stayed through the end of the year, but hated it. "I told my parents that I was not going back there." He'd tried fitting into the ultra-Orthodox mold but hadn't made many friends. The next year, he was enrolled at a new school—Torah Vodaath. The founder, Rabbi Lipa Margulies, had made a name for the school by cherry-picking top talent, paying his teachers more, and working them harder. "He's single-minded," says Rabbi Nosson Scherman, a former teacher there. "He's obsessed with his school."

Torah Vodaath seemed for a time to be a good fit for David. "It was more what I grew up with in Toronto," he says, "a more normal school, where they had Hebrew lessons or Torah, but they also had English, math, and social studies." A few of David's classmates lived on his street. Soon after the start of the school year, Framowitz says, "I met some kids from the school, and they said, `We have a lift,' and I said, `With whom?' and they said, `One of the teachers lives here, and he's gonna give us a ride.' " After the first attack in the Plymouth, Framowitz says, he tried to avoid Kolko. He tried not walking down his block. "But how many blocks can you skip to go around to get to school," he asks, "before other kids started to wonder?" Some days, he'd be late and miss the bus, or it would be freezing, and he couldn't come up with a reason not to get into Kolko's car when the rest of his friends were piling aboard. Sometimes, it would be a Sunday, when the school day ended early, and he was playing with his friends.

"Here, I'm going home," Framowitz says Kolko would say. "I'll give you a ride."

"No, no, no, I'm here. I'm gonna catch the bus with my friends."

"No, come, we'll go for a ride home."

"You're a young boy, and you get scared," Framowitz says. "What happens if you don't go with him? He's a rabbinic authority in the school. He's the teacher. Will something happen that will cause you to get into trouble because of him—because you didn't show up to go with him on the ride?"

The abuse, Framowitz says, became ritualistic: Kolko would coax him into his car, place him on his lap, and fondle him. Kolko would keep his own pants up, ensuring that his genitals would never touch the boy—a line, perhaps, the rabbi was afraid to cross. Facing forward, David had no view of Kolko during the act. "Did he ejaculate? I have no idea. Was he getting there? I have no idea. I was 12 years old." Even avoiding Kolko's car wasn't a solution: Framowitz says Kolko would corner him after recess at school and rub against him.

Framowitz thought the end of the school year would bring an end to the abuse. But that summer, his parents sent him to Camp Agudah—run by Agudath Israel of America, a powerful ultra-Orthodox organization—and Kolko was a counselor. When Framowitz saw him, his heart sank. After one baseball game, "he pulled me into the woods, just past the center field, and pushed me up against a tree and started rubbing against me," Framowitz says. Other times, he says, the incidents were more fleeting—Kolko would wait until he and Framowitz were alone and rub his knee against Framowitz's groin.

Early on, Framowitz says, he tried telling his mother about Kolko, but she didn't know how to respond. The new marriage wasn't going well; his mother had miscarried—a potential replacement son for his stepfather, to help make up for what the accident had taken away. "It was just terrible pressure," Framowitz says. "One time, she picked herself up, with me and my brother, and she took us down to Manhattan and we stayed in a hotel for a couple of nights. With all the problems in the house, I couldn't force myself to make this into a big issue. And my stepfather just couldn't understand it. He couldn't see how a rabbi, a respectable rabbi, would be doing such things, so I must be making up these stories to get attention."

After a while, Framowitz just stopped talking about it. "I wasn't getting anywhere. They weren't defending me. So I said, Okay, I have to suffer. For family harmony. I'd tell myself, I just want to be a normal kid, but I can't. I can't do anything, because I'll get into trouble. I can't get into trouble because I can't cause more upheavals in the house. So just be quiet, and it'll go away."

Yehuda Kolko first caught the attention of religious authorities as early as the mid-eighties, after a major sexual-abuse scandal rocked the ultra-Orthodox world in Brooklyn. A Hasidic psychologist named Avrohom Mondrowitz had been accused of not just molesting but having intercourse with four boys in his care, ages 10 to 16, some of whom he allegedly took away on long weekends. He was indicted in 1985 but decamped for Israel. In the wake of the case, several prominent rabbis in Brooklyn decided to field complaints about rabbis and others accused of molesting kids. The rabbi chosen to look into Borough Park, who spoke to New York on the condition of anonymity, says Kolko's name came up repeatedly.

This rabbi wasted little time empaneling six rabbis to informally hear Kolko's accusers. Kolko's alleged problems, according to this rabbi, stemmed from his summers at a camp not far from Camp Agudah that Kolko apparently had an ownership stake in during the eighties. According to a former counselor at the camp, who also wishes to remain anonymous, it was an open secret among counselors that Kolko was misbehaving with several campers. A dozen kids had individually come to different counselors, the former counselor says, to complain that Kolko woke them at night, offered them rides in a golf cart, and then let them steer if they sat in his lap. Others said he'd visit them at night and touch them in inappropriate places. But these counselors were 18 or 19 years old, unsure of how to handle the claims, the former counselor says. Only after the Mondrowitz case broke a few years later did some of the former campers and counselors come forward. The panel of six rabbis heard the campers' stories and sympathized, according to the rabbi who convened the panel. But, he says, "there was no mechanism in the community to stop Kolko from teaching, except to go to the cops."

As the six-rabbi panel knew, rabbinical-court proceedings have no real power to substantiate abuse claims or punish abusers. Going to the police is largely frowned on in the ultra-Orthodox world; the notion of mesira, dating to the days of the shtetl, equates going to outsiders with treason. So instead, the teenagers and their families decided first to try to persuade Margulies, Kolko's boss at Torah Temimah, to force Kolko to sell his stake in the camp and resign from the school. At a preliminary meeting with some of Kolko's accusers, Margulies asked whom they had as witnesses. "Each name he dismissed: `This one is in a fantasyland, this one is a thief, you can't trust any of them,' " the source recalls Margulies saying. "And he was not going to do anything about it."

The group, along with parents and former campers from Camp Agudah, then tried summoning a beit din to rule on Kolko. They demanded Kolko not be there so the victims would feel comfortable telling their stories. But when the proceeding began, he was there, so they left. Then Margulies is said to have started a second beit din. According to Framowitz's lawsuit, Pinchus Scheinberg, the powerful rabbi who was close to Margulies, contacted several of Kolko's alleged victims, listened to their complaints, and told them that what happened to them was not abuse—that there needed to be penetration and that because there was none, their claims were not actionable. Then, the lawsuit says, threats followed. One father allegedly was told by Margulies over the phone that if his boy continued to complain, the safety of the rest of his children could not be assured. Both beit dins were halted, the victims never went to the police, and for years, Margulies told others who inquired about Kolko that the rabbi and the school had been exonerated.

Is molestation more common in the Orthodox Jewish community than it is elsewhere? There are no reliable statistics on the subject—molestation often goes unreported, even in relatively liberal communities—but there's reason to believe the answer to that question might be yes. "I wasn't even looking for it, and the amazing thing was how often it would just come up," says Hella Winston, whose recent book, Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels, examines ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn through the eyes of some dissident members who struggle with the dictates of the community. "I heard more from men than from women. What was really shocking was how many boys—so many boys—have had this experience. People I've interviewed have told me every Hasidic kid has heard about this happening to someone."

There are some who believe the repression in the ultra-Orthodox community can foster abuse. Sex before marriage in Hasidic life is strictly forbidden (unmarried men and women are barely allowed to look at one another), and even within marriage, sex is tightly regulated (couples aren't allowed to have sex, for instance, during menstruation and the week after). As Winston notes, fathers can't attend their daughters' school plays, "as the sound of women singing can lead to uncontrollable male sexual arousal." In a world of Paris Hilton videos and Victoria's Secret billboards, there are few outlets for an Orthodox man with compulsions the community refuses to acknowledge even exist. The repression, some say, creates a fertile environment for deviance.

Taboos against reporting sexual abuse don't just promote silence—they may also encourage molesters. Besides the general prohibition against talking about sex, there is also the shondah factor—the overwhelming concern with shame (a child who makes an abuse claim can be thought to bring shame on his whole family). Then there's the prohibition against lashon hara, or "evil speech"; the thinking is that virtually any public complaint about another person amounts to slander. There is shalom bayit, or the mandate to maintain peaceful domestic relations; many women and children have been made to feel that it's their responsibility to maintain harmony by not turning in their abusers. There's the notion of Chillul Hashem—desecrating God's name. This can be invoked if you say anything bad about the community at all. Finally, there is mesira, or the suspicion of secular authorities.

The beit dins are hardly an effective mechanism for dealing with abuse. Given the choice between going after sexual abusers and protecting the community from scrutiny by outsiders, victims' advocates say, religious authorities protect the community almost every time. "They don't have investigative bodies," says Rabbi Yosef Blau, a Yeshiva University adviser who has spoken out about other abuse cases. "They don't do DNA evidence." There's one ancient Jewish legal theory that the testimony of a mentally ill man is more highly regarded than the testimony of a woman. And if beit dins fail a victim, there is no appeal. "We're not accountable to anyone," says Mark Dratch, a modern-Orthodox rabbi who chaired a task force on rabbinical improprieties for the Rabbinical Council of America. "Even the Catholic Church supposedly has more of a structure for accountability than us. If we don't have the training to deal with a victim who comes to us for help, we have the potential to make them a victim again."

The Brooklyn district attorney's office insists it aggressively pursues sex-abuse cases in the Orthodox community, and D.A. Charles Hynes has been commended for launching Project Eden, a Hasidic-sanctioned program that reaches out to ultra-Orthodox victims of domestic violence. "There is nothing different about the way we handle cases in any community, whether they be sex abuse, homicide, or any other crime," says Hynes spokesman Jerry Schmetterer. It bears noting, however, that for months, Hynes's office resisted New York's requests for information on Project Eden, and still won't speak in detail about how they handle sex-abuse cases in the Orthodox community. Victims' advocates have long argued that Hynes's office simply doesn't actively go after abusers in the community, and that when complaints do come their way, they're often too quick to defer to the ruling of a beit din. "I've never seen any district attorney do this with the Catholics," says Amy Neustein, perhaps this issue's best-known cause célèbre, who in 1986 claimed that her 6-year-old daughter was being sexually abused by her husband, only to have the child taken out of her custody forever. "The beit dins are hijacking the whole justice system."

Newsday recently uncovered a document, purported to be from the State Department, suggesting that Hynes has all but dropped the Mondrowitz case—ceasing to prod the State Department in its extradition battle. Hynes denies this. "Our position has always been that were Mondrowitz to return to the United States, we would prosecute him for his heinous crimes," says Rhonnie Jaus, chief of Hynes's sex-crimes bureau. Now that there's a civil case against Kolko, are they pursuing a criminal investigation? "We look into cases all the time that are beyond the statute of limitations to see if there are any cases that fall within the statute," Jaus says. "That's what happened with the priest investigations." No Kolko investigation has yet been launched.

What's certain is that much of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish leadership still refuses to acknowledge that sexual abuse is even a problem. Efforts to persuade Orthodox organizations like Agudath Israel and Torah Umesorah (the National Society for Hebrew Day Schools) to develop a sex-offender registry have so far been all but ignored. Even Henna White, the Lubavitcher community liaison to Hynes's Project Eden, has complained that she can't get into the yeshivas to be heard on the subject of abuse. "In New York, we're going into the girls' schools," White said at a conference in January. "Unfortunately, we're not going into the boys' schools, and not for lack of trying. Our right-wing yeshivas do not want us there, and there are many people who have tried. The feeling is that this is not a conversation they want to open up."

"The bottom line is that abuse is a universal issue that closed communities hide because it threatens them," says one former Lubavitcher in his thirties who says he was molested by an ultra-Orthodox neighbor, and who wishes to remain anonymous. "Whether it's Jewish or Amish or Mennonite or Catholic or Muslim, it doesn't make a difference. I feel like this is kind of like a fungus. It grows in the dark."

When Framowitz was 14, he began hanging out at the Jewish Defense League in Borough Park. "I needed to get away," he says. "It was more of a showing-off, `Oh, I'm JDL,' like putting up a façade. I was looking for somebody to defend me because I wasn't getting protection at school or at home."

Recognizing how unhappy David was, his parents sent him to yet another yeshiva, in Cleveland, for ninth grade. He lasted a year there, six months at a yeshiva in Toronto, and half a year each in Long Beach and Far Rockaway. In Baltimore, he says, he was molested again, by a rabbi who is now deceased. In retrospect, Framowitz wonders if something about him made him seem vulnerable to pedophiles. "I grew up not wanting to make more trouble than there was already in the house," he says. "Maybe I took everything as it came."

He was 16 when he dropped out of the yeshiva system, moved home to Borough Park, and started working at a computer-services company on Park Avenue while he pursued his GED. He met his future wife, Joyce, in a youth group; he told her about Kolko almost immediately, he says, and she understood. By 1983, he'd become a CPA, and he and his wife had had their first child and decided to make aliyah before their son was old enough to start school in Brooklyn. The whole family, including his parents, eventually moved to Israel.

Three years ago, on a visit to New York, Framowitz was walking down Ocean Parkway when he ran into his seventh- and eighth-grade rebbe. He called out.

"Rabbi Kaufman, Rabbi Kaufman—I don't know if you remember me, but you were my teacher 30 years ago."

The rabbi squinted. "I remember the face, but I don't remember the name."

"David Framowitz."

"Oh," said the rabbi. "David Framowitz. How are you? It's been so long."

"And I told myself, David, say something, tell him that you were molested by Rabbi Kolko. And I said to myself, I can't. It's a different world, you're not there. Forget it—you've made a life for yourself."

Back in Israel, he found himself typing Kolko's name into Google.

Framowitz found what he was looking for on a blog called Un-Orthodox Jew. The site—one anonymous insider's blistering, some say heretical, accusations of hypocrisy and corruption in the community—started about a year ago and took just months to report a half-million hits. Its anonymous Webmaster, who calls himself UOJ, has made the Kolko case his main cause. UOJ has never met with me, but he calls when I e-mail him. When he does, my caller I.D. is blocked. "Being from the family I'm from, I know everybody," he tells me. "They've all been to my home. My family's involved in all aspects of the Jewish community."

UOJ says that he first became disenchanted with the established Jewish leadership when as a young man he attended a beit din with his father and saw the rabbis there behaving in less than honest ways. "They were businessmen, mostly," he says. His earliest postings, in March of last year, reflect what would become his signature cynicism. "By the time I was Bar-Mitzvah, I got the whole picture," he wrote. "The guys with the money got the respect, the final say in the schools and shuls, and were the guests of honor at Jewish functions, period! . . . Give me one truly religious and honorable Jew, and I will give you one hundred thousand who do not have a clue." UOJ's first reference to Kolko came on June 26 of last year, in a broadside against Margulies. In no uncertain terms, he accused Margulies of harboring a pedophile and threatening the parents of victims into silence.

The initial responses were hostile. "You're a bit too bitter, even for my taste," one reader commented. "Maybe you are just a typical extreme left-wing Jew who hates Rabbonim and the Torah."

"You are entitled to your opinion," UOJ replied. "ALL MY POSTS ARE FACTS, AS UGLY AS THEY ARE!!!!"

"FACTS," his critic replied. "Like what, the New York Times?"

But, a day later, on June 27, came another anonymous comment claiming to confirm what UOJ had said. And then another, from someone saying he was molested by Kolko. And another, from someone claiming to be the parent of another victim, and mentioning a failed beit din.

This is the string of posts that Framowitz noticed on Google. On September 23, he told his story in detail as a comment, using only his first name.

"I too was molested by Rabbi Kolko," he wrote, "both while a student in 7th and 8th grades and during those same summers whilst a camper in Camp Agudah. . . . He would insert his hands down the front of my pants and would begin to `search around,' to say the least. At the same time he would pull me closer to himself, or would push himself forward against myself, sometimes even pushing me into the steering wheel, to the point that it hurt. Unfortunately I didn't react or complain. I of course told my parents and tried on several times to explain to them what I was going through, but they didn't want to believe me and my `stories,' etc. So I just shut up and let the molestation and perversion continue. . . . I feel that it is about time that the wall of silence be torn down."

A few months later, after getting dozens of similar comments and e-mails, UOJ listed Jeffrey Herman's name and phone number. He says he hadn't spoken with Herman—he'd just noticed him as a guest on The O'Reilly Factor, talking about a clergy sex-abuse case, and thought that anyone reading his site who wanted confidentiality might consider calling him. "The key for me," UOJ says, "was that on his Website, Herman said that he had strategies for getting around the statute of limitations."

UOJ posted Herman's name and number. When Herman, in turn, sent an e-mail saying he'd be happy to speak with alleged victims confidentially, Framowitz saw the posting and called him. Herman, an observant Jew from Miami, has handled millions of dollars in sex-abuse claims against clergy and school systems, mainly against the Catholic Church. He says he was interested in working on Jewish cases for the same reasons he works on Catholic ones. "People say, `Oh, are you gonna go after a rabbi?' " he says. "That's kind of a funny question to me. I see the kind of work I'm doing as protecting kids. Jewish kids are certainly as worth protecting as Catholic kids."

On February 2, UOJ paid for a bulk mailing to Orthodox homes in Borough Park, Flatbush, Williamsburg, and Crown Heights that might be too observant to have access to the Internet. The mailing accused Kolko of molestation and Margulies of a cover-up and even included their phone numbers. That's when UOJ says he started receiving threats—"We're gonna get your family" and "We know who you are." (Many of these e-mails have been forwarded to Herman.) People accused him of betraying his community and having an ax to grind against Kolko and Margulies. The Jewish Press ran an editorial blasting the mailing. A rival blog called End UOJ was created. But the most shocking responses came from those who believed that accusing Kolko of abuse—true or not—was worse than the abuse itself. "Certainly speaking evil of somebody, truth or otherwise, establishes the most severe of all wrongdoings," one pseudonymous comment on UOJ reads—"far, far worse then [sic] `child sexual abuse,' and the punishment far more severe." The post goes on to claim that having sex with a child is punishable by 39 lashings "at the most," whereas lashon hara is punishable by leprosy—"a far worse penalty."

Now that there's a lawsuit, UOJ feels vindicated. "Molestation is rampant," he says. "It's not a one-in-a-million case. There's at least one in every school. And I'm going to go after them one at a time."

David Framowitz has four adult children of his own now, with careers and graduate degrees. His kids have served in the Israeli Army and lost friends to terror bombings. He lives in a sunny, concrete split-level house near the West Bank, and considers himself a modern-Orthodox Jew now, wrapping the leather straps of tefillin around his arms every morning, praying three times a day, spending Sabbath at shul. He does not wear the black hat or suit or the curls of payes. He has told his children all about Kolko.

For years, he says, he's been happy—but he knows he's been affected by the abuse. "I'd tell myself, It wasn't my fault, I'm not going to let this ruin my life," he says. "You keep yourself busy and go to work and have a normal family life. But it's always there. It's like a nightmare that never goes away. No matter how hard I try to push it away, his face is always there."

Framowitz knows it won't be easy to win the lawsuit. The three-year statute of limitations is the greatest obstacle. Others have tried circumventing it and failed. Most recently, an upstate man named John Zumpano sued a priest for allegedly repeatedly abusing him throughout much of the sixties, arguing that he was too mentally damaged to bring a case until now. The state's highest court refused this argument. But the decision showed others one possible way around the statute: If after the abuse, a defendant keeps his accusers from suing by intimidation, the statute could perhaps be voided. Margulies's alleged threats of reprisals against young victims, Herman argues, meet that standard.

The $20 million price tag ($10 million per plaintiff), Herman says, is an appropriate figure given Framowitz's pain and suffering. (Herman's latest settlement, in a priest case, was $5 million.) But money isn't all Framowitz and Herman are after, they say. They'd like Kolko dismissed from the yeshiva and kept from working with children again. They want the yeshiva to establish a fund for victims who resurface in the future. And they want the yeshiva to publicly accept responsibility for its negligence, which in all likelihood would mean disciplining or dismissing Margulies. While Kolko's chances of returning to the yeshiva are clearly in jeopardy in light of his suspension, people who know Margulies say it's doubtful he'd ever loosen his hold on the institution he created. "Margulies is angry and bitter about this," says one longtime supporter. Like the powers-that-be in the Catholic Church, this source says, Margulies "doesn't get how this crime is viewed by this society with such abhorrence. He still believes the issue can be managed, when the proper response would be to meet it head-on."

The day his lawsuit was announced, David Framowitz visited the street in Borough Park where he and Kolko first met. He hadn't been there in years. In the car, he saw men with black hats and payes, women with forties fashions. He noticed a familiar toy store on a corner and shook his head. "Nothing's changed here," he said. "They're in their own little ghetto. It's hard for them to believe that such things happen."

He was silent for a time, then he turned toward me.

"So, you have pictures?"

At a red light, I handed him three snapshots of the rabbi, taken a few mornings earlier outside his house in Midwood. Framowitz stared at them.

"Huh. Huh. That's him. The face."

The only difference, he said, was the hair—once so red, now all white.

We arrived on the street where Framowitz had lived—57th between Fifteenth and Sixteenth Avenues. He pointed up to the third-floor balcony of a small redbrick building. "Same house, same everything," he said.

But when we got to Kolko's old block, there was new construction where Kolko's house once was. "It's not there anymore," he mumbled, crossing the street. "It's not there."

Framowitz, silent for 35 years, now couldn't stop talking.

"If they've known about this for 20 years or 25 years, why the cover-up? If there's even an iota of people thinking or knowing about Kolko, why is the guy still teaching children? Why hasn't anybody filed a complaint with the police? And why isn't anybody filing a complaint with the D.A.'s office? If they want to take care of it the Jewish way, fine. But why haven't they done that? Why aren't people standing outside the yeshiva demonstrating? For one person getting a ticket in Borough Park, look what they did! They rioted in the streets! Jewish kids are getting harmed, and no one's outside this school demanding an investigation? I don't understand it. I should have done this years ago. But if I can still save some kid . . . "

He trailed off.

"He who saves one life is like saving the world. That's what the Torah says."

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Letters To The Editor

By: Our Readers

Jewish Press (NY) - Wednesday, May 31, 2006

No Redress For Abuse Victim

While you say in your May 26 editorial "Allegations Against a Rabbi" that your position "should in no way imply support for the accused," you seem to strongly disagree with the bringing of the lawsuit and having the plaintiff "publicly accuse another," preferring instead to "have our rabbinic leaders come up with a process that can appropriately deal with these very serious challenges to our community" – with "a course of action compatible with Torah standards."

If you read the article that you refer to in New York magazine carefully, you will note that the victim sought relief from the community some twenty years ago but that the accused rabbi's employer, "a pillar of the ... community, took extraordinary measures to derail a rabbinical court action, or beit din."

It seems it was decided that the appropriate way to deal with the rabbi was to let him continue having his fun with young boys.

At least the Catholic Church transfers offenders to another area.

Gerald Deutsch

Glen Head, NY

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Yeshiva In Sex Scandal Pledges More Protection

Torah Temimah, at meeting with parents, admits no wrongdoing in Kolko case.

Jennifer Friedlin - Special To The Jewish Week

Jewish Week (NY) - June 14, 2006

The yeshiva at the heart of a sex abuse scandal that has rocked the Orthodox community of Flatbush has pledged to take a series of steps to protect children from sexual molestation, including forbidding teachers from being alone with students and hiring a counselor and ombudsman to hear any future complaints.

While not admitting to any wrongdoing in the wake of two lawsuits that allege that Yeshiva and Mesivta Torah Temimah knowingly harbored a molester, the school announced the latest moves on Monday night at a forum attended by 150 parents of school-age children.

A number of parents applauded the school's efforts, and there were no critical questions from the audience. But some observers said the event shed light on the inner workings of the insular Brooklyn community in terms of the deference it pays to its leadership.

The head of the yeshiva, Rabbi Lipa Margulies, who allegedly perpetrated a cover-up of the abuse and threatened students who made complaints, called the meeting, he said, to stress the importance of children's safety. However, he declined to address parents' concerns about the allegations, saying the matter was in litigation.

"I'm sure you'll understand, I am precluded because of pending litigation from discussing any of that," Rabbi Margulies said in reference to the claims.

In his only allusion to the past, he noted: "We always have had and always will have zero tolerance for any type of abuse, whether physical or emotional. ... If, however, any member of our yeshiva family was ever subject to abuse by anyone at any time, our hearts go out for them and their families."

The event was the first open forum for parents following the filing of the lawsuits in May. In two complaints, three former students of Torah Temimah alleged that Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, a longtime rebbe at the school, had sexually molested them in attacks that occurred more than 20 years ago. The lawsuits, which seek $30 million in damages, claim that Rabbi Margulies conducted a rigorous coverup, including the foiling of two beit dins convened in the 1980s to air alleged victims' complaints.

One of the alleged victims, David Framowitz, 48, said that Rabbi Kolko fondled him on multiple occasions in a car as well as in the school and at a summer camp for boys.

After the lawsuit was filed in Brooklyn Federal Court, Rabbi Kolko, who has worked for the yeshiva for four decades, was put on administrative leave. Rabbi Margulies, who appears to have the community's full support, has remained in his position.

None of the named defendants in the two lawsuits — Rabbi Kolko, Torah Temimah and Camp Agudah — have yet responded to the lawsuit. A lawyer for Torah Temimah previously denied the allegations.

In the wake of the charges, Torah Temimah invited Rabbi Aaron Twerski, dean of the Hofstra University Law School, and David Mandel, the executive director of Ohel Children's Home and Family Services, a Jewish social service agency, to speak at the event on Monday night.

Rabbi Twerski, a legal scholar who said he has been working on the issue of abuse for "a long time," dismissed the allegations against Rabbi Margulies.

"I know Rabbi Margulies for many years and know him to be a man of great honor," said Rabbi Twerski. He did not make any comments about Rabbi Kolko.

Rabbi Twerski then outlined a host of steps he said the yeshiva was taking to improve school safety, including agreeing to train employees to recognize signs of abuse. In addition, he said the school would be hiring a counselor and an ombudsman to handle claims of abuse.

One member of the audience was overheard saying under her breath, "It's about time."

In addition, Rabbi Twerski said the school had implemented a number of guidelines, including forbidding teachers to be alone with students and requiring that there be no enclosure without windows "so that a passerby cannot see what is going on."

Rabbi Twerski also said that Torah Temimah was in the process of implementing additional, but undefined, steps recommended by Torah U'Mesorah, the Jewish education arm of Agudath Israel of America.

A call placed to Torah U'Mesorah in search of the guidelines was not returned.

Following Rabbi Twerski, Mandel spoke about ways to engage children in conversations about sex abuse. Mandel noted that it was up to the parents to engage their children because most victims do not come forward due to shame, fear of their abusers, a sense of loyalty to their abusers and/or concern about being stigmatized.

However, when an audience member asked whether sex education could help to strengthen children's knowledge of inappropriate behaviors and empower them to come forward if someone violated them, Mandel responded that sex education was "not something realistic" in a community that stresses modesty.

He told parents that the overwhelming majority of children who have experienced "unwanted touch" would go on to live happy, healthy lives, while only a "small percentage" of individuals would be permanently harmed by the abuse

Mandel also said that abusers could be treated for their perversions.

"An individual who abuses children and who participates in treatment can lead a successful life and be believed that they would no longer hurt children," Mandel said.

When asked, in an interview the following day, whether such people could work with children again, Mandel evaded the question.

Several parents who were in attendance said they were pleased with the information they received and with the school for holding the session.

"A little too late, but better late than never," said one parent following the event.

Another parent, requesting anonymity, said he felt the school was "taking every step humanly possible" to prevent abuse. He added that Rabbi Margulies had his full confidence.

But some Orthodox observers said the event amounted to a whitewash of the allegations.

Rabbi Yosef Blau, spiritual adviser at Yeshiva University who has been working to focus communal attention on the problem of rabbinic abuse, said that the community was so "authority oriented" that it prevented members from demanding more accountability from its leadership.

"No one who protected him [Rabbi Kolko] all these years is paying any price," Blau said, adding that Rabbi Margulies "should remove himself for awhile until things can be reviewed objectively."

Rabbi Mark Dratch, executive director of JSafe, an organization that fights abuse in the Jewish community, said the Brooklyn Orthodox community had a somewhat spotty record of taking care of its own.

"Part of the problem with Brooklyn is that it's a very insular community," Rabbi Dratch said. "They look to solve the problems themselves even if it's not in the best interest of the community."

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Yeshiva Dustup

A lawyer who battled the church takes on the Orthodox establishment

By Forrest Norman

Miami News Times - July 13, 2006

Zipping around his Aventura office on a recent afternoon, Jeffrey Herman doesn't look much like someone who regularly hears real-life horror stories. The young-looking 44-year-old lawyer wears a white Kiss T-shirt with yellow sleeves and answers his cell phone every few seconds. He is simultaneously participating in a conference call and yelling to his assistant about plane tickets to New York.

"At this point, we're nationwide," Herman says. "I'm handling abuse cases from all over the country."

On May 4, Herman sued Rabbi Yehuda Kolko and Yeshiva Torah Temimah, an Orthodox school for about 1000 boys in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn. His client is David Framowitz, a 48-year-old living in Israel. Framowitz, who attended the yeshiva in the late Sixties and early Seventies, says he was molested at least fifteen times over three years. Herman alleges a coverup by yeshiva elders.

And on May 19, Herman sued Kolko and the yeshiva on behalf of two anonymous plaintiffs who allege abuse in the late Eighties.

Neither Kolko nor Yeshiva Torah Temimah officials would comment on the case. In May the yeshiva issued a statement denying any coverup.

Since the cases became public — mostly in New York newspapers and magazines — Herman contends he's been contacted by about 30 people who say they were abused by Kolko. Indeed Herman claims many families of alleged victims reported the abuse to yeshiva leaders and were rebuffed. "It's similar to some of the really horrifying instances of abuse in the Catholic Church, where the victim or the victim's family did report the abuse to higherups and nothing was done," Herman says, sitting at a gleaming conference table in his freshly painted office.

The alleged abuse by Rabbi Kolko is a new twist in a story familiar to anyone who has read a newspaper in the past five years. In Boston, Los Angeles, and even Miami, the Catholic Church has paid out huge settlements to abuse victims who have claimed their tormentors were church officials more concerned with bad publicity than weeding out pedophiles.

As much as any attorney in America, Herman is responsible for bringing these cases to light.

The Ohio-raised lawyer has practiced in Florida since 1985, but his first headlines came in 1997, when he sued Nova Southeastern University, which runs the Ralph J. Baudhuin Oral School, a Davie facility for autistic children. The school never conducted a background check on a volunteer — Daniel Patrick Donohue — who turned out to be a convicted pedophile. A teacher claims to have seen Donohue molesting one student; it's impossible to tell whether he victimized others because many of the children are unable to speak. Herman successfully sued on behalf of one of the children enrolled at the school, and won a $208,300 settlement. The lawyer is presently representing families of seventeen other students at the Davie institution in a consolidated lawsuit that is pending in Broward Circuit Court.

"That was just such a horrific case," he says. "But for some reason I wanted to keep doing this kind of work. It's corny, but I actually do it for the kids."

Herman, who has four children, insists it's not all about the money (although the new, well-appointed Aventura office of his firm, Herman & Mermelstein, suggests he's doing all right). "I could make money doing other kinds of law and not have to hear these awful stories about adults abusing and destroying the trust these kids have in them," he explains. "Say what you want about attorneys, but for some of these families that have tried to go to the church or the police, I'm the last resort."

In April 2002, Herman sued the Archdiocese of Miami on behalf of the family of a deceased former altar boy, Miguel Chinchilla, whose family claimed he had been molested between 1975 and 1977 by two priests at the Church of the Little Flower in Coral Gables. Rev. Ricardo Castellanos and Rev. Alvaro Guichard, the alleged molesters, denied the accusations. In May 2002, Herman filed suit on behalf of José Currais Jr., who said the pair had molested him during the early Seventies. The lawsuit also alleged Castellanos organized orgies with Currais and other children. Both priests strongly denied the allegations, although the church settled all the lawsuits against the two men in 2004. The amounts ranged from $75,000 to $500,000.

All told, the church has settled 23 molestation lawsuits with Herman, for a total of $3.4 million.

Framowitz contacted Herman, who is an observant Jew, after the lawyer appeared on The O'Reilly Factor to discuss the Catholic Church's sex-abuse problem. Herman's name and number later showed up on theunorthodoxjew.blogspot.com (UOJ), a Website that hosts lengthy discussions of Orthodox Judaism and rabbinical sex abuse.

The case has generated endless bickering on sites like UOJ and chaptzem.blogspot.com, where some people accuse Framowitz and Herman of bringing unwarranted shame on the Orthodox community. Herman shrugs at critics, like an anonymous poster recently accusing him of being "interested in generating more noise than [truthfulness]."

"So I should care less about little Jewish kids being molested than little Catholic kids?" he asks. "It's nonsense. If the yeshiva had done the right thing when they first learned about this man's behavior, none of this would be happening right now."

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`He Took My Innocence Away'

South Carolina man alleges Brooklyn rabbi sexually abused him 20 years ago; third accuser against Rabbi Kolko and Yeshiva Torah Temimah.

By Jennifer Friedlin

The Jewish Week - August 9, 2006

The alleged molestation did not begin immediately. In fact, it would take at least a year of priming (survivor) before Rabbi Yehuda Kolko allegedly started to sexually abuse the young boy.

The year was 1986 and (survivor), then a sixth grader at Yeshiva and Mesivta Torah Temimah in Flatbush, had suddenly become one of Rabbi Kolko's favorite students in the school. Rabbi Kolko, then a teacher at the yeshiva, would call (survivor) out of class to monitor his class or to do small errands, like make photocopies.

The attention felt good.

"I thought I was special because he was taking an interest in me," (survivor) recalled recently in a phone conversation.

Over time, however, Rabbi Kolko's favoritism crossed the line and became abusive, (survivor) alleges. (survivor) says the molestation, which included fondling and groping of his genitals, continued until he completed the eighth grade and graduated middle school.

The scars, however, still remain.

"I hate that he took away my innocence. I blame so much on him," said (survivor), a 31-year-old former U.S. Army soldier who lives in South Carolina.

(survivor) is the third person to bring a lawsuit against Rabbi Kolko and the yeshiva for crimes he allegedly committed in the 1970s and `80s. His story took on a new resonance recently when (survivor) went public in a court filing attaching his name to the claims against Rabbi Kolko; he had been referred to only as John Doe 3.

"The sexual abuse has caused Israel to suffer severe and permanent psychological, emotional and physical injuries and the inability to lead a normal life, as well as attendant economic losses," according to the complaint. "Plaintiff's injuries are persistent, permanent and debilitating in nature."

Although the statute of limitations has expired for both a criminal and civil action, the plaintiffs hope that evidence of an alleged cover-up orchestrated by the head of the school, Rabbi Lipa Margulies, will enable them to proceed with the civil action.

Since the lawsuits were filed in Brooklyn Federal Court, Rabbi Kolko has been put on administrative leave. He has declined to comment on the allegations, while the yeshiva has denied any wrongdoing. Calls to Rabbi Kolko's lawyer, Robert Mercurio, were not returned.

Recently, Rabbi Kolko was spotted chaperoning campers from Silver Lake Camp, Torah Temimah's summer camp, at a Connecticut theme park, New York magazine reported this week. Avi Moskowitz, a lawyer for the yeshiva, told the magazine that Rabbi Kolko is not affiliated with the camp, but that "Obviously, the camp has no control over where he goes and what he does."

Reached for comment Moscowitz told The Jewish Week that "[Rabbi Kolko] did not come on [the camp's] behalf and wasn't invited by us."

Moscowitz maintained that the allegations against the yeshiva are "simply not true." He added that he believes that the statute of limitations is such that the case should be dismissed.

(survivor) said he decided to pursue his $10 million lawsuit against the rabbi and the school in order to try and regain a sense of control over the past and to encourage the fervently Orthodox community to which he once belonged to recognize that sexual abuse is a problem in need of attention.

"If the only thing that comes from this case is that the community wakes up and says, `this happens here,' and that they stop it, I'll be happy," said (survivor).

The (survivor)' family ties to Rabbi Margulies go back generations to Hungary, where Israel's grandfather knew him. So, years ago, when the (survivor) family was looking for a school for their young son, the grandfather recommended his friend's yeshiva. Rabbi Kolko was (survivor)' first-grade teacher. But the alleged trouble began several years later.

Throughout his early elementary school years, (survivor) said he was a good student, but a bit of a loner. By sixth grade, he was having more trouble academically and his grades started to slip. His relationship with his parents was also growing strained. At that point (survivor) says that Rabbi Kolko began taking a personal interest in his life. (survivor), meanwhile, started to see Rabbi Kolko as someone he could trust and confide in.

"I didn't have a bad home or upbringing," (survivor) said. "But he was like my father away from home, like a big brother or an uncle. He would tell me I'm special and whenever there was a slight problem in my life he was the first one to take an interest."

By the time (survivor) entered the seventh grade, he said that Rabbi Kolko had his total trust. It was then that Rabbi Kolko allegedly began touching the boy inappropriately. (survivor) said Rabbi Kolko would pull him from class and take him to his private office, where the rabbi would put his hands down the boy's pants and fondle his genitals. On some occasions, Rabbi Kolko would follow (survivor) to his private bathroom to "help" him buckle up his pants. (survivor) said Rabbi Kolko would then grope him.

At the time, (survivor) said that he had no sense that what Rabbi Kolko was doing was wrong. He blames this largely on the fact that neither the yeshiva nor his parents ever discussed the difference between appropriate and inappropriate sexual behavior.

"My son and daughter know more about which areas are private than I knew when I was 15," said (survivor), referring to his 4-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter. "I felt if this is what he's doing it must be OK."

However, by the time he was a teenager, (survivor)' behavior was getting more out of control, so much so that a psychologist recommended that the teen undergo intensive therapy. While (survivor) was in treatment, the truth of the abuse emerged, he said.

Although he felt a sense of relief, (survivor) said he never fully recovered from the damage of having been abused by a figure of communal authority and personal importance.

"Once I realized that what he did was wrong, my whole life came tumbling down," said (survivor), noting that his parents had a hard time knowing how to deal with their son's situation.

Because of behavioral problems, (survivor) bounced around five high schools in four years. Throughout his teen years, he began hanging out with the wrong crowd. His faith in Judaism was shattered.

"If this guy would do this to me and he represents Judaism, then something was really wrong," said (survivor), who is no longer observant.

After high school, (survivor) said he did a series of odd jobs and bummed around before joining the U.S. Army as a medic at 24 to "get some control back." That same year he also married a woman he had known from Brooklyn. The couple is now separated.

"I have acquaintances but relationships are hard for me," (survivor) said.

In fact, (survivor) said that he has never felt as good as he did when Rabbi Kolko was showering attention on him. "It was the ultimate high," (survivor) said. "I felt important, distinguished from the class."

He said his pull to Rabbi Kolko has remained so great over the years that he has gone back to Brooklyn on several occasions to try and visit him in an effort to recapture that feeling of importance. However, (survivor) said that Rabbi Kolko always seems distracted and uninterested in speaking with him.

"I would continuously go back to him and he would reject me," (survivor) said. "It's sort of like a woman in an abusive relationship. Why does she go back? Because she feels special. I long for that special feeling."

Over the years, (survivor) said he tried to recapture the feeling through other relationships, but nothing came close to the feeling Rabbi Kolko gave him.

"Throughout my life I needed attention and he filled the gap," (survivor) said.

To this day, (survivor) says he is still confused by what happened and why it made him feel the way he did. If he had the chance, he said he would like to ask Rabbi Kolko, "Why me? What was it about me? Why not any of the other 60 kids?"

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An open letter to Rabbi Matisyahu Salomon, mashgiach, Bais Medrash Govoha, Lakewood, New Jersey

Rabbi Matisyahu Salomon Blog December 5, 2006

http://rabbimatisyahusalomon.blogspot.com/

Dear Rabbi Salomon:

I heard your speech at the Agudah Convention and have a few comments and questions I would like to share with you. I am writing this letter in an open forum as I believe the issues herein are of vital importance to our people and warrant the same circulation as your much publicized speech.

I take no issue with your well reasoned argument calling for civility in expression of disagreement. Bnai Torah should be able to agree to disagree. While I join you in condemning the deplorable language used by the few, I respectfully suggest that dissenters need not be placed in the category of "Rasha," or "Maskil" for you to make your point. Likewise, suggestions of "Hakei Es Shinov" and proclamations that children of select members of our community whose views you may disagree with have no place in our schools; do little to further civilized discourse.

In your speech you made a point of declaring your lack of cowardice in dealing with the issue of sexual abuse by Rabbeim in Yeshiva and insisted that keeping your efforts discreet or as you put it to "sweep under the carpet", is a choice you make to protect human dignity. Whose dignity are you referring to? The dignity of those few victims courageous enough to step forward and confront these powerful monsters or the dignity of these monsters and their poor families? I respectfully suggest that by concerning yourself with the dignity of the pedophile and sweeping his heinous acts under the carpet, you subject his victims to another round of abuse at the hands of the community while enabling the predator to continue his reign of terror on unsuspecting victims.

We are taught that "Chochmah B'Goyim, Taamin." Medical statistics tell us that a treated pedophile has a sixty percent rate of recidivism. This places the pedophile squarely in the category of a Rodeph and as such we have a duty to our community to expose him so that potential victims are aware of this clear and present danger. Sex Offender Registries exist for a reason. Namely, the law and medical science recognize that these people are incapable of controlling themselves. You may be impressed by a heartfelt and tearful confession coupled with a commitment to never again succumb to temptation, ("Teshuva".) However, you will not be present when this pedophile succumbs to his overwhelming urges and destroys another poor innocent life. Respectfully, you do not have the right to ignore universally accepted medical knowledge and take innocent children's lives into your hands for the sake of a pedophile's "dignity."

Indeed, your strategy of not acting until the pedophile has been proved 100 percent guilty and using the Torah as your guide to protect our Mosdos is not new. As will be shown below this very same strategy was followed by many other Rabbonim with disastrous results. Rabbi Shalom Yosef Elyashiv puts it best while writing about this very issue. Rabbi Elyashiv quotes the Rashba who writes in his Responsa, III no. 393, "...Because if you will adjudicate based only on the laws established by the Torah, society will be destroyed..." (emphasis added.)

Yes, we do need to stop "the terrible assault" and "immunize against a plague" of "insidious poison seeping in." It is our duty to teach our children to "rise in their defense" and of course we must "give them the ammunition to fight back when they are attacked." You and I differ only in our opinion of where the threat lies. You maintain with an impressive fervor that the threat lies with disrespectful bloggers. I respectfully disagree and see the threat to be that deadly minority of Rabbeim who are morally corrupt and are destroying our children.

In your speech you alluded to the case of Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, a Rebbe in Yeshiva Torah Temimah for over thirty-eight years. You express indignation that this one example of a pedophile that "slips through the fingers" is being used as an illustration of how Klal Yisroel behaves. Rabbi Salomon; unfortunately one is as one does. As such, this is who we are as a community today. Tragically, the story as depicted by the secular media in all its gory detail is but the tip of the iceberg.

The below bullet point history is general and merely touches upon events of the past forty years. If you want more details, I suggest you confer with Rabbi Ephraim Wachsman, who was employed by Kolko in Camp Ma-Na-Vu and will surely share his knowledge of events with you. Remind Rabbi Wachsman of his expression of remorse to his friends for not having informed his uncle, Rabbi Shloime Klein, of Kolko's predilection for young boys when Rabbi Klein was embroiled in a difficult Din Torah with Kolko and Rabbi Lipa Geldwirth in or around 1990.

A Partial Biography of Rabbi Yehuda Kolko & Rabbi Lipa Margulies

• 1967 – While working as Dormitory Counselor at Yeshivas Mir, Rabbi Yehuda Kolko calls David R. out of his dormitory room and begins discussing matters of a sexual nature with him while rubbing up against him in an aroused state. This abuse continues for the remainder of the school year and into the summer season at Camp Agudah. Mr. R. is now a distinguished Manhattan attorney living happily with his partner in New York City and insists that his lifestyle choice has absolutely nothing to do with his abuse by Kolko.
  
  
• 1969 thru 1971 - Rabbi Yehuda Kolko begins abusing Dovid Framowitz in Yeshiva Torah Vodaas of Flatbush (now known as Yeshiva Torah Temimah) and Camp Agudah, the details of which abuse are now public knowledge. Mr. Framowitz, a grandfather living in Eretz Yisroel, has not gone a day since being abused without reliving the unspeakable agony he suffered at Kolko's hands.
  
  
• 1972 - Rabbi Yehuda Kolko sexually abuses two young campers (names withheld at the request of the victims) in Camp Agudah who complain to their counselor. Their counselor reports the complaint to Rabbi Simcha Kaufman. The abuse of these two boys cease for the remainder of that summer. Rabbi Simcha Kaufman is a co-worker of Kolko in Yeshiva Torah Temimah (more on Kaufman below) and was a co-worker of Kolko in Camp Agudah until 1976 when Kolko voluntarily left Camp Agudah after he co-founded Camp Ma-Na-Vu with Rabbi Lipa Geldwirth, another co-worker of his at Yeshiva Torah Temimah.
  
  
• 1977 – Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, employed as a Rebbe in Yeshiva Torah Temimah in the morning, is employed in the afternoons by Yeshiva Karlin Stolin as Secular Studies Principal. During the course of his short tenure in Yeshiva Karlin Stolin numerous complaints are lodged by both students and parents (names withheld at the request of the victims) accusing Kolko of sexually abusing boys in the Yeshiva. Rabbi Shmuel Dishon asks Kolko to leave the employ of the Yeshiva.
  
  
• 1977 on – Eyewitness testimony and accusations of sexual abuse by Rabbi Yehuda Kolko of students at Yeshiva Torah Temimah and Camp Ma-Na-Vu reach a crescendo which culminates in several businessmen approaching Rabbi Lipa Margulies in 1984 and offering to fund a retirement package for Rabbi Yehuda Kolko provided he seeks employment away from children. Rabbi Lipa Margulies steadfastly refuses to accept the offer and suggests that those parents who disagree with his decision remove their children from his Yeshiva Torah Temimah.
  
  
• 1981 – Rabbi Yehuda Kolko sexually abuses a twelve year old student of Yeshiva Torah Temimah (name withheld at the request of the victim.) This victim publicizes the abuse and acts out, vandalizing Kolko's home and car. Rabbi Lipa Margulies calls this victims father and warns him that if this activity does not stop his other children would be expelled from Yeshiva and the safety of his family could not be guaranteed. This victim is subsequently referred to Avrohom Mondrowitz for counseling.
  
  
• 1984 – As instructed by Rabbi Avigdor Miller, an Askan calls for a meeting which takes place at the home of Rabbi Yakov Perlow (the Novominsker) and is attended by Rabbi Avrohom Pam, Rabbi Elya Svei, Rabbi Chaim Dov Keller, Rabbi Aharon Schechter, Rabbi Moshe Scheinerman, Rabbi Shia Fishman and Rabbi Yankel Bender. At this meeting, chaired by Rabbi Perlow, the Askan discusses what is transpiring to innocent boys at the hands of Rabbi pedophiles and requests that Torah Umesorah and the Rabbonim issue a statement calling for their removal from Chinuch. Rabbi Svei informs this Askan that Torah Umesorah has consulted their attorneys who advised that for Torah Umesorah to admit knowledge of such abuse would subject Torah Umesorah, its staff, all its member schools and their staff to liability for not having reported their knowledge to the authorities earlier. Accordingly, Rabbi Elya Svei informs the Askan, neither he nor Torah Umesorah will do anything about this problem.
  
  
• 1984 thru 1985 – At directed by Rabbi Avrohom Pam an Askan approaches Rabbi Moshe Scheinerman and the two meet with Rabbi Shia (Joshua) Fishman in the office of Torah Umesorah. Both Scheinerman and Fishman neglect to inform this Askan that Fishman had been instructed by Torah Umesorah's lawyer to do nothing about this issue. Rabbi Fishman requests the names of Kolko's victims and promises absolute confidentiality. Names are provided to Rabbi Fishman who begins his own investigation of the allegations. He meets with and speaks with several victims who pour their hearts out to him after he guarantees them confidentiality. Rabbi Shia Fishman promptly discloses all he has learned to Rabbi Lipa Margulies who in turn publicly disparages and discredits each and every one of those boys who were brave enough to step forward.
  
  
• 1985 – A follow up meeting takes place at the home of Rabbi Simcha Kaufman and includes Rabbi Kaufman, Rabbi Lipa Margulies, Rabbi Shia Fishman, an Askan and an eyewitness. The eyewitness recounts his personal knowledge of Rabbi Kolko's sexual abuse of boys and discusses the information he had gleaned from others. Rabbi Lipa Margulies insists that the charges are all fabrications and attacks the reputations of everyone involved in seeking the removal of Kolko from his Yeshiva Torah Temimah. Rabbi Shia Fishman subsequently informs anyone who asks that he can not deal with this issue as he is old (50 at the time) and will lose his job if he pursues this matter.
  
  
• 1985 – Rabbi Moshe Scheinerman is offered a lucrative and prestigious position as Rav of a Shul (a position he holds to this day) and is told that he must cease and desist from his actions against Yeshiva Torah Temimah Rabbeim (his own words) which he promptly does. Scheinerman abandons ship explaining that it is not appropriate for a rabbi of his stature to deal with these matters. Rabbi Yehoshua Leiman takes over.
  
  
• 1985 - Rabbi Yehoshua Leiman and others continue their quest for a solution and convene a Bais Din for this purpose. This Bais Din, consisting of Rabbi Menashe Klein, Rabbi Yechezkel Roth, Rabbi Aharon Stein, Rabbi Moshe Stern and Rabbi Chaim Yankel Tauber, is scheduled to hear testimony for two days after which they will rule on how to proceed. This panel meets and hears testimony for one day. Shortly thereafter, Rabbi Moshe Stern states that he is unable to participate in any more sessions and this Bais Din is disbanded without further explanation. In a private conversation with one of the Askanim, Rabbi Stern disclosed that he had been approached by Rabbi Lipa Margulies which resulted in the discontinuance of the Din Torah.
  
  
• 1985 – Upon the dissolution of the above Bais Din, Rabbi Lipa Margulies retains Rabbi Pinchus Scheinberg to convene a second Bais Din for the purpose of clearing Rabbi Yehuda Kolko's name. Rabbi Lipa Margulies then drafts Rabbi Friedman (the Tenka Rav) and Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Brown to serve on Rabbi Scheinberg's Bais Din. Prior to convening the Bais Din, Rabbi Pinchus Scheinberg speaks with several of Kolko's victims and asks them to describe what Kolko has done to them. Upon hearing the allegations Rabbi Scheinberg informs the boys that in the eyes of Halacha they had not been molested. Rabbi Scheinberg also calls the Askanim and tells them to cease and desist in their attempts to remove Kolko from Chinuch. Rabbi Avigdor Miller disagrees and instructs the Askanim in no uncertain terms to do whatever must be done to protect children from Kolko. Rabbi Pinchus Scheinberg convenes the Bais Din and takes the position that Rabbi Kolko has a Chezkas Kashrus absent any testimony by two adult witnesses to any single event. Rabbi Friedman takes the position that in light of the persistent rumors Rabbi Kolko must be kept away from children. Rabbi Brown ultimately concedes that there is no Halachic evidence against Kolko and the Din Torah is concluded. Rabbi Lipa Margulies insists that he has a Psak from this Bais Din but to this day has refused to produce it. Regardless, it is of note that no victims testified before this Bais Din.
  
  
• 1987 – Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, having groomed a former first grade student of his for years, begins systematically sexually abusing this boy (name withheld at the request of the victim) both in and out of the Yeshiva Torah Temimah building. When this boy complains to Rabbi Lipa Margulies that his grades are slipping because Kolko is removing him from class almost daily, Margulies responds by slapping the boy across the face and throwing him out of his office. This young man is now living down south after obtaining a leave of absence from the U.S. Army.
  
  
• 2001 – Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, takes a young Yeshiva Torah Temimah student under his wing (name withheld at the request of the victim) and begins removing him from class for "special projects." These special projects include the boy being sexually molested by Kolko in the basement of the Yeshiva, in Rabbi Kolko's car and in Rabbi Kolko's private office, which Rabbi Lipa Margulies has conveniently equipped with its own private bathroom. This young man is currently in therapy and hopes to be able to recover enough to be able to get married and start a family.
  
  
• 2005 – Dovid Framowitz, after years of searching on the internet, chances upon a post written by a blogger calling himself "Un-Orthodox Jew" which makes reference to Rabbi Lipa Margulies harboring Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, a known pedophile, in his Yeshiva Torah Temimah. Dovid begins communicating with this blogger via e-mail who in turn posts Dovid's story on his blog. Over the course of several months other victims of Kolko begin to step forward with their stories. 
  
  
• January 2006 – Several Askonim decide that this four decade long Chillul Hashem must stop and approach both Rabbi Yehuda Kolko and Rabbi Lipa Margulies with a demand that Kolko be removed from Yeshiva Torah Temimah and Camp Silver Lake and further commit to spending the rest of his life in treatment and away from children. Both Kolko and Margulies refuse.
  
  
• February 2006 – A letter is drafted informing the public that Rabbi Yehuda Kolko is a dangerous pedophile and that Rabbi Lipa Margulies continues to employ him despite his knowledge of this fact. Copies of this draft letter are delivered to Kolko and Margulies. Both Kolko and Margulies are offered the opportunity to deal quietly with the issue and are informed that if they continue to refuse, the letter would be mass mailed to the entire community. Kolko responds by stating that "the matter has been taken care of" and Margulies responds by asking if anyone "thinks Kolko is still a threat" and declares "if anyone does not like the way I run my yeshiva let them not send their children to my yeshiva." They refuse to comply and the letter is sent out in a mass mailing.
  
  
• February 2006 – Eli Greenwald, a graduate of Yeshiva and Mesivta Torah Temimah, son of one of the founders of the Yeshiva and a parent in the Yeshiva receives the letter and spends a few days investigating the matter. He calls Rabbi Yaakov Applegrad, the Yeshiva's Administrator, and requests a meeting of the Vaad HaHorim in order to address this serious issue. Rabbi Applegrad informs him that there will be no meeting as the allegations are false and that he and Rabbi Margulies have the matter under control. Mr. Greenwald called Rabbi Lipa Margulies and makes the same request of him. Rabbi Margulies responds by shouting at him.
  
  
• February 17, 2006 – Eli Greenwald is served with a Hazmana issued by Rabbi Yisroel Belsky calling him to a Din Torah to answer the charge of Hotzoas Shem Rah allegedly committed against Rabbi Yehuda Kolko. Mr. Greenwald responds on February 21, 2006, that he will appear for a Din Torah before the Bais Din of America. To this day there has been no reply to Mr. Greenwald's response by either Kolko or Rabbi Yisroel Belsky.
  
  
• February 2006 – An Askan meets with Rabbi Yaakov Perlow and pleads with him to get involved in this matter. Rabbi Perlow refuses on the basis of his being a Yuchid and this being a Tzibur matter. After being pressed further Rabbi Perlow takes his final stand that this is a Flatbush matter and as he is a Boro Park Rabbi it would be unseemly for him to get involved in this matter.
  
  
• March 2006 – Rabbi Lipa Margulies reaches a standstill agreement with the Askonim by committing to appear before a panel consisting of two Rabbonim and one Frum lawyer, all three of whom had been chosen by him. Rabbi Lipa Margulies reneges on his promise to appear before this panel.
  
  
• March 23, 2006 – A Hazmana to a Din Torah is sent to Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, Rabbi Lipa Margulies and Yeshiva Torah Temimah summoning them to a Din Torah before the Bais Din of Mechon L'Hoyroa or a Bais Din of ZBLA. The Hazmana is ignored by all the defendants.
  
  
• March 30, 2006 – A second Hazmana to a Din Torah is sent to Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, Rabbi Lipa Margulies and Yeshiva Torah Temimah summoning them to a Din Torah before the Bais Din of Mechon L'Hoyroa or a Bais Din of ZBLA. By fax sent on April 5, 2006, Rabbi Lipa Margulies responds to this Hazmana stating he will not appear for a Din Torah "without a prior determination of the charges against Rabbi Kolko." Rabbi Kolko continues to ignore the Hazmanas.
  
  
• April 6, 2006 – A third Hazmana to a Din Torah is sent to Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, Rabbi Lipa Margulies and Yeshiva Torah Temimah summoning them to a Din Torah before the Bais Din of Mechon L'Hoyroa or a Bais Din of ZBLA. By fax sent on April 10, 2006, Rabbi Lipa Margulies responds to this Hazmana by stating "the Hazmonah that you sent to us was not a valid Hazmonah." Rabbi Kolko does not respond at all. It is of note that Rabbi Yehuda Kolko is still teaching in Yeshiva Torah Temimah while these exchange are taking place.
  
  
• May 4, 2006 – A lawsuit is filed in United States District Court: Eastern District of New York, naming Rabbi Yehuda Kolko; Yeshiva & Mesivta Torah Temimah, Inc. and Camp Agudah as defendants. Rabbi Yehuda Kolko remains in the classrooms of Yeshiva Torah Temimah.
  
  
• May 5, 2006 – Rabbi Simcha Kaufman approaches Dovid Framowitz and with tears in his eyes tells him that if only he had known what Rabbi Kolko was doing to him he would have put a stop to it. Of interest was Rabbi Simcha Kaufman's complete denial of any prior knowledge of any accusation before Dovid Framowitz brought his lawsuit. Rabbi Simcha Kaufman pleads with Dovid to withdraw his lawsuit lest he hurt Rabbi Lipa Margulies and the Yeshiva.
  
  
• May 10, 2006 – After being approached for comment on several occasions by Robert Kolker, a reporter for New York Magazine, and with a 5:00 printing deadline looming, Rabbi Lipa Margulies issues a statement through his attorney at 4:30 PM. Beginning with a proclamation that Yeshiva Torah Temimah is the preeminent Yeshiva in the world followed by an absolute denial of all the allegations, the statement concludes with an announcement that Rabbi Kolko has agreed to a "leave of absence" pending the resolution of this matter. Despite this claim, Rabbi Yehuda Kolko remains in the classrooms of Yeshiva Torah Temimah.
  
  
• May 12, 2006 – A second lawsuit is filed in United States District Court: Eastern District of New York naming Rabbi Yehuda Kolko; Yeshiva & Mesivta Torah Temimah, Inc. as defendants. Still, Rabbi Yehuda Kolko remains in the classrooms of Yeshiva Torah Temimah.
  
  
• May 15, 2006 – "On the Rabbi's Knees – Do the Orthodox Jews Have a Catholic Priest Problem" a feature article in New York Magazine, a publication with a circulation of three million, is published. Within days of the publication of the article and after thirty-eight years of committing unspeakable acts of perversion in Yeshiva Torah Temimah, Kolko leaves the classrooms of Yeshiva Torah Temimah. It was only after the magazine hit the newsstands that Margulies succumbed to pressure and removed Kolko from the classrooms of Yeshiva Torah Temimah.
  
  
• July 2006 – Over the vocal protest of many residents and with the help of his friend Rabbi Yaakov Applegrad, Rabbi Yehuda Kolko takes up summer residence at a home in Regency Estates in the Catskills. Despite the claim that Kolko was on a leave of absence from Yeshiva Torah Temimah, he continues working for Camp Silver Lake, Yeshiva Torah Temimah's summer home. In addition, Kolko initiates and organizes a multi-camp excursion to Lake Compounce, a water park located in Connecticut, where he is seen frolicking with young boys in bathing suits. A media outcry ensues resulting in Kolko being banned from the park by its non-Jewish management. Astonishingly, in August Kolko organizes a second trip to Lake Compounce, which is attended by the same Frum boy's camps who participated in the July trip. 

The above is but a sampling of the cases I am aware of. One need not be a great Lamden to realize that I am aware of only a small percentage of Kolko's abuse victims. As Rachmonim Bnai Rachmonim, it is unbearable to grasp the stunning extent of this catastrophe.

To all who decry the "Chillul Hashem" the New York Magazine article resulted in, I say; embarrassing, yes. Chillul Hashem, absolutely not! Indeed, it is ironic that this very article which has been condemned by many Rabbonim is what got you and them to belatedly acknowledge Kolko's guilt. Apparently a mere forty years of Koila D'Lo Posuk was not enough. Were the lawsuits and the magazine article the Chillul Hashem? No! The decades long Chillul Hashem is that of Margulies and Kolko's actions coupled with the many decades of improper action and inaction by our Rabbonim and organizations. This was somewhat offset by the recent Kiddush Hashem of the action taken by a few Askonim. They who had the courage to do what had to be done to protect our children from the acts of monsters and the cowardice of our Rabbonim. All this I say with the utmost respect and reverence.

I lay no blame at your doorstep for the above; you come from another part of the world, did not participate in and have no first hand knowledge of these events. I merely ask you to understand the world of pain that Rabbi Yehuda Kolko and his enablers; with a special note of distinction going to Rabbi Lipa Margulies; have left in their wake. I respectfully question your judgment in showing respect and support for Rabbi Lipa Margulies without having done a thorough investigation of his history. Surely, L'Man Yishmeu V'Yirahu, a man such as Lipa Margulies must be publicly vilified; not Cholila V'Chas publicly honored by someone of your esteem.

I respectfully submit that despite the focus of your speech, this issue has nothing to do with an obnoxious blogger or Kovod HaTorah. No reasonable adult takes this blogger's inane ravings as anything but. That he fell into this issue and "B'Mokom SheAin Ish" he chose to "Hishtadail Lehios Ish" and participate in pushing it forward, is a sad commentary on the egregious failures of our leadership. Rather, the issue is the still unanswered question of where our leaders were all these decades while Rabbi Yehuda Kolko and Rabbi Lipa Margulies were savaging our children. I ask with the utmost respect and humility; how can you stand in front of us in good faith and turn this into an issue of Kovod Hatorah? I ask that you hear the constant cries of anguish laden souls destroyed by chronic inaction coupled with a misguided concern for the "dignity" of Rabbeim who molest.

This is not a tale of something that somehow "slips through the fingers" but rather only one of many glaring examples of what occurs in a community whose leaders are unwilling to deal with an issue that sits under a spotlight for four decades and engulfs the souls of countless innocent children. Hashem Yerachaim.

As parents we have every right to expect that accusations of sexual abuse by a Rebbe be first verified post haste and then publicized so that we may protect our children from this predator and make informed decisions about where to send our children to Yeshiva. In the face of Pikuach Nefesh; cries of Kovod HaTorah, Chillul Hashem and Loshon Harah have no relevance. To resort to such cries is simply Am HaHaretzes and violates the precept not to be a Merachaim Al HaAchzoir. The issue all of us need to address, lay people and Rabbonim alike, is why nothing was done for so many decades and what lessons we can learn from our past mistakes to prevent future catastrophes of this nature.

Respectfully yours,

_________________________________________________________________________________

Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of Kings

December 6, 2006

JOHN DOE NO.4, by and through his natural parents and guardians, and by his MOTHER and FATHER individually,

INDEX NO.:

Plaintiffs,

COMPLAINT

YESHIVA & MESIVTA TORAH TEMIMAH, INC.

Defendant.

Plaintiffs, JOHN DOE NO. 4, by and through his natural parents and guardians, and by his MOTHER and FATHER individually, by and through their attorneys, Herman & Mermelstein, P.A. and Gallet, Dreyer and Berkey, LLP, hereby file this Complaint against Defendants YESHIVA & MESIVTA TORAH TEMIMAH, INC., and state as follows:

INTRODUCTION

1. JOHN DOE NO. 4 ("JOHN" or "JOHN DOE"), is a minor child residing in the State of New York.

2. Plaintiffs, JOHN DOE's MOTHER and JOHN DOE's FATHER, are individuals residing in the State of New York. They are the natural parents and guardians of JOHN, and bring this action on his behalf and in their individual capacities.

3. Plaintiffs demand damages in this action in excess of $10 million.

4. Plaintiffs bring this action anonymously to protect their identities because the allegations herein concern the sensitive matter of sexual abuse upon a minor.

5. At all material times, Defendant, YESHIVA & MESIVTA TORAH TEMIMAH, INC. ("TORAH TEMIMAH"), was a New York not-for-profit religious corporation organized and existing pursuant to the Religious Corporation Law of the State of New York. At all material times, TORAH TEMIMAH was a Jewish day school with its principal place of business in Brooklyn, New York. At all material times, RABBI KOLKO was an agent, employee, or appointee of TORAH TEMIMAH in his capacities as rabbi, teacher, and/or counselor at the school.

SEXUAL ABUSE BY RABBI KOLKO

6. JOHN DOE's parents enrolled JOHN as a student in TORAH TEMIMAH. RABBI KOLKO was a rabbi and teacher at TORAH TEMIMAH.

7. JOHN and his parents placed their trust in TORAH TEMIMAH. In particular, they reposed trust and confidence in the fidelity and integrity of RABBI KOLKO. With the authorization and knowledge of TORAH TEMIMAH, RABBI KOLKO accepted this trust and confidence and used it to gain influence with JOHN, as well as assume control and responsibility over him.

8. During the 2003-04 school year, JOHN was sexually abused by RABBI KOLKO. The abuse took place on TORAH TEMIMAH's premises. At that time, JOHN was in early elementary school at TORAH TEMIMAH.

9. RABBI KOLKO's position of trust and confidence, together with his unfettered access to JOHN at TORAH TEMIMAH, facilitated him in committing the heinous sexual abuse.

10. At all material times, TORAH TEMIMAH knew or should have known that RABBI KOLKO sexually abused young male students under his supervision or control. TORAH TEMIMAH knew or should have known of RABBI KOLKO's dangerous sexual predisposition and/or that he was unfit, dangerous and a threat to the health, safety and welfare of the minors entrusted to his counsel, care and protection at TORAH TEMIMAH.

11. Upon information and belief, TORAH TEMIMAH, through its leader, Rabbi Lipa Marguiles, knew for a period of over 25 years before JOHN was abused of multiple credible allegations of sexual abuse and pedophilia against Rabbi Kolko, yet continued to employ Rabbi Kolko as an elementary school teacher and give him unfettered access to young children. Rabbi Marguiles, in concert with Rabbi Kolko, additionally engaged in tactics of intimidation, threats, coercion and misrepresentations over a period of years with the intent of squelching any complaints or civil claims concerning Rabbi Kolko's misconduct. Such acts and omissions demonstrate extreme gross negligence, recklessness, and/or wanton, willful and malicious conduct, as to be the equivalent of a conscious disregard of the rights of others.

COUNT I – NEGLIGENCE

12. Plaintiff repeats and re-alleges, as if fully set forth herein, each and every allegation contained in the above Paragraphs 1 through

13. At all material times, the Defendant TORAH TEMIMAH owed a duty to JOHN to use reasonable care to ensure his safety, care, well-being and health while he was under its care, custody or in the presence of their agents or employees. TORAH TEMIMAH's duties encompassed the hiring, appointment, retention and/or supervision of RABBI KOLKO and otherwise providing a safe environment for JOHN.

14. TORAH TEMIMAH exercised physical care and custody over JOHN as a minor child who was enrolled in the school. As a result, TORAH TEMIMAH took the position and responsibility of JOHN's parents for his care and well being while in its charge. TORAH TEMIMAH breached this duty of care by failing to protect the minor JOHN from sexual assault and lewd and lascivious acts committed by their agent and/or employee, RABBI KOLKO. Despite its knowledge regarding RABBI KOLKO's dangerous propensities, TORAH TEMIMAH failed to take any remedial action, conduct a good faith investigation, and/or place restrictions on RABBI KOLKO's duties and interactions with minors.

15. At all relevant times, TORAH TEMIMAH had grossly inadequate policies and procedures to protect children entrusted to its care and protection, including JOHN.

16. As a direct and proximate cause of TORAH TEMIMAH's failure to remove RABBI KOLKO from his duties and/or otherwise take remedial action upon receiving allegations of sexual abuse against RABBI KOLKO, JOHN was sexually abused.

17. The sexual abuse has caused and will cause JOHN to suffer past, present and future severe and permanent psychological and emotional injuries, as well as attendant economic losses.

WHEREFORE, Plaintiff, JOHN DOE, prays that judgment for money damages and punitive damages be entered in his favor and against the Defendant, YESHIVA & MESIVTA TORAH TEMIMAH, INC.

COUNT II - BREACH OF FIDUCIARY DUTY

18. Plaintiff JOHN DOE repeats and re-alleges, as if fully set forth herein, each and every allegation contained in the above Paragraphs 1 through

20. At all relevant times, RABBI KOLKO occupied and accepted a position as fiduciary to JOHN as his counselor, advisor and teacher, in a relationship of trust and confidence.

21. TORAH TEMIMAH knew that RABBI KOLKO had a fiduciary relationship with JOHN, and in fact authorized RABBI KOLKO to act as its agent in counseling and advising JOHN. Accordingly, TORAH TEMIMAH was also in a fiduciary relationship with JOHN.

22. TORAH TEMIMAH breached its fiduciary duty to JOHN by allowing RABBI KOLKO to serve as JOHN's rabbi, teacher, counselor, and advisor, despite knowledge of his dangerous sexual propensities.

23. As a direct and proximate cause of TORAH TEMIMAH's failure to remove RABBI KOLKO from his duties and/or otherwise take remedial action upon receiving allegations of sexual abuse by RABBI KOLKO, JOHN was sexually abused.

24. The sexual abuse has caused and will cause JOHN to suffer past, present and future severe and permanent psychological and emotional injuries, as well as attendant economic losses.

WHEREFORE, Plaintiffs, JOHN DOE, prays that judgment for money damages and punitive damages be entered in his favor and against the Defendant YESHIVA & MESIVTA TORAH TEMIMAH, INC.

COUNT III - LOSS OF CONSORTIUM

25. Plaintiffs, JOHN DOE's MOTHER and JOHN DOE's FATHER, repeat and reallege paragraphs 1 through 11 above.

26. JOHN DOE's MOTHER and JOHN DOE's FATHER have suffered and will suffer tangible, pecuniary losses resulting from TORAH TEMIMAH's negligence and breach of fiduciary duty, including without limitation, loss of services and expenses for medical and psychological care.

WHEREFORE, Plaintiffs, JOHN DOE's MOTHER and JOHN DOE's FATHER, respectfully demand judgment for loss of consortium money damages against Defendant YESHIVA & MESIVTA TORAH TEMIMAH.

DEMAND FOR JURY TRIAL

Plaintiffs hereby demand a trial of their claims by jury.

Dated: December 6, 2006

Respectfully submitted,

HERMAN & MERMELSTEIN, P.A.

Jeffrey M. Herman, Esq. Stuart S. Mermelstein, Esq. 18205 Biscayne Boulevard Suite 2218 Miami, Florida 33160

Telephone: (305) 931-2200 Facsimile: (305) 931-0877 www.hermanlaw.com

and

GALLET DREYER & BERKEY LLP

845 Third Avenue - 8th Floor New York, New York 10022

Tel. (212) 935-3131 Fax (212) 935-4514

By:_ David T. Azrin, Esq.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Police: Brooklyn Rabbi Charged With Sexual Abuse On Child

WNBC (Channel 4) - December 7, 2006

NEW YORK –– A Brooklyn Rabbi has been charged with sex abuse and child endangerment, police said.

Rabbi Joel Kolko, 60, was arrested Wednesday and charged with four counts of sex abuse and endangering the welfare of a minor, police said.

Police said the alleged victim is a 9-year-old boy who said he was sexually abused during 2002 and 2003.

The arrest comes after a the New York Daily News reported on a $10 million lawsuit that was filed by a child of "early elementary school" age.

Police said they had been investigating Kolko and made the decision to arrest him after the lawsuit was made public.

Kolko is part of Mesivta Torah Temimah on Ocean Parkway, where the lawsuit alleges the abuse took place.

"He's been my principal for years," said one person. "I never knew him like that. He never acted inappropriately."

No one at the school wanted to comment officially, NewsChannel 4 reported, but his former student said he finds the allegations hard to believe.

"As a person, he doesn't fit the criteria," said Abraham Birnbaum. "I've known him for 10 years. My brother was a student, (comma) and he never had that view of him."

Students said Kolko voluntarily left the school a few years ago when the allegations of abuse began to surface.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Brooklyn school rabbi accused of molesting boy

Newsday - December 7, 2006

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--rabbi-sexabuse1207dec07,0,4063364.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork

NEW YORK -- A rabbi at an Orthodox school was arrested Thursday on charges he sexually abused a little boy, police said.

Joel Kolko, 60, taught at the private school for boys, Yeshiva-Mesivta Torah Temimah, and was arrested on four counts of sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of a minor, police said. The 9-year-old boy reported he was abused during 2002 and 2003, police said.

A lawsuit was filed Wednesday against the school, claiming it protected the rabbi, also known as Yehuda Kolko, and accusing it of "failing to protect" the boy "from sexual assault and lewd and lascivious acts" despite knowing Kolko's "dangerous propensities," the Daily News reported on its Web Site. The suit was seeking $10 million in damages.

Another lawsuit, filed in federal court in May by two of Kolko's former students, claims the rabbi molested them nearly 20 years ago, according to published reports. The suit, which is seeking $20 million in damages, alleges Kolko victimized nearly 15 children.

One of the former students filing the suit appeared in a New York magazine article in May detailing the abuse claims. The magazine said Kolko had refused to comment.

On Thursday night, Kolko, who was handcuffed, bowed his head and didn't speak when he was led from a Brooklyn police station to a waiting car before his arraignment.

There was no answer at a telephone number for Kolko listed at the home address provided by police, and an after-hours message left at the school was not immediately returned.

Kolko was defended by one of his former students at the school, where about 1,000 boys are enrolled.

"As a person, he doesn't fit the criteria," Abraham Birnbaum told WNBC-TV. "I have known him for 10 years. My brother was his student, and he never had that view of him."

_________________________________________________________________________________

Brooklyn rabbi charged with sexual abuse

Rabbi Joel Kolko and Brooklyn Yeshiva named in a lawsuit

By Jeff Pegues

WABC News - December 7, 2006

Brooklyn, NY - There are charges of child molestation at a yeshiva in Brooklyn and now, a rabbi at that Jewish school is under arrest.

Rabbi Joel Kolko and the Yeshiva are also named in at least two lawsuits charging the rabbi molested young students over a 25 year period.

On Thursday night, the 60-year-old rabbi was walked out of a local precinct facing charges that could land him behind bars for years. He's accused of the sexual abuse of an elementary school student at this Brooklyn Yeshiva on Ocean Parkway.

According to investigators, Rabbi Kolka sexually abused a 6-year-old boy at the school. And police believe the abuse happened on more than one occasion in 2002 and 2003.

On this night near the school, most people here declined to talk about the allegations.

The 60-year-old rabbi will face charges in criminal court and lawsuits in civil cases as well.

A 10 million dollar suit has been filed against Yeshiva Mesivta Torah Temimah, accusing the school of protecting the rabbi, despite concerns that he was allegedly molesting children.

Add that case to a $20 million dollar lawsuit filed last May on behalf of two former students at the Yeshiva, who claim they were abused more than 25 years ago.

Some of the rabbi's former students refuse to believe the charges.

"I've known him for 10 years, my brother was a student and he never had that view of him," the student said.

The rabbi now faces four counts of sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of a minor. Police tell us one of the victims is now 9-years-old and was 6-years-old at the time. Sources tell us there is another victim claiming abuse.

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Rabbi Charged With Sexually Abusing 9-Year-Old

Another Lawsuit Claims Misconduct From 20 Years Ago

By Hazel Sanchez

CBS News - December 8, 2006

(CBS/AP) NEW YORK A rabbi at an Orthodox school was arrested Thursday on charges he sexually abused a little boy, police said.

Joel Kolko, 60, taught at the private school for boys, Yeshiva-Mesivta Torah Temimah, and was arrested on four counts of sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of a minor, police said. The 9-year-old boy reported he was abused during 2002 and 2003, police said.

A lawsuit was filed Wednesday against the school, claiming it protected the rabbi, also known as Yehuda Kolko, and accusing it of "failing to protect" the boy "from sexual assault and lewd and lascivious acts" despite knowing Kolko's "dangerous propensities," the Daily News reported on its Web Site. The suit was seeking $10 million in damages.

Another lawsuit, filed in federal court in May by two of Kolko's former students, claims the rabbi molested them nearly 20 years ago, according to published reports. The suit, which is seeking $20 million in damages, alleges Kolko victimized nearly 15 children.

One of the former students filing the suit appeared in a New York magazine article in May detailing the abuse claims. The magazine said Kolko had refused to comment.

On Thursday night, Kolko, who was handcuffed, bowed his head and didn't speak when he was led from a Brooklyn police station to a waiting car before his arraignment.

There was no answer at a telephone number for Kolko listed at the home address provided by police, and an after-hours message left at the school was not immediately returned.

Kolko was defended by one of his former students at the school, where about 1,000 boys are enrolled.

"As a person, he doesn't fit the criteria," Abraham Birnbaum told WNBC-TV. "I have known him for 10 years. My brother was his student, and he never had that view of him."

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Brooklyn Rabbi Arrested On Sexual Assault Charges

By Bradley Hope 

New York Sun - December 8, 2006

A Brooklyn rabbi was arrested on charges of sexual assault of a child yesterday, police officials said.

Rabbi Yehudi Kolko, 60, who taught at an all-boys school, in May was the target of a $20 million lawsuit by a former student. On Tuesday, another student filed a lawsuit seeking $10 million. Both students say Mr. Kolko sexually assaulted them.

Mr. Kolko was arrested yesterday at his home at 1249 E. 22nd St. following a long-term investigation, police said.

He was charged with four counts of sexual abuse, including two felony counts, and endangering the welfare of a child, police said.

The most recent sexual abuse was allegedly against an 8-year-old boy, who says he was abused while he was in the first grade during the 2002-03 school year, police said.

Mr. Kolko has been on administrative leave since May from Torah Temimah, a school for Orthodox boys school in Brooklyn with 1,000 students. He was also active in the school's summer camp, Camp Silver Lake, according to an article in New York magazine.

According to the magazine article, he attracted suspicion among religious leaders in the mid-1980s for similar allegations. A dozen children reported to counselors that Mr. Kolko had abused them, but those accounts did not lead to a criminal investigation, the article said.

As of yesterday evening, Mr. Kolko had not been arraigned on the charges in Brooklyn Criminal Court.

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Sex-rap rabbi is busted in Brooklyn

BY NANCIE L. KATZ

DAILY NEWS STAFF - December 8, 2006

A Brooklyn rabbi who is being sued for decades of alleged sexual abuse was busted yesterday.

Joel Yehuda Kolko, 60, likely will face felony charges in the most recent case - the alleged molestation of a 9-year-old boy - as well as the abuse of an adult man, a law enforcement source said.

"The streets of New York are safer tonight," said Jeffrey Herman, a Florida lawyer who is suing the rabbi for more than $40 million on behalf of three adult victims and the child. "If the allegations are true, he's been an active predator for 30 years. Finally, justice will be served, and the children of New York will be protected."

Special NYPD child abuse cops arrested Kolko at his Midwood home about 4 p.m. yesterday, just hours after the Daily News ran a story about the latest allegation against him.

"There was some concern he was going to flee," a law enforcement source said.

A $10 million lawsuit filed at Brooklyn Supreme Court on Wednesday accuses Yeshiva-Mesivta Torah Temimah on Ocean Parkway, where the rabbi taught, of harboring Kolko despite accusations that he has abused children in his care for years.

Kolko molested a boy of "early elementary age" at the school during the 2003-2004 academic year, the suit charged. Similar suits against Kolko and the Yeshiva that seek $30 million in damages were filed in May on behalf of men now 30, 40 and 50 years old who say the rabbi victimized them as children.

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Brooklyn School Rabbi Accused of Molesting Boy

Associated Press - December 8, 2006

NEW YORK (AP) -- Police tell 1010 WINS there may be more victims in the case of a rabbi accused of sexually abusing a little boy.

The rabbi, 60-year-old Joel Kolko, was arrested Thursday on charges he sexually abused a little boy, police said. He was arrested on four counts of sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of a minor.

1010 WINS Audio: Al Jones Reports (Dec. 7)

Kolko, of E. 22nd St. and Ave. K in Midwood, Brooklyn, taught at Yeshiva-Mesivta Torah Temimah. The Orthodox private school for boys is located on Ocean Parkway in the Parkville section of Brooklyn. The 9-year-old boy reported he was abused during 2002 and 2003, police said.

The executive director of the school told 1010 WINS Kolko has been fired.

A lawsuit was filed Wednesday against the school, claiming it protected the rabbi, also known as Yehuda Kolko, and accusing it of "failing to protect'' the boy "from sexual assault and lewd and lascivious acts'' despite knowing Kolko's "dangerous propensities,'' the Daily News reported on its Web Site. The suit was seeking $10 million in damages.

Another lawsuit, filed in federal court in May by two of Kolko's former students, claims the rabbi molested them nearly 20 years ago, according to published reports. The suit, which is seeking $20 million in damages, alleges Kolko victimized nearly 15 children.

One of the former students filing the suit appeared in a New York magazine article in May detailing the abuse claims. The magazine said Kolko had refused to comment.

On Thursday night, Kolko, who was handcuffed, bowed his head and didn't speak when he was led from a Brooklyn police station to a waiting car before his arraignment.

There was no answer at a telephone number for Kolko listed at the home address provided by police, and an after-hours message left at the school was not immediately returned.

Kolko was defended by one of his former students at the school, where about 1,000 boys are enrolled.

"As a person, he doesn't fit the criteria,'' Abraham Birnbaum told WNBC-TV. "I have known him for 10 years. My brother was his student, and he never had that view of him.''

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NYC rabbi charged with sex abuse of 9-year-old boy

The Associated Press - December 8, 2006

NEW YORK (AP) — A rabbi at an all-boys Orthodox school was charged Friday with sexually abusing a young student, prosecutors said.

Joel Kolko, 60, was ordered held on $10,000 bond or $5,000 cash bail, a spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney's office said. The charges handed down in Brooklyn criminal court include sexual abuse in the first, second and third degrees as well as endangering the welfare of a child.

Kolko, who was arrested Thursday night, taught at the private school, Yeshiva-Mesivta Torah Temimah, for years. The accuser, now age 9, reported he was abused during 2002 and 2003, police said.

Yaakov Applegrad, executive director of the school, said Kolko was no longer working there.

"If something did indeed happen, we sympathize with the child and are confident that the judicial system will handle it appropriately," he told WINS-AM 1010.

A lawsuit filed Wednesday in state Supreme Court on behalf of the accuser claims the school protected the rabbi, also known as Yehuda Kolko, despite knowing he had molested students, said Jeffrey Herman, a lawyer for the child. The suit seeks more than $10 million in damages.

Two of Kolko's former students filed another lawsuit in Brooklyn federal court in May claiming he had molested them nearly 20 years ago. That suit, in which the plaintiffs seek $10 million each, alleges Kolko victimized multiple children.

One of the former students in the May suit detailed the abuse claims in a New York magazine article. The magazine said Kolko had refused to comment.

Messages seeking comment from Kolko and his lawyer were not immediately returned Friday.

About 1,000 boys are enrolled at the school.

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Brooklyn Rabbi In Perv Bust

By PERRY CHIARAMONTE

New York Post - December 8, 2006

December 8, 2006 -- A rabbi was arrested yesterday for allegedly molesting students at his Brooklyn yeshiva, police said.

Joel Kolko, 60, was busted at his home in Midwood after an 8-year-old male student and a former student, now grown, told cops he abused them.

Kolko was already facing sexual-abuse allegations in a $10 million lawsuit filed Wednesday against Yeshiva-Mesivta Torah Temimah.

Cops acted after seeing the court papers and interviewing the victims.

A similar abuse lawsuit was filed in May by two men who claimed Kolko molested them more than 25 years ago. It was thrown out due to the statute of limitations.

It is alleged that Kolko abused the 8-year-old during the 2002-2003 school year, while the boy was a first-grader.

The former student claims that he was abused not only as a child, but also again when he was an adult during an encounter between the two.

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Yeshiva Denies Knowledge Of Alleged Sexual Abuse

Respected Rabbi Faces Sex Assault Charges

By Magee Hickey

CBS News - December 8, 2006

WATCH VIDEO: http://wcbstv.com/watercooler/local_story_342135916.html

(CBS) BROOKLYN Rabbi Joel Kolko was a well-known and well-respected rabbi at the Yeshiva and Mesivta Torah Temimah, according to the Yeshiva's executive director. But Kolko, also known as Yehuda, is now facing four counts of sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of a minor.

Police say a 9-year-old boy is claiming that he was sexually abused by Rabbi Kolko when he was in first grade during the 2002-2003 school year.

For 37 years, Rabbi Kolko, was a first grade Hebrew studies teacher and was also an assistant principal.

When word of these allegations of sexual abuse first surfaced last May, Rabbi Yaakov Applegrad, the executive director of the Yeshiva, said Kolko, 60, was asked to leave.

"At no time did the Yeshiva have any knowledge of anything alleged against Rabbi Kolko," said Rabbi Applegrad. "Nor did any parent ever raise a complaint against Rabbi Kolko."

Applegrad refused to answer questions, on advice of his lawyer, because a $10 million lawsuit has also been filed against the school, claiming the Yeshiva protected Rabbi Kolko and failed to protect the first grader from sexual abuse and what the lawsuit claims were "lewd and lascivious acts," despite knowing the rabbi's "dangerous propensities."

"If something did happen, we sympathize with the child and are confident that the judicial system will handle the matter appropriately," Rabbi Applegrad said.

Some people who live in the community were upset by the arrest:

"It's a big shame for the Jewish community for something to happen like this," said one man, who did not want to be identified.

"It's horrible," Brooklyn resident Louise Geller said. "I'm really surprised that something like this would happen here. I live here because it's safe."

Rabbi Kolko is also being sued by two former students in Federal Court.

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Rabbi Pleads Not Guilty To Molestation Charges

Brooklyn Yeshiva Denies Any Knowledge Of Incidents

By John Slattery

CBS News - December 8, 2006

(CBS) BROOKLYN Rabbi Joel Yehuda Kolko, 60, entered a plea of not guilty Friday afternoon after being charged in connection with molesting a 6-year-old student three years ago, and a 31-year-old former student last year. He is also accused in civil suits of molesting other students over the last three decades.

The child, who is now 9, was a student at Yeshiva-Mesivta Torah Temimahon Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, but the executive director of the yeshiva, Rabbi Yaakov Applegrad, denied any wrongdoing on the part of the school.

"At no time did the yeshiva know of anything alleged against Rabbi Kolko, nor did any parent come forward with a complaint," Applegrad said.

Kolko, who taught first grade Hebrew studies and was assistant principal, has been with the yeshiva for 37 years. He was recently fired.

Outside the yeshiva at noontime as students were being dismissed for the weekend, many young students said they like Kolko. A parent agreed.

"Two of my sons learned from him," Sander Herschkovitz said. "He's a very nice, intelligent man."

In addition to Friday's charges, the rabbi faces multi-million dollar civil suits filed by three other alleged victims, who are now adults.

"Unfortunately, I anticipated there were going to be many more victims," said attorney Jeffrey Herman, who is representing the alleged victims.

Kolko was charged with four counts of sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of a child.

"My client will be fine when he gets home for Shabis," said Scott Tulman, Kolko's attorney.

Bail for Kolko was set at $5,000, and he was ordered to surrender his passport.

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Orthodox Rabbi Arrested for Sex Abuse

WNYC (New York Public Radio) - December 8, 2006

NEW YORK, NY December 08, 2006 —An Orthodox school rabbi has been arrested on charges he sexually abused a little boy. 60 year-old Joel Kolko taught at a Brooklyn yeshiva for boys.

Police say he was arrested on 4 counts of sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of a minor. The 9 year-old boy reported he was abused during 2002 and 2003.

Kolko also has been named in two related lawsuits. He hasn't spoken out against the allegations.

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NYC Rabbi Arrested For "Decades Of Alleged Sexual Abuse"

By Matthew Borghese

All Headline News - December 8, 2006

New York, NY (AHN) - A Brooklyn rabbi has been arrested following the molestation of a young boy.

Joel Yehuda Kolko, 60, is being sued for "decades of alleged sexual abuse" yet will currently face criminal charges for molesting a 9-year-old boy and an adult man.

Jeffrey Herman, a Florida lawyer says, "The streets of New York are safer tonight."

Herman, who is suing on behalf of three adult victims and the child, explains, "If the allegations are true, he's been an active predator for 30 years. Finally, justice will be served, and the children of New York will be protected."

According to the New York Daily News, special NYPD child abuse cops arrested Kolko at his Midwood home about 4 p.m. yesterday, just hours after the paper ran a story about the latest allegation against him. Kolko molested a boy of "early elementary age" at the school during the 2003-2004 academic year, the suit charged. Similar suits against Kolko and the Yeshiva that seek $30 million in damages were filed in May on behalf of men now 30, 40 and 50 years old who say the rabbi victimized them as children.

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Rabbi Charged With Sexually Abusing 9-Year-Old - Another Lawsuit Claims Misconduct From 20 Years Ago

by Hazel Sanchez

CBS News/Associated Press - December 8, 2007

NEW YORK (CBS/AP) –– A rabbi at an Orthodox school was arrested Thursday on charges he sexually abused a little boy, police said.

Joel Kolko, 60, taught at the private school for boys, Yeshiva-Mesivta Torah Temimah, and was arrested on four counts of sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of a minor, police said. The 9-year-old boy reported he was abused during 2002 and 2003, police said.

A lawsuit was filed Wednesday against the school, claiming it protected the rabbi, also known as Yehuda Kolko, and accusing it of "failing to protect" the boy "from sexual assault and lewd and lascivious acts" despite knowing Kolko's "dangerous propensities," the Daily News reported on its Web Site. The suit was seeking $10 million in damages.

Another lawsuit, filed in federal court in May by two of Kolko's former students, claims the rabbi molested them nearly 20 years ago, according to published reports. The suit, which is seeking $20 million in damages, alleges Kolko victimized nearly 15 children.

One of the former students filing the suit appeared in a New York magazine article in May detailing the abuse claims. The magazine said Kolko had refused to comment.

On Thursday night, Kolko, who was handcuffed, bowed his head and didn't speak when he was led from a Brooklyn police station to a waiting car before his arraignment.

There was no answer at a telephone number for Kolko listed at the home address provided by police, and an after-hours message left at the school was not immediately returned.

Kolko was defended by one of his former students at the school, where about 1,000 boys are enrolled.

"As a person, he doesn't fit the criteria," Abraham Birnbaum told WNBC-TV. "I have known him for 10 years. My brother was his student, and he never had that view of him."

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'Perv' Rabbi In Shul Shocker

Victims Say Yehsiva Hid Kid 'Abuse'

By HEIDI SINGER, ALEX GINSBERG, MURRAY WEISS and JOHN MAZOR

'SICK MAN' Rabbi Joel Kolko, who was sued earlier this year by alleged sex-abuse victim David Framowitz, is in custody yesterday after being charged with child molestation.

December 9, 2006 -- A Brooklyn yeshiva covered up a rabbi's long history of child molestation and threatened parents and children who tried to end the abuse, it was charged yesterday.

Officials of Yeshiva Mesivta Torah Temimah knew of Rabbi Joel Kolko's attacks on young boys but ignored them because he was cleared by a rabbinical court, said lawyer Jeffrey Herman, who represents some of the alleged victims.

Details of Kolko's lurid past rocked the close-knit Jewish community yesterday as the rabbi was arraigned on new sex abuse charges yesterday.

They involved a 6-year-old boy - and a 31-year-old man, who says he was abused as a boy and again when he went back to visit the school last year.

The yeshiva denied a coverup.

Head Rabbi Lipa Margulies "never received any hard evidence about anything about Rabbi Kolko," said Avi Moskowitz, the attorney for Margulies and the yeshiva.

But Herman told The Post that when one boy considered making a public accusation against Kolko, his father got a threatening phone call from the yeshiva's leader.

The victim said Margulies "told his father that if your son doesn't keep his mouth shut, I can't guarantee the safety of your other children," Herman said.

"It's very scary stuff," he said. "All of a sudden, kids were afraid to come forward."

Word of the scandal first broke in May when Kolko, who is 60 and has 18 grandchildren, was hit by a $20 million lawsuit. Two former students filed the suit, charging they were molested more than 25 years ago.

One of the accusers, David Framowitz, 48, said he had been abused by Kolko at least 15 times over two years, both at the yeshiva and in the front seat of a Plymouth driven by the rabbi.

Kolko was arrested Thursday on the new charges, including allegedly touching the 6-year-old at the yeshiva on Ocean Parkway in Midwood.

He was also charged with attacking the 31-year-old man, who was one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed in May.

When the former student attended a social event at the school in January 2005, Kolko held the man down and forced the victim's hand onto Kolko's genitals, authorities said.

Yesterday, the rabbi, wearing a navy blue suit and black yarmulke, said nothing at his arraignment as $10,000 bail was set.

His lawyer, Scott Tulman, said the charges were "unquestionably . . . serious, but the fact remains it is just an allegation."

Moscowitz said the claim that Margulies threatened victims who came forward was "absolute lies."

Asked whether the school knew of the previous accusations, he said, "There's ancient history that's being referred to, but there have been no credible complaints."

But Herman said there are claims that Margulies interfered with a rabbinical court to protect Kolko, whom his accusers called "a very sick man."

"But what's incredible to me is that you have a rabbi who runs this school and presumably doesn't have this sickness and is alleged to have been covering for a known pedophile for over 25 years," he said. "It's a breach of trust at the highest level."

Assistant District Attorney Marc Fliedner indicated more victims are being sought, saying the case was a "comprehensive, ongoing investigation."

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Tip of iceberg feared in rabbi child sex rap

BY NANCIE L. KATZ and BRENDAN BROSH

DAILY NEWS - December 9, 2006

Prosecutors warned yesterday that a Brooklyn rabbi accused of sexually abusing two victims - including a young boy - may face more charges.

Joel Yehuda Kolko, 60, a former teacher and assistant principal at Yeshiva-Mesivta Torah Temimah on Ocean Parkway in Midwood, was released on $10,000 bail after he was arraigned yesterday on four counts of sexual abuse and one count of endangering the welfare of a child.

He was required to surrender his passport before he was allowed to return to his Midwood home in time for Sabbath observations.

The charges against him involve the alleged molestation of a 6-year-old boy and a 31-year-old man.

"There may be other charges with other complainants, and there is an ongoing investigation regarding Kolko," Assistant Brooklyn District Attorney Marc Fliedner said in Brooklyn Criminal Court.

A $10-million suit filed in Brooklyn Supreme Court on Wednesday accuses the yeshiva of harboring Kolko despite accusations that he abused children in his care there for years.

In May, three men filed suits seeking $30 million for alleged abuse the rabbi committed against them when they attended the yeshiva as children.

One of the three men was contacted by a Daily News reporter following yesterday's court action.

"I think it's 25 years later than it should have happened," the 39-year-old man said. "I know the wheels of justice are slow. I hope they crunch this guy."

The man said he personally knows of another 15 victims, and that he believes more than 100 other boys were molested by the rabbi.

Some of Kolko's former students were flabbergasted at the charges yesterday.

"I think a bunch of people are out to get him," said Aaron Tarnes, 30, a student at the yeshiva for 15 years. "I'm disturbed to hear such things against such a wonderful man."

Kolko arrived at his home on E. 22nd St. shortly after 4:15 p.m. in a silver Buick driven by his son, Avi. Kolko dashed inside without a word to waiting reporters.

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Brooklyn Rabbi Is Arraigned on Charges of Sexual Abuse

By DARYL KHAN

New York Times - December 9, 2006

A rabbi charged with sexual abuse of a minor at a school in Brooklyn walked out of criminal court yesterday after posting $5,000 bail.

Rabbi Joel Kolko, 60, a former teacher and assistant principal at Yeshiva and Mesivta Torah Temimah, an all-boys private school on 555 Ocean Parkway in Midwood, was arraigned on two counts of sexual abuse in the first and second degree and one count of endangering the welfare of a child in two separate episodes — one with a boy who was 6 at the time, the other with a man, 31.

During the arraignment, an assistant district attorney, Marc Fliedner, said Rabbi Kolko placed his hand on a 6-year-old student's penis during school hours in October 2003. In January 2005, Mr. Fliedner said, Rabbi Kolko forced an adult to place his hand on the rabbi's penis, also inside the school. Neither of the complainants was named in court papers because of the nature of the allegations.

Civil lawsuits filed by the adult in the case, along with three other adult victims, alleges a pattern of sexual abuse for decades and an effort to cover it up. Jeffrey Herman, a Miami-based lawyer who filed the lawsuits, said yesterday was a difficult for the plaintiffs.

"They've been living with this their entire adult lives," Mr. Herman said. "They came forward to make sure he wouldn't do this to anyone else, and for them to see another child has been abused is devastating for them."

In a radio interview yesterday on WINS-AM 1010, Yaakov Applegrad, executive director of the school, said, "If something did indeed happen, we sympathize with the child and are confident that the judicial system will handle it appropriately."

The rabbi's lawyer, Scott Tulman, declined to comment on the charges after the hearing, but said, "My client will be fine when he's able to celebrate Shabbat with his family." Judge Richard N. Allman ordered Rabbi Kolko to surrender his passport and to post $5,000 bail. As he left court surrounded by his lawyers and court officers, he did not respond to a flurry of questions from reporters.

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Bail Set for Brooklyn Rabbi Accused of Sex Abuse

1010 WINS - December 9, 2006

NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- A rabbi at an all-boys Orthodox school was charged Friday with sexually abusing a young student, prosecutors said.

Joel Kolko, 60, was ordered held on $10,000 bond or $5,000 cash bail, a spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney's office said. The charges handed down in Brooklyn criminal court include sexual abuse in the first, second and third degrees as well as endangering the welfare of a child.

Kolko, who was arrested Thursday night, taught at the private school, Yeshiva-Mesivta Torah Temimah, for years. The accuser, now age 9, reported he was abused during 2002 and 2003, police said.

Yaakov Applegrad, executive director of the school, said Kolko was no longer working there.

"If something did indeed happen, we sympathize with the child and are confident that the judicial system will handle it appropriately," he told 1010 WINS.

A lawsuit filed Wednesday in state Supreme Court on behalf of the accuser claims the school protected the rabbi, also known as Yehuda Kolko, despite knowing he had molested students, said Jeffrey Herman, a lawyer for the child. The suit seeks more than $10 million in damages.

Two of Kolko's former students filed another lawsuit in Brooklyn federal court in May claiming he had molested them nearly 20 years ago. That suit, in which the plaintiffs seek $10 million each, alleges Kolko victimized multiple children.

One of the former students in the May suit detailed the abuse claims in a New York magazine article. The magazine said Kolko had refused to comment.

Messages seeking comment from Kolko and his lawyer were not immediately returned Friday.

About 1,000 boys are enrolled at the school.

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We Need To Be Honoring The Survivors of Rabbi Yehuda Kolko As Heros!

© (2006) By Vicki Polin

The Awareness Center, Inc. - December 9, 2006

I know I shouldn't have been shocked when I read the following quote in the New York Times regarding Rabbi Joel Kolko (AKA: Yehuda Kolko).

The rabbi's lawyer, Scott Tulman, declined to comment on the charges after the hearing, but said, "My client will be fine when he's able to celebrate Shabbat with his family."

I don't quite understand. Keep in mind that Tulman's "holy" client is an alleged serial sex offender. Why should anyone care about Kolko being "fine". What about the thirty to forty years of survivors of sex crimes Rabbi Kolko left behind?

We can't forget the newest hero/survivors who came forward. The first was only six years old at the time he became a victim of criminal sexual behavior. Remember, Kolko did not limit his violence to just children. The second hero/survivor who came forward was in his early thirties at the time of the molestation:

During the arraignment, an assistant district attorney, Marc Fliedner, said Rabbi Kolko placed his hand on a 6-year-old student's penis during school hours in October 2003. In January 2005, Mr. Fliedner said, Rabbi Kolko forced an adult to place his hand on the rabbi's penis, also inside the school. Neither of the complainants was named in court papers because of the nature of the allegations.

According to the New York Daily News a third hero/survivor said:

He personally knows of another 15 victims, and that he believes more than 100 other boys were molested by the rabbi.

It saddens me a great deal when naive individuals make supportive statements defending alleged sex offenders and attack those who have been victimized. As a society we need to be educated. Those who have been victimized did nothing wrong! One would never treat someone robbed on the street as a villian. Survivors of sex crimes need to be seen as hero's and respected.

Each time a survivor comes out, discloses their victimization, works with law enforcement -- they are helping to prevent another unsuspecting individual (adult and or child) from becoming the next victim. The attacks against Survivors often becomes more intense when the alleged offender is arrested.

Part of the problem is a lack of education in communities, the other issue has to do the process one goes through when learning that someone they loved, honored and respected might have sexually violate another. This is a major loss -- it is a major betrayal of trust! It's natural defense mechanism to be in denial. It's much easier then facing the truth.

"I think a bunch of people are out to get him," said Aaron Tarnes, 30, a student at the yeshiva for 15 years. "I'm disturbed to hear such things against such a wonderful man."

The same sort of statements have been made about alleged sex offender Rabbi Ephraim Bryks, Rabbi Moshe Eisemann and Rabbi Eliezer Eisgrau. At least in the case of Yudi Kolko the survivors had the courage to come forward and law enforcement was able to do something with the statements and evidence. In the case of Moshe Eisemann the survivors chose to work things out quietly within the Ner Israel system. The agreement was that Eisemann would be retired, yet unfortunately still lives on their campus. In the case of Eisgrau, the police detective was allegedly stonewalled by individuals in Baltimore. Meaning law enforcement was unable to do their job.

Former Yeshiva-Mesivta Torah Temimah student, Aaron Tarnes was in a state of shock when he made his comments. It's also obvious he knows very little about sex offenders and the grooming process. Schools like Yeshiva-Mesivta Torah Temimah need to hire organizations like The Awareness Center to come in to provide workshops on awareness and prevention for its parents, students and staff. Education is the key!

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Rabbi Perv-Bust 'Justice'

By HEIDI SINGER

New York Post - December 10, 2006

http://www.nypost.com/seven/12102006/news/regionalnews/rabbi_perv_bust_justice_regionalnews_heidi_singer.htm

December 10, 2006 -- A victim of an alleged pedophile rabbi said yesterday that the religious teacher's arrest means "there is justice in the world" but that he's still furious over a Brooklyn yeshiva's alleged coverup.

"So many people have known about it and done nothing - so many rabbis," David Framowitz, 48, said by phone from Israel.

Rabbi Joel Kolko, 60, was busted Thursday on state charges stemming from the alleged molestation of a 6-year-old and a man now 31.

The statute of limitations has passed on Framowitz's alleged two-year abuse, starting at age 12, but he's filed a $20 million federal lawsuit against Kolko and Yeshiva Mesitva Torah Teminah.

Yeshiva director Rabbi Lipa Margulies has denied there was a coverup.

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So Many Rules, So Little Protection, Sex & Suppression Among Ultra Orthodox Jews

By Hella Winston

Lilith Magazine - Winter 2006/2007

The first time 12-year-old David Framowitz had his genitals fondled by a respected teacher from his yeshiva, he panicked, desperate to flee the parked car in which the man had given him a ride to school. Later, when he told his parents about what had happened, they dismissed his story, unable to fathom that a rabbi could be capable of such behavior. Not wanting "to cause trouble," Framowitz continued to suffer the abuse in silence, until he changed schools two years later. Now 48 and the plaintiff in a civil suit against this rabbi, and the school and camp that employed him, Framowitz has come forward to tell his story. Not surprisingly, reactions to it in the ultra-Orthodox world have hardly been encouraging for other victims.

Last May, New York magazine ran an article about the Framowitz allegations, and while many members of the ultra-Orthodox community expressed their outrage in private conversations, or anonymously on Internet blogs, the communal leadership remained silent. The few rabbis and other leaders who acknowledged the report expressed anger not about the alleged abuse and cover-up, but at those who brought the crimes to light.

That bombshell article (disclosure: I was quoted in it) suggested several reasons why confronting sexual abuse is a particular challenge for ultra-Orthodox Jews: the social stigma associated with being the victim of abuse; the agesold Jewish prohibition against mesira, or "informing" to the secular authorities; and the religious proscriptions against lashon hara (gossip) and chilul Hashem ("desecrating God's name," which in this context means giving the community a "bad name"). These impediments silence victims and protect perpetrators. Reporter Robert Kolker also speculated that the characteristically restrictive ultra-Orthodox approach to sexuality may foster such abuse through its rigidly enforced sex segregation, strict laws governing physical contact between the sexes (including married couples), and taboo against talking openly ("immodestly") or educating young people about sexuality.

The conjectures in that article proved deeply offensive to many in the frum (religious) world. Orthodox advocate Marvin Schick, in his regular advertisement which runs as a paid column in New York's Jewish Week newspaper, accused Kolker of "group libel." In an op-ed article in the same newspaper, Avi Shafran, spokesman for the influential ultra- Orthodox umbrella organization Agudath Israel, offered a counter-argument:

A Torah-observant life does not lead to aberrant behavior; it helps prevent it....That fundamental Jewish truth that human inclinations are harnessed and controlled by Torahlife and Torah-study is self-evident to anyone truly familiar with the Orthodox community. The vast majority of its members are caring and responsible people who lead exemplary lives, free in large measure from societal ills like rape, AIDS, prostitution and marital infidelity that affect their less "repressed" neighbors.... To imagine that what has defined traditional Jewish life for millennia is somehow a risk factor for abuse is to turn all logic and experience on their heads. The true risk factors, as mental health professionals attest, are things like absent parents, alcohol and drug abuse, lack of support systems and the touting of a Woody Allenesque "the heart wants what it wants" mindset, all considerably underrepresented in the Orthodox community. If any environment can reasonably be imagined to foster the bane of child abuse, it is the charged atmosphere of MTV, R-rated movies, contemporary advertising and uncontrolled Internet usage, not the universe of Jewish values.

There is no doubt that the vast majority of Orthodox Jews are caring and responsible individuals, and that Judaism stresses ethical conduct. Further, because the reasons for pedophilia are not completely understood, to assert a causal relationship between this disorder and the strict regulation of sexuality is problematic, just as inaccurate as blaming pedophilia on MTV or Woody Allen. However, many interviews I have conducted over three years with people intimately familiar with ultra-Orthodox life— including therapists, social workers, physicians, educators and community members themselves—suggest that some aspects of today's stringent ultra-Orthodox approach to sexuality, intended to promote marriage, procreation and a strong family life, can also (unintentionally) create conditions conducive to sexual abuse.

The ultra-Orthodox world consists of both Hasidic and non-Hasidic Jews. While there are important differences between these groups, and within the myriad communities that comprise them, they share a punctilious observance and interpretation of Jewish law, and strict boundaries between themselves and what they see as a corrupt—and corrupting—"secular" society. Though the Hasidim tend to promote an even greater separation from the surrounding culture than their non-Hasidic counterparts, both groups generally prohibit watching television, movies or sports; reading secular books, magazines or newspapers; using the Internet (except for business purposes); socializing with outsiders; and getting a secular education. These constraints are intended to protect religious integrity and help ensure the perpetuation of a way of life by staving off assimilation.

These communities—concentrated primarily in parts of New York and New Jersey—also enforce rigid gender roles, derived from a belief in the essential difference between men and women. Rules about "modesty" in dress and behavior also justify sex segregation in almost every area of social life, including education, employment and family relations. Women generally have primary responsibility for the "private" realm of home and family, and some public charity efforts, while men—who, unlike women, are obligated to engage in religious learning—occupy public positions of leadership and power in the community.

A fierce commitment to sex segregation has emerged in the "rules" issued recently by the leadership of the Hasidic enclave of New Square, in New York's Rockland County, purportedly to ensure the "modesty, holiness and pureness" of this "holy shtetl." In this community of approximately 7000 people, about 30 miles north of Manhattan, Yiddish signs instruct women and men to use opposite sides of the street, to prevent them from walking or talking together in public. In addition, women in New Square are urged never to sit in the front seat of a car (as passengers only; women there and in several other Hasidic communities are not allowed to drive); not to congregate in middle of the street or talk loudly in public, especially at times when boys and men come home at the end of the day; not to sit or stand near the entrances of the school or their own housing complexes, since that might force men to pass by them too closely. The rules also prohibit girls from riding bikes or "dancing" on a trampoline, unless it is surrounded by an actual mechitza (a wall separating women from men in synagogue and mixed social events). Other regulations warn against women wearing transparent hosiery, dying their eyelashes and sporting long wigs and housecoats outside the home.

Most of these regulations deal with control of women's bodies and their mobility, but they also imply that "immodest" women have the power to defile the entire community. In fact, ultra-Orthodox ideology places most of the burden for thwarting male sexual desire on women, who are to blame if male desire is incited.

In the upstate New York Satmar Hasidic community of Kiryas Joel, several women told me that they had received letters and visits from members of self-appointed community watchdog groups (meshmeris hatznius—"guardians of modesty") because they were seen to be violating communal standards. One woman was targeted for wearing a skirt that was "a few inches above regulation" (about three inches above the ankle is the custom), while another was approached because she and her husband often invited divorced men to her home for Shabbos, something the watchdogs apparently considered inappropriate mixing of the sexes; eventually both of these women moved with their families out of the community. This past August in Kiryas Joel, a flyer was posted publicly referring to one married woman by name and labeling her a "stinking carcass" and a "sinner" who must "abscond from" this "holy shtetl." No resident I spoke to could confirm this woman's sin, other than to mention that she dressed attractively and that she and her husband often invited other young couples to their home to socialize.

Certainly New Square and Kiryas Joel are among the most extreme ultra-Orthodox communities; in more "modern" (and not exclusively Hasidic) neighborhoods, many ultra-Orthodox women do drive, and there are no directives ordering women and men to walk on different sides of the street. Nonetheless, throughout the ultra-Orthodox world schools are sex-segregated, and social contact with nonfamily members of the opposite sex, let alone casual dating, are generally prohibited. In this environment, all-male yeshivas can become breeding grounds for behavior that borders on—and sometimes crosses over into—sexual abuse. In an email to me, one Hasidic man I know personally explained how this can happen:

The atmosphere of sexual repression in yeshivas (at least the kind of yeshivas I'm directly familiar with) contributes to many sexual perversions in people not otherwise inclined to behave that way. I'm not only talking about the rampant gay sexual activity ("rampant" as in relative to what I would expect; I don't know if it's rampant relative to a similar secular environment), but also pressuring younger boys into acquiescing to certain acts by the older boys, offering payments— or certain electronic goods in lieu of payments—for outright molestation, and sometimes even rape. The vicious cycle is sometimes continued by newlywed young men coming back for their favorite "pets" even after they have a chance for something different (either because they are gay, or because they feel more of an emotional connection to their friends than they do to their wives). Even without the above, the outsized emphasis put—both explicitly and implicitly—on the sin of masturbation, combined with the extreme sexual repression, leaves many detrimental affects [sic] on most going through the system. Now combine all of the above with the fact that many people in positions of authority over young boys and teenagers are young men not yet mature enough to have acquired a healthy attitude toward sex after the perverse environment in yeshiva.

While this man stressed that the abusive behavior he described is by no means a universal feature of yeshiva life, his overall assessment of the environment, and its potential impact on students, was echoed by other people I have spoken to at length. A married Hasidic woman with whom I communicated online wrote "Everyone knows frum boys fuck around with each other in yeshiva, mikvah (the ritual bath). Because they are told DON'T EVER look at a girl...Blah Blah Blah.... They get married but still think of gay sex once in a while"—even though male homosexual sex is forbidden by the Torah. These observations were confirmed by a sex therapist working with ultra-Orthodox clients, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity because of her sensitive therapeutic role. She likened the situation in all-male yeshivas to that of prisons, or the military. "It's the same thing. People are sexual and it gets acted out." In fact, several men told me that sexually abusive teachers would often target boys they knew were already "sinning" by experimenting sexually with their peers, as a way to ensure their silence about the teacher's abusive behavior. Further, my own research revealed that many Hasidic boys were groped or fondled in the ritual bath (mikvah), something that has been the subject of recent discussion on blogs like failedmessiah.typepad.com and jewishsurvivors.blogspot.com.

Some women also reported same-sex activity in all-female seminaries; notably, the women tended not to experience these relationships as hierarchical or abusive, but more playful or even loving. This may have to do with the fact that there is no explicit Jewish religious prohibition against female homosexual acts, and thus perhaps less guilt, shame and coercion surrounding such encounters. The sex therapist noted that the prohibition against male masturbation ("spilling seed") can exacerbate problems for boys—at least those who take it seriously. Without any outlet for their normal sexual urges—one man told me that he and his classmates were instructed not to touch their penises even while urinating, lest they accidentally get aroused—particularly at a time when those urges are strongest, boys may act out sexually in ways they otherwise would not if other options were not forbidden.

Young people growing up in ultra-Orthodox communities generally receive no formal education about sex. All of the Hasidic men I spoke with told me that in their schools, boys skip the sections of the Talmud that deal with sexual matters. While their non-Hasidic ultra-Orthodox counterparts apparently do study this material, they do so in a very technical manner, focusing, for example, on laws relating to sexual relations in marriage, or on menstruation.

Sanctioned sex education generally occurs only in the weeks before one's wedding, typically an arranged marriage. One man summarized for me the session with his "sex rabbi" this way: "He told me to do a little kissy, kissy, touch her here and there, and then put it in." A Hasidic woman described being on the receiving end of such advice: "My husband had no idea what he was doing," she told me. "It hurt and was humiliating."

People in the secular world are hardly immune to such experiences. However, a taboo against talking about sexuality can do more than predict awkward wedding nights; it can also foster a profound sense of shame around sexuality, and about the body and its functions. Many Hasidim told me that they had never even learned the words for genitals, but were taught to use euphemisms instead; for men, for example, "the organ of the bris." With no vocabulary—let alone permission— to discuss matters of a sexual nature openly, people who have been sexually abused often have trouble communicating, or even understanding, what has happened to them. A social worked illustrated this quite strikingly when she described to me an interview she conducted with an 18-yearold Hasidic victim who had been molested: lacking the words for parts of his own body, the young man had to use gestures to indicate what happened to him. Even for people who are able to speak about such experiences, there is often an inordinate amount of shame involved in the disclosure. One woman recounted her parents' reaction to her revelation that she had been repeatedly raped by her brother:

[You] know damn well that anything sexual is not discussed in a frum household. My mom and dad, they moved on, dismissed it like it never happened. [My mother] does not know that such actions screw you for life. She is in denial. I don't know if it's only my parents or all frum parents. My father, after he was told, did mention he wants to kill my brother, that's all. I was told [by a non-family member] to buy a book and read it, regarding incest. On my wedding day, my father found it and was so upset that I was reading such a sexual book. Oh, come on, it's ok for your fucking son to fuck me, but it ain't ok to heal through reading such a book.

One highly regarded Manhattan psychiatrist, who treats many ultra-Orthodox patients and who spoke on condition of anonymity in order not to compromise his therapeutic relationships, told me he had noted a good deal of what he called "casual incest"—sexual activity between siblings— among his patients. He attributed this to the fact that boys reaching puberty are denied what would be considered healthy contact with females apart from close relatives and, with masturbation considered sinful, end up acting out sexually with whomever was available.

Of course, no one suggests that there are more abusers in the ultra-Orthodox world than in the general population. Research by psychologist Dr. Michelle Friedman, appearing last summer in the annual student journal of Yeshiva Chovevei Torah, Milin Havivin, found that Orthodox girls and teens report rates of sexual abuse similar to that of their secular counterparts. The main difference is that, for a variety of reasons, within the ultra-Orthodox world abuse if it does occur is more likely to go unchecked, allowing abusers to remain in business longer, creating more victims.

Why the silence? Bringing shame on one's family is a significant obstacle to reporting abuse and prosecuting abusers. Because most marriages are arranged on the basis of individual and familial reputation, public knowledge that a person has been a victim of abuse severely compromises his or her options for making a "good match." The stigma of abuse taints not only the victim but siblings and other relatives as well. As a result, those who have been abused (and their families) have a tremendous incentive to keep the abuse a secret. One woman told me that her father, learning that she had been raped by a respected member of the community, threatened to burn her with a hot pan if she ever told anyone in the community about it; she was 10 years old at the time.

Another serious impediment to rooting out abuse is the communal prohibition against mesira, betraying the community to outside authorities. Once punishable by death, mesira is still taken seriously, discouraging most people from reporting abuse to the police. When I asked her whether she had ever considered going to the police, one woman who was molested replied, "I don't think so! It does not work like that in the frum world. You shall not be a moser, which means no telling on others; suffer in silence." This attitude is pervasive, despite a recent ruling by Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, a Jerusalem rabbi considered by the ultra-Orthodox to be one of the most respected interpreters of Jewish law. Elyashiv's ruling held that it is permissible to hand over a child abuser to the American police in cases where "It is clear that [the person] has committed a foul deed, and that this [informing] constitutes a sort of repair of the world." However, even in light of this clear ruling, the fear of being branded an informer remains strong, and is often exploited by those in power as a means of silencing victims, protecting the community's "good name"—and protecting the abuser in the process.

Many parents privately express concern about this issue, and claim they would like their leaders to prevent sexual abuse in institutional settings, and to deal with it effectively when it does occur. Most also say, though, that they themselves are unlikely to speak up about their concerns, let alone "inform" to the police on an abuser. Further, most admit that they would not allow one of their own children to marry a known victim of abuse.

While the outside world responds to such reports with shock, there is no denying the role played by the larger society in enabling this state of affairs. In the name of deeply held American commitments to religious freedom, these communities have been allowed to flourish with little outside oversight. A combination of ignorance and nostalgia often makes these very stringently observant and closed communities immune to serious scrutiny by fellow citizens— particularly liberal Jews who may idealize or romanticize this way of life, or politicians who appreciate the fact that ultra-Orthodox leaders can and do deliver votes in a bloc.

Unlike their public-school counterparts, administrators in ultra-Orthodox schools and other non-public schools are not required to run background checks on teachers, and because clergy are exempt from being mandated reporters, ultra- Orthodox teachers (most of whom are rabbis, at least in boys' schools) are not legally required to report suspected cases of abuse. And where distortions of Jewish law and custom may be invoked to prevent people from taking legal action, and educational options are limited, there may be little motivation for self-policing, aside from the obvious: the health and welfare of young people. Instead, this past August, a few months after the original magazine article appeared, the teacher accused of sexual molestation was spotted escorting young campers to a water park in Connecticut, and a reliable source told me that he has since been soliciting parents to sign their children up for a similar outing next summer. At Rosh Hashanah, he was also reportedly asked to blow the shofar in his shul, an honor accorded only the most respected members of the community. One can only imagine how his victims must feel about that.

Hella Winston is author of Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels. She received her PhD in sociology.

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Brooklyn rabbi charged with molestation

JTA - Dcember 12, 2006

http://www.jta.org/page_view_breaking_story.asp?intid=5997&ref=daily_briefing

A Brooklyn rabbi was charged with molesting his students at an Orthodox boys yeshiva.

Rabbi Yehudah Kolko was charged last Friday with four counts of sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of a child.

The court released him on $5,000 bail.

Kolko, 60, taught at Yeshiva-Mesivta Torah Temimah for decades and served as the school's assistant principal.

He is accused of molesting a boy who was a first-grade student of his in the 2002-03 school year and a former student.

A $20 million civil suit brought in May against Kolko and the yeshiva by two adult former students asserted that the school was aware of the alleged abuse and protected Kolko.

"If something did indeed happen, we sympathize with the child and are confident that the judicial system will handle it appropriately," Yaakov Applegrad, executive director of the school, said in a radio interview.

Kolko was fired recently after 37 years at the school.

"My client will be fine when he gets home for Shabbos," said Scott Tulman, Kolko's attorney.

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Kolko Arrested on Sexual Abuse Charges

By: Shlomo Greenwald

Jewish Press Staff Reporter - December 13, 2006

Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, 60, was arrested Thursday night in his home in Midwood, Brooklyn, and arraigned Friday on four counts of sexual abuse and one count of endangering the welfare of a child.

Kolko, a former first-grade rebbe and assistant principal at Yeshiva Torah Temimah, was released in time to go home for Shabbat after bail was posted.

On Wednesday, the parents of one of the two alleged victims filed a $10 million suit against the yeshiva, claiming it retained Kolko as a teacher despite knowing about sexual abuse allegations against him.

Yaakov Applegrad, executive director of the yeshiva, told 1010 WINS radio, "If something did indeed happen, we sympathize with the child and are confident that the judicial system will handle it appropriately." Kolko has not worked at the yeshiva or its affiliated summer camp for the last year.

Kolko has been dogged by sexual abuse allegations for several years. In May, Jeffrey Herman, a Miami-based attorney who is representing the two alleged victims whose claims led to Kolko's arrest, filed two lawsuits on behalf of three men claiming total damages of $30 million against Kolko for alleged abuse while they were students at the yeshiva.

"I think a bunch of people are out to get him," Aaron Tarnes, 30, a student at the yeshiva for 15 years, told The Daily News. "I'm disturbed to hear such things against such a wonderful man."

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4th Sex-Abuse Suit VS. Yeshiva

By ALEX GINSBERG

New York Posts - January 5, 2006

http://www.nypost.com/seven/01052007/news/regionalnews/4th_sex_abuse_suit_vs__yeshiva_regionalnews_alex_ginsberg.htm

January 5, 2007 -- A Brooklyn yeshiva has been slapped with a fourth sex lawsuit, this one alleging it covered up the abuse of a young pupil by a highly regarded rabbi.

The suit, filed yesterday in Brooklyn Supreme Court on behalf of an underage "John Doe," accuses Yeshiva Torah Temimah of covering up a sex attack by Rabbi Yehuda Kolko during the 2004-2005 school year. It seeks $10 million from the yeshiva.

Lawyers for Kolko and the yeshiva, facig four suits by five students, declined comment.

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Midwood Rabbi Faces Kiddie Sex Charges - Cops Say Joel Kolko Sexually Assaulted Yeshiva Students

By Thomas Tracy

Kings Courier [New York] - December 14, 2006

http://www.courierlife.net/site/tab2.cfm?newsid=17593614&BRD=2384&PAG=461&dept_id=552848&rfi=6

A Midwood rabbi who had already been accused of being a pedophile was arrested last week for allegedly sexually assaulting a nine-year-old student, officials said.

Joel Kolko, 60, of the 1200 block of East 22nd Street, was charged with four counts of sex abuse and endangering the welfare of a minor on December 7.

The rabbi's arrest has Kolko's past alleged victims believing that no one can run away from their past.

Police arrested Midwood Rabbi Joel Kolko (above) on sex abuse charges last week.

"There is justice in the world," one of the two grown men currently suing Kolko for the alleged horrors he instilled upon them over 20 years ago told the New York Post.

In a lawsuit filed last May, the two victims alleged that they were enrolled in Yeshiva Torah Temimah, 555 Ocean Parkway, in the 1980s, when Kolko sexually abused them.

The complainants charged that when they brought these allegations to Yeshiva Torah Temimah, school officials refused to investigate the allegations.

Attorneys for Yeshiva Torah Temimah claim that the school did not probe the allegations because they were never given enough evidence to warrant an investigation. Kolko, they said, is no longer affiliated with the school.

While it was whispered throughout the school, Kolko's alleged activities were never brought to the police until last week, when a nine-year-old boy came forward, alleging that the rabbi had sexually abused him both in 2002 and in 2003.

Prosecutors said that Kolko was arraigned on sex abuse charges on Friday.

He is currently out on $5,000 bail, officials said.

Attorneys for the two former students allegedly assaulted by Kolko said that the rabbi, as well as Yeshiva Torah Temimah were each facing a $10 million lawsuit.

Both men, who were only identified as John Doe #1 and John Doe #2 in court papers, claimed that when the alleged abuse they suffered at Kolko's hands was reported to the school, yeshiva administrators shot down the complaints, stating that the students "were not actually abused."

Their parents were warned that if they continued with their complaints or had the authorities investigate the complaints, "other children in their families would be expelled from the yeshiva and prevented from attending other yeshivas in the New York area," according to the suit filed by Jeffrey Herman of the Miami-based law firm Herman and Mermelstein.

One of the victims, now 48 and living in Israel, joined Herman as he outlined the alleged abuse during a press conference in front of the yeshiva on Friday afternoon.

John Doe #1 said that as a child he was his family were happy that he was enrolled in Yeshiva Torah Termimah, which was at the time considered "one of the more important and revered institutions" in his community.

Rabbi Lipa Margulies, the leader of Torah Temimah at the time, was one of his neighbors, he said.

Another neighbor was Rabbi Kolko, who would offer to drive the child to school each morning, according to the complaint.

When John Doe #1 was in the seventh grade, Rabbi Kolko took him to school, but would first park down the block from the school, where he would allegedly instruct the child to sit on his lap and hold the steering wheel as he began to "grind his erect penis" against the plaintiff, who also alleged that, on occasion, Kolko would put his hands in his pants to touch the victim's genitals.

John Doe #1 said that this alleged abuse happened on 15 other occasions, both on the way to the school and after school recess at Torah Temimah when Kolko allegedly told John Doe #1 to face a wall while he molested him.

The alleged abuse continued until John Doe #1 graduated from the school and continued on to high school, according to the complaint.

The summer between the seventh and eighth grade posed no relief for the child, who Kolko allegedly abused during a stay at Camp Agudah in upstate New York, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit alleges that Kolko would pull the child out of camp for a "drive around town" where the child was abused.

John Doe #2 suffered the same abuse at the hands of Rabbi Kolko, Herman alleged.

But, when members at Torah Temimah received word that one of their teachers was allegedly abusing students, they immediately put the kibosh on all complaints, the lawsuit states.

"[Yeshiva Torah Temimah] received multiple, credible reports that Rabbi Kolko was sexually abusing other young boys who he came into contact with," Herman states in his suit. "But instead of accepting responsibility or at a minimum conducting a good faith investigation, Rabbi Lipa Margulies with Rabbi Kolko willfully engaged in a campaign of intimidation, concealment and misrepresentations designed to prevent victims from filing civil lawsuits."

Herman admitted that both his clients' complaints come upwards of a decade after the statute of limitations on sexual abuse charges had expired.

The lawsuits against Kolko and Yeshiva Torah Temimah have yet to go to court.

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Kolko Scandal Now Criminal

By Adam Dickter - Assistant Managing Editor

Jewish Week - December 15, 2006

http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=13389

Prosecutors and lawyer seeking more alleged victims after Torah Temimah rabbi is arrested; fourth lawsuit has yeshiva facing $40 million in claims.

For David Framowitz, the world became "a little safer" this week.

That's because Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, who 48-year-old Framowitz says sexually abused him 36 years ago, was arrested last week on unrelated but similar charges.

"I'm very, very relieved that justice is finally being done," Framowitz said Monday in an interview from Israel, where he now lives.

Rabbi Kolko, 60, who left Yeshiva and Mesivta Torah Temimah in May after Framowitz filed a $10 million civil suit against the school, was charged last week with sexually abusing a 6-year-old child and an adult man in 2003.

At the same time, the child's parents hit the yeshiva with a fourth lawsuit alleging that it covered up abuses by Rabbi Kolko.

The rabbi now faces four counts of sex abuse and one count of endangering a minor. He was released on Friday on $10,000 bail and the case went before a grand jury this week.

It is the first time law enforcement authorities have been involved in the case of Rabbi Kolko, because previous accusations regarded incidents that took place beyond the statute of limitations.

The rabbi's lawyer, Scott B. Tulman, did not immediately return calls to his office.

As prosecutors warned there could be other criminal charges, Jeffrey Herman — the Florida-based lawyer representing all four plaintiffs against the yeshiva — was in New York this week seeking more information from potential witnesses or plaintiffs.

"I have heard from many other people about this," Herman said.

The yeshiva now faces a total of $40 million in claims. Each of the suits alleges that the yeshiva covered up complaints about Rabbi Kolko, intimidated his accusers and allowed him to continue molesting children.

Marcy Hamilton, a lawyer who has represented a wide range of plaintiffs alleging clergy abuse, said the criminal proceedings will increase the burden on the yeshiva in fighting the civil suits.

"It's going to be a very hard battle," said Hamilton, a professor at Cardozo Law School. "If a religious organization wants to avoid having secrets aired in public they are very motivated toward settlement. The problem here is, since they have criminal charges involved, that tells you the statute of limitations, usually the bar in these cases, may not be a problem in [the civil] case. If that's so, they face very serious liability."

After reviewing the latest complaint, the yeshiva's lawyer, Avraham Moskowitz, said on Thursday that it "emphatically" denies the allegations.

"The yeshiva did nothing wrong and the yeshiva is confident that when the case is over it will be vindicated," said Moskowitz.

In a statement to the press, the yeshiva's executive director, Rabbi Yaakov Applegrad, said "at no time did the yeshiva have any knowledge of anything alleged against Rabbi Kolko, nor did any parent ever come to raise a complaint."

But Framowitz — who with another defendant, Israel Tsatskis, has taken the rare step of speaking out publicly with his allegations and identifying himself — said on Monday "the senior staff of the yeshiva for three and a half decades has known about it and basically covered it up. Anyone who tried bringing it up to the management was rebuffed or ostracized all these years. Someone has to pay the price for that."

In an interview with The Jewish Week in August, Tsatskis chronicled how Rabbi Kolko had lured him over the course of a year, first letting him monitor the sixth-grade class he was in and having him do small errands for the rabbi. "I thought I was special because he was taking an interest in me," Tsatskis said in the interview.

Then, Tsatskis alleged, that favoritism crossed the line and became abusive. Tsatskis said the molestation, which included fondling and groping of his genitals, continued until he completed the eighth grade and graduated middle school.

"I hate that he took away my innocence. I blame so much on him," Tsatskis, a 31-year-old former U.S. Army soldier living in South Carolina, said in the August interview.

Framowitz made similar charges, first reported in a detailed New York magazine story.

A phone number listed for the school appeared not to be working Tuesday.

Framowitz said he hoped the criminal charges would protect other children from harm.

"The only treatment for pedophiles is to keep them away from children," he said. "There must be dozens or hundreds of other boys out there who have been molested by him over the years."

Herman said the criminal charges against Rabbi Kolko would not deter the civil cases. "This is about taking back power in their lives," said the lawyer, adding that his clients greeted the news of the rabbi's arrest with "mixed emotions."

"On one hand," Herman continued, "there is a sense of relief, but it is also a very sad day for many of these victims who tried so hard and hoped they could have stopped it years ago but were unsuccessful."

The case is being closely watched by critics of Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes.

Two lawyers who monitor Orthodox sex abuse allegations, (Names Removed), recently wrote to Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, the state's governor-elect, asking him to appoint a special prosecutor in the case of Rabbi Avrohom Mondrowitz, a rabbi accused of sexual abuse in 1985 who has taken refuge in Israel.

Hynes has argued that case law prohibits him from seeking Rabbi Mondrowitz's extradition, a position disputed by many lawyers.

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REINING IN ABUSE

Clergy sexual misconduct: What´s being done to squelch it?

By Eugene L. Meyer and Richard Greenberg

JTA - January 10, 2006

Rabbi David Kaye resigned from Panim: The Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values, after being ensnared in a nationally televised pedophile sting operation. Kaye was sentenced Dec. 1 to 6 1/2 years in prison for trying to solicit sex from someone posing on the Internet as a 13-year-old boy.

NEW YORK (JTA) — The rabbi in a mid-sized Pennsylvania city was eager to share his congregation´s wrenching experience — but no names, please.

It´s been nearly five years since the synagogue´s cantor pleaded guilty to sexually molesting two girls he was preparing for their bat mitzvahs. He was sentenced to 15 to 30 months in prison and is now on Pennsylvania´s sexual offender list.

Still, the rabbi wanted the name of his synagogue and of the abuser, whose crimes are a matter of public record, kept confidential.

"We are mindful of not causing additional trauma to those who suffered here," he wrote in an e-mail.

But the rabbi wanted it known that measures have been instituted to guard against a repeat occurrence. For example, the synagogue now requires that another adult be present during private religious instruction.

In that respect, this synagogue typifies many Jewish institutions, which over the past several years have adopted new policies — or beefed up existing ones — aimed at cracking down on rogue rabbis and others in positions of trust who sexually exploit congregants, students or others.

The issue of clergy sexual abuse has gained increased attention in the 10 years since it was first investigated by JTA.

That earlier investigation, which focused primarily on rabbis who sexually coerce adult congregants, indicated that the problem was more widespread than had been assumed — and that the Jewish establishment was beginning to grapple with it, but not always effectively.

For example, formal denominational policies governing rabbinic conduct were sometimes slow to develop. Although behavioral guidelines are now the norm, some other systemic problems uncovered in that earlier JTA series still persist.

Since that original investigation was published, the Catholic Church has been rocked by a massive pedophilia scandal, while the Jewish community has been buffeted by high-profile cases of sexual impropriety involving rabbis and other authority figures.

The list of offenders includes Orthodox youth leader Rabbi Baruch Lanner, a former regional director of the National Conference of Synagogue Youth, who is now serving a seven-year prison sentence for abusing teenage girls while he was principal of a New Jersey yeshiva. The scandal set off a storm in the Orthodox world stemming from allegations that rabbinic leaders and others had long been negligent in supervising Lanner.

More recently, David Kaye, a prominent 56-year-old Conservative rabbi from Maryland, was ensnared in a nationally televised pedophile sting operation. Kaye, the former vice president for programs of Panim: The Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values, was sentenced Dec. 1 to 6 1/2 years in prison for trying to solicit sex last year from someone posing on the Internet as a 13-year-old boy, a case that was featured on the network television show "Dateline NBC."

Virtually all denominations, except segments of fervent Orthodoxy, now have formal codes on the books that outline unacceptable clergy behavior and mandate precisely how complaints of sexual impropriety are to be investigated and adjudicated by in-house ethics panels.

In a three-month-long investigation, JTA examined those policies with the help of mental health providers, victims´ advocates, rabbis and others whose assessments reflected a mix of encouragement and skepticism. Among the findings of this five-part series:

· The anti-abuse guidelines represent a well-intentioned yet sporadically flawed attempt to address a problem that had once been neglected entirely. One evaluator gave the policies a C-plus grade, another a C-minus.

· The system, according to critics, suffers from an institutional fear of lawsuits and excessive secrecy — both byproducts of an ethical quandary faced by decision-makers. They must balance an individual´s right to privacy against the obligation to protect the public from a potential sexual predator.

· A symbol of that ethical push-pull is the Awareness Center, a private, 5-year-old Baltimore-based Jewish organization that is devoted to protecting the public from abusers. The center has been both criticized and praised for its policy of identifying rabbis and other sexual predators on its Web site, whether or not they have been tried in court.

· Perhaps the most serious impediment to controlling clergy abuse is what Chicago psychologist and psychoanalyst Vivian Skolnick calls "the plague of silence" — the continuing reluctance of victims to report transgressions. "People are afraid of being ostracized if they come forward," said David Framowitz, 49, who has alleged in a recently filed federal lawsuit that he was abused decades ago by a Brooklyn rabbi.

Like most of the observers contributing to the JTA analysis, anti-abuse activist and author Drorah Setel, a rabbi at a Reform congregation in Niagara Falls, N.Y., lauded the denominational rule-makers for taking steps to undo decades of inaction and denial—but she faulted their specific policies nonetheless.

"They are really well-intentioned, but they just don´t understand the process and the issues involved in sex abuse cases," said Setel, who has written extensively on the topic of clergy sexual misconduct.

The notion of image-conscious, liability-minded and often male-dominated rabbinic ethics boards policing their own members, she added, is like "the fox guarding the henhouse."

Secrecy vs. privacy

Although Judaism´s get-tough policies may have their flaws, conclusive proof of their effectiveness — or ineffectiveness — is elusive. One reason is that the pool of sex abuse complaints that have been processed by ethics panels over the past several years is minuscule.

It is an open question, however, whether the low volume of cases indicates that the problem of sexual misdeeds among rabbis and other Jewish clergy is minimal, as some claim, or is simply underreported, as Skolnick and several others contend.

In addition, the administrative proceedings aimed at meting out justice are typically cloaked in what critics call excessive secrecy and advocates of the system maintain is an environment of prudent and compassionate privacy. The denominational hearings are generally closed to the public, and in some cases, public access to the results of those hearings is severely limited.

Proponents of this approach say it is warranted to avoid unnecessarily tainting the reputation of the accused while sparing the accuser additional shame and embarrassment.

"It´s not easy for someone to institute an ethics complaint; it´s frightening," said Rabbi Rosalind Gold, chair of the ethics committee of the Reform movement´s Central Conference of American Rabbis. "There are repercussions in the community, and people are not stupid about that."

Victims are typically traumatized by the fear of being ostracized if they publicly challenge a respected, and often charismatic, communal authority figure such as a rabbi, according to Skolnick and others.

That fear is not always illusory. As this JTA investigation demonstrates, victims are indeed sometimes shunned and even harassed by fellow congregants. Consequently, other victims fail to report transgressions.

Despite encouraging inroads in the area of reporting sexual abuse, the reticence of victims to come forward continues to be a major problem across all denominations. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that under-reporting may be more prevalent in the fervently Orthodox community—the type of neighborhood where denial runs rampant regarding clergy sexual misconduct, according to Framowitz.

"Growing up in that frum world, it was thought that things like this couldn´t be; it was too much of a black mark on the community," explained Framowitz, who was raised in part in the Flatbush and Borough Park neighborhoods of Brooklyn, which are described in his lawsuit as "tight-knit Orthodox Jewish" communities.

Framowitz, who now lives in Israel, told JTA that even his parents did not initially believe that he had been repeatedly sexually abused. "For several years," he said, "nobody protected me."

When asked by JTA about that episode, Framowitz´s mother, Naomi Framowitz, said: "I was too naive to understand that such a thing could happen. I lived in my own little world. At that time, it wasn´t spoken about like it is today."

The denominational policies examined by JTA, which were developed by both the congregational and rabbinic wings of the major religious movements, have several similarities. For example, they address a vast range of prohibited deeds, from criminal acts such as rape and child molestation to sexually charged conduct that is exploitive but not necessarily criminal. That includes sexual harassment, adultery and other forms of "seductive" or coercive behavior that is grouped under the broad heading of "boundary violations."

In many instances, boundary violations are an outgrowth of pastoral counseling that rabbis and other clergymen are often called on to provide for congregants who, for example, are grieving, undergoing religious conversion or experiencing personal problems, such as marital crises. Explicitly banning even sexually suggestive behavior, most of the denominational guidelines recognize that the inherent power imbalance between clergyman and congregant makes otherwise consensual sexual contact unacceptable.

The codes of professional conduct promulgated by both the Conservative and Reconstructionist movements go as far as to warn of possible pitfalls that may arise when an unmarried rabbi dates a congregant.

Some regulations aim to foster gender balance among those who investigate or rule on sex abuse cases — an important consideration in these matters, according to several sources. Other provisions are geared to raising the level of expertise and independence among denominational investigators and adjudicators.

For example, the Rabbinical Council of America, a primarily modern Orthodox organization, specifies that whoever initially assesses complaints not be a member of the RCA, that the organization´s fact-finding team include one mental health professional and that all members of that team "have appropriate training in the area of sexual abuse."

The CCAR guidelines, meanwhile, require that its three-member fact-gathering team include a lay person in addition to two rabbis.

Limiting mobility

Another key provision of the denominational codes focuses on an issue that gained prominence during the child-molestation scandal in the Catholic Church. That is, the problem of sexual predators who escape apprehension by relocating to another institution or community where they repeat their conduct.

In the case of the church, pedophile priests were aided by superiors who routinely shuttled them from one parish to another where they continually had access to children.

"This is an area of great concern in the Jewish community as well," said Alison Iser, director of The Jewish Program at the FaithTrust Institute, a Seattle-based nonprofit devoted to combating sexual and domestic violence. "The Jewish community has viewed with disdain that sort of behavior elsewhere, and as a result, has felt a sort of smugness that it was not happening here."

Whether segments of the Jewish community do in fact have a "Catholic-priest problem" is debatable. And yet Yosef Blau, a modern Orthodox rabbi, focused on a similar concern in the July 2003 issue of Nefesh News, the journal of the International Network of Orthodox Mental Health Professionals.

"Even when the pattern of abuse is clear," Blau wrote, referring to the situation in the Orthodox community, "the question remains how to effectively deal with the abuser in a way that at least limits his ability to move elsewhere and continue to abuse new people."

If progress has been made on that front, it is in part because of denominational regulations that govern how much background information about a clergyman is to be divulged to interested parties, including prospective employers. The guidelines generally place a premium on confidentiality, but they vary in terms of how much discretion movement officials have to release personnel information. For example:

· Declaring that "confidentiality is crucial," the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association guidelines — which predate Blau´s article by nearly four years and are now being revised — say the chair of the association´s Ethics Committee may only disclose that a member is under investigation, the investigation "has been resolved but is confidential," or that the member has been suspended or expelled. "No other details are to be revealed." Rabbi Richard Hirsh, executive director of the association, elaborated: "In the abstract, the default position would be that the more serious the violation, the more imperative it is to disclose as much information as possible."

· News of a rabbi´s expulsion from the RCA, the modern Orthodox organization, must be disseminated throughout the RCA, and the rabbi´s current employer must also be notified. Beyond that, though, RCA officials shall determine "who else, if anyone," is to be informed that such an action took place. The RCA´s executive vice president, Rabbi Basil Herring, said that policy enables officials to consider relevant factors such as the seriousness of the offense as well as possible complications posed by pending lawsuits.

· The CCAR, the Reform rabbinic arm, mandates that a prospective employer be provided with a fairly detailed report of disciplinary action taken against a CCAR member. But "after an extended period of time," a single non-criminal infraction doesn´t have to be reported at all. Attorney Anne Underwood, who helped write the CCAR code, noted that before the decision is made to withhold information, it must first be reviewed by several senior CCAR officials in conjunction with the organization´s legal counsel. "I don´t like secrecy," Underwood added, "but there is a difference between secrecy and privacy, and this provision honors that."

Not everyone views that distinction in precisely the same way. As a result, the proper role of transparency in the adjudicative process is a controversial topic, highlighting the tension between maintaining the public´s right to know and enabling an individual to keep his or her reputation intact — especially in the absence of criminal charges or civil allegations.

"If you act on a false accusation, you´re killing a guy and his family; the responsibility is awesome," said Rabbi Abraham Twerski, medical director emeritus of the Gateway Rehabilitation Center in Pittsburgh. "Plus, you can be sued for defamation of character. And boy does that ever hamper the system."

Concern over litigation "causes people to get very frightened," added David Pelcovitz, a suburban New York psychologist who has treated many victims of sexual abuse. "It certainly tests the limits of their idealism."

Some victims´ advocates are transparency absolutists, insisting on full disclosure of virtually all details of sex-abuse cases involving religious authority figures that have been ruled on by denominational ethics panels. They feel that such information should be released not only to prospective employers but to the public at large to protect the maximum number of people.

"There has been so much secrecy for so long that victims are rightfully distrustful," said rabbinic activist Setel of Niagara Falls. "They have a desire to overcompensate and I can totally understand that."

Responding to those who advocate maximum transparency, Rabbi Joel Meyers, executive vice president of the Conservative movement´s Rabbinical Assembly, said: "They´re not crazy and they´re not wrong. It´s a dilemma we struggle with. The question is how high up do you put that billboard?"

The underlying issue, added Meyers, who said the R.A. has not been influenced by fear of lawsuits, is "what do you do in these cases to restore equilibrium between the rabbi, the victim and the community? That is really the Jewish challenge."

Due in part to concerns over civil liability, the RCA generally limits the public release of details regarding sex abuse cases, even those that have resulted in a rabbi´s expulsion from the organization, said Herring.

"The threat of liability hangs over you," he added. "The chill factor is significant."

The RCA guidelines, however, do have an emergency clause that recommends informing a wide range of individuals, including neighbors and civil authorities, if a rabbi might pose an immediate danger to "alleged or potential victims."

Sources within the other movements said that regardless of official policy, an expansive disclosure stance would likely apply in similar circumstances.

The ethics panel of the Reform movement´s CCAR does not ordinarily publicize its findings, even in expulsion cases, according to Gold of the CCAR ethics committee.

"I don´t know for sure why," she said. "I´m not sure that question has ever been discussed as that question. It´s not a desire to keep things secret. It might be an interesting thing to discuss."

Commenting on the transparency issue, Minneapolis psychologist Gary Schoener, whose office has consulted on hundreds of clergy sex abuse cases, both Jewish and non-Jewish, said there is such a thing as "hurtful honesty" that can needlessly trash the perpetrator — who might be a good risk for recovery — while inadvertently exposing the identity of the victim. Otherwise, Schoener added, full disclosure is always the best policy when responding to inquiries from would-be employers.

Due in part to extensive First Amendment protections enjoyed by religious organizations, the keepers of clergy personnel records have "lots of leeway" in terms of what information they can release without being successfully sued, Schoener said.

Simple morality and common sense are usually effective decision-making guides in these situations, he said.

"Let´s say you´re hiring a rabbi," Schoener explained, "and he had done something wrong, and somebody later finds out about his history. How would the congregation feel if he goes out and does it again?

"The issue here is knowing the truth. It does set everyone free. The prospective employer should know both the good and the bad," he said. "There should be an accurate description of the full person, including his recovery plan and how it is being monitored.

"The idea is to know exactly what kind of situation we´re dealing with."

_________________________________________________________________________________

Correction: Marci Hamilton on JTA clergy abuse series

January 11, 2006

From: Marci Hamilton, Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University,

To: Richard Greenberg, Senior Editor - JTA

Dear Richard --

I wanted to applaud your excellent series on clergy abuse in the Jewish community. It truly is a non-denominational problem. We need this kind of in-depth reporting within every denomination.

I have one concern about a statement in the first instalment, where you say that the First Amendment provides such extensive protections that it can get in the way of exposing clergy abuse, etc. That is actually not accurate. The First Amendment has proved to be a low barrier in clergy abuse cases. I am the First Amendment specialist for the clergy abuse victims in California and elsewhere, including the Spokane and Portland diocese bankruptcies, and courts have consistently rejected the Catholic Church's attempts to use the First Amendment as a shield to liability, disclosure, etc. I am worried to see the statement, though it is just a small portion of an outstanding series, because it gives comfort to those within the community who continue to believe that they have a constitutional (justified) right and moral obligation to keep clergy abuse secret. The secrecy, of course, is what perpetuates the problem and escalates the number of victims.

In any event, congratulations on an important contribution. I look forward to further reporting on such an important issue.

Best regards, Marci Hamilton

Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law

Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law

Yeshiva University

_________________________________________________________________________________

So Many Rules, So Little Protection, Sex and Suppression Among Ultra Orthodox

By Hella Winston

Lilith / Winter 2006–07

Download PDF for all the graphics http://www.lilith.org/pdfs/LilithWinter2006_Hella1.pdf

The first time 12-year-old David Framowitz had his genitals fondled by a respected teacher from his yeshiva, he panicked, desperate to flee the parked car in which the man had given him a ride to school. Later, when he told his parents about what had happened, they dismissed his story, unable to fathom that a rabbi could be capable of such behavior. Not wanting "to cause trouble," Framowitz continued to suffer the abuse in silence, until he changed schools two years later. Now 48 and the plaintiff in a civil suit against this rabbi, and the school and camp that employed him, Framowitz has come forward to tell his story. Not surprisingly, reactions to it in the ultra Orthodox world have hardly been encouraging for other victims.

Last May, New York magazine ran an article about the Framowitz allegations, and while many members of the ultra-Orthodox community expressed their outrage in private conversations, or anonymously on Internet blogs, the communal leadership remained silent. The few rabbis and other leaders who acknowledged the report expressed anger not about the alleged abuse and cover-up, but at those who brought the crimes to light.

That bombshell article (disclosure: I was quoted in it) suggested several reasons why confronting sexual abuse is a particular challenge for ultra-Orthodox Jews: the social stigma associated with being the victim of abuse; the agesold Jewish prohibition against mesira, or "informing" to the secular authorities; and the religious proscriptions against lashon hara (gossip) and chilul Hashem ("desecrating God's name," which in this context means giving the community a "bad name"). These impediments silence victims and protect perpetrators. Reporter Robert Kolker also speculated that the characteristically restrictive ultra-Orthodox approach to sexuality may foster such abuse through its rigidly enforced sex segregation, strict laws governing physical contact between the sexes (including married couples), and taboo against talking openly ("immodestly") or educating young people about sexuality.

The conjectures in that article proved deeply offensive to many in the frum (religious) world. Orthodox advocate Marvin Schick, in his regular advertisement which runs as a paid column in New York's Jewish Week newspaper, accused Kolker of "group libel." In an op-ed article in the same newspaper, Avi Shafran, spokesman for the influential ultra- Orthodox umbrella organization Agudath Israel, offered a counter-argument:

A Torah-observant life does not lead to aberrant behavior; it helps prevent it....That fundamental Jewish truth that human inclinations are harnessed and controlled by Torahlife and Torah-study is self-evident to anyone truly familiar with the Orthodox community. The vast majority of

its members are caring and responsible people who lead exemplary lives, free in large measure from societal ills like rape, AIDS, prostitution and marital infidelity that affect their less "repressed" neighbors.... To imagine that what ha defined traditional Jewish life for millennia is somehow a risk factor for abuse is to turn all logic and experience on their heads. The true risk factors, as mental health professionals attest, are things like absent parents, alcohol and drug abuse, lack of support systems and the touting of a Woody Allenesque "the heart wants what it wants" mindset, all considerably underrepresented in the Orthodox community. If any environment can reasonably be imagined to foster the bane of child abuse, it is the charged atmosphere of MTV, R-rated movies, contemporary advertising and uncontrolled Internet usage, not the universe of Jewish values.

So Little & Suppression Orthodox Jews

There is no doubt that the vast majority of Orthodox Jews are caring and responsible individuals, and that Judaism stresses ethical conduct. Further, because the reasons for pedophilia are not completely understood, to assert a causal relationship between this disorder and the strict regulation of sexuality is problematic, just as inaccurate as blaming pedophilia on MTV or Woody Allen. However, many interviews I have conducted over three years with people intimately familiar with ultra-Orthodox life— including therapists, social workers, physicians, educators and community members themselves—suggest that some aspects of today's stringent ultra-Orthodox approach to sexuality, intended to promote marriage, procreation and a strong family life, can also (unintentionally) create conditions conducive to sexual abuse.

The ultra-Orthodox world consists of both Hasidic and non-Hasidic Jews. While there are important differences between these groups, and within the myriad communities that comprise them, they share a punctilious observance and interpretation of Jewish law, and strict boundaries between themselves and what they see as a corrupt—and corrupting—"secular" society. Though the Hasidim tend to promote an even greater separation from the surrounding culture than their non-Hasidic counterparts, both groups generally prohibit watching television, movies or sports; reading secular books, magazines or newspapers; using the Internet (except for business purposes); socializing with outsiders; and getting a secular education. These constraints are intended to protect religious integrity and help ensure the perpetuation of a way of life by staving off assimilation.

These communities—concentrated primarily in parts of New York and New Jersey—also enforce rigid gender roles, derived from a belief in the essential difference between men and women. Rules about "modesty" in dress and behavior also justify sex segregation in almost every area of social life, including education, employment and family relations. Women generally have primary responsibility for the "private" realm of home and family, and some public charity efforts, while men—who, unlike women, are obligated to engage in religious learning—occupy public positions of leadership and power in the community.

A fierce commitment to sex segregation has emerged in the "rules" issued recently by the leadership of the Hasidic enclave of New Square, in New York's Rockland County, purportedly to ensure the "modesty, holiness and pureness" of this "holy shtetl." In this community of approximately 7000 people, about 30 miles north of Manhattan, Yiddish signs instruct women and men to use opposite sides of the street, to prevent them from walking or talking together in public. In addition, women in New Square are urged never to sit in the front seat of a car (as passengers only; women there and in several other Hasidic communities are not allowed to drive); not to congregate in middle of the street or talk loudly in public, especially at times when boys and men come home at the end of the day; not to sit or stand near the entrances of the school or their own housing complexes, since that might force men to pass by them too closely. The rules also prohibit girls from riding bikes or "dancing" on a trampoline, unless it is surrounded by an actual mechitza (a wall separating women from men in synagogue and mixed social events). Other regulations warn against women wearing transparent hosiery, dying their eyelashes and sporting long wigs and housecoats outside the home.

Most of these regulations deal with control of women's bodies and their mobility, but they also imply that "immodest" women have the power to defile the entire community. In fact, ultra-Orthodox ideology places most of the burden for thwarting male sexual desire on women, who are to blame if male desire is incited.

In the upstate New York Satmar Hasidic community of Kiryas Joel, several women told me that they had received letters and visits from members of self-appointed community watchdog groups (meshmeris hatznius—"guardians of modesty") because they were seen to be violating communal standards. One woman was targeted for wearing a skirt that was "a few inches above regulation" (about three inches above the ankle is the custom), while another was approached because she and her husband often invited divorced men to her home for Shabbos, something the watchdogs apparently considered inappropriate mixing of the sexes; eventually both of these women moved with their families out of the community. This past August in Kiryas Joel, a flyer was posted publicly referring to one married woman by name and labeling her a "stinking carcass" and a "sinner" who must "abscond from" this "holy shtetl." No resident I spoke to could confirm this woman's sin, other than to mention that she dressed attractively and that she and her husband often invited other young couples to their home to socialize.

Certainly New Square and Kiryas Joel are among the most extreme ultra Orthodox communities; in more "modern" (and not exclusively Hasidic) neighborhoods, many ultra-Orthodox women do drive, and there are no directives ordering women and men to walk on different sides of the street. Nonetheless, throughout the ultra-Orthodox world schools are sex-segregated, and social contact with nonfamily members of the opposite sex, let alone casual dating, are generally prohibited. In this environment, all-male yeshivas can become breeding grounds for behavior that borders on—and sometimes crosses over into—sexual abuse.

In an email to me, one Hasidic man I know personally explained how this can happen:

The atmosphere of sexual repression in yeshivas (at least the kind of yeshivas I'm directly familiar with) contributes to many sexual perversions in people not otherwise inclined to behave that way. I'm not only talking about the rampant gay sexual activity ("rampant" as in relative to what I would

expect; I don't know if it's rampant relative to a similar secular environment), but also pressuring younger boys into acquiescing to certain acts by the older boys, offering payments— or certain electronic goods in lieu of payments—for outright molestation, and sometimes even rape. The vicious cycle is sometimes continued by newlywed young men coming back for their favorite "pets" even after they have a chance for something different (either because they are gay, or because they feel more of an emotional connection to their friends than they do to their wives). Even without the above, the outsized emphasis put—both explicitly and implicitly—on the sin of masturbation, combined with the extreme sexual repression, leaves many detrimental affects [sic] on most going through the system. Now combine all of the above with the fact that many people in positions of authority over young boys and teenagers are young men not yet mature enough to have acquired a healthy attitude toward sex after the perverse environment in yeshiva.

While this man stressed that the abusive behavior he described is by no means a universal feature of yeshiva life, his overall assessment of the environment, and its potential impact on students, was echoed by other people I have spoken to at length. A married Hasidic woman with whom I communicated online wrote "Everyone knows frum boys fuck around with each other in yeshiva, mikvah (the ritual bath). Because they are told DON'T EVER look at a girl...Blah Blah Blah.... They get married but still think of gay sex once in a while"—even though male homosexual sex is forbidden by the Torah. These observations were confirmed by a sex therapist working with ultra-Orthodox clients, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity because of her sensitive therapeutic role. She likened the situation in all-male yeshivas to that of prisons, or the military. "It's the same thing. People are sexual and it gets acted out." In fact, several men told me that sexually abusive teachers would often target boys they knew were already "sinning" by experimenting sexually with their peers, as a way to ensure their silence about the teacher's abusive behavior. Further, my own research revealed that many Hasidic boys were groped or fondled in the ritual bath (mikvah), something that has been the subject of recent discussion on blogs like failedmessiah.typepad.com and jewishsurvivors.blogspot.com.

Some women also reported same-sex activity in all-female seminaries; notably, the women tended not to experience these relationships as hierarchical or abusive, but more playful or even loving. This may have to do with the fact that there is no explicit Jewish religious prohibition against female homosexual acts, and thus perhaps less guilt, shame and coercion surrounding such encounters. The sex therapist noted that the prohibition against male masturbation ("spilling seed") can exacerbate problems for boys—at least those who take it seriously. Without any outlet for their normal sexual urges—one man told me that he and his classmates were instructed not to touch their penises even while urinating, lest they accidentally get aroused—particularly at a time when those urges are strongest, boys may act out sexually in ways they otherwise would not if other options were not forbidden.

Young people growing up in ultra-Orthodox communities generally receive no formal education about sex. All of the Hasidic men I spoke with told me that in their schools, boys skip the sections of the Talmud that deal with sexual

matters. While their non-Hasidic ultra-Orthodox counterparts apparently do study this material, they do so in a very technical manner, focusing, for example, on laws relating to sexual relations in marriage, or on menstruation.

WHY THE SILENCE? FEAR OF BRINGING SHAME ON THE FAMILY KEEPS PEOPLE FROM REPORTING ABUSE AND PROSECUTING ABUSERS.

Sanctioned sex education generally occurs only in the weeks before one's wedding, typically an arranged marriage. One man summarized for me the session with his "sex rabbi" this way: "He told me to do a little kissy, kissy, touch her here and there, and then put it in." A Hasidic woman described being on the receiving end of such advice: "My husband had no idea what he was doing," she told me. "It hurt and was humiliating."

People in the secular world are hardly immune to such experiences. However, a taboo against talking about sexuality can do more than predict awkward wedding nights; it can also foster a profound sense of shame around sexuality, and about the body and its functions. Many Hasidim told me that they had never even learned the words for genitals, but were taught to use euphemisms instead; for men, for example, "the organ of the bris." With no vocabulary—let alone permission—to discuss matters of a sexual nature openly, people who have been sexually abused often have trouble communicating, or even understanding, what has happened to them.

A social worked illustrated this quite strikingly when she described to me an interview she conducted with an 18-year old Hasidic victim who had been molested: lacking the words for parts of his own body, the young man had to use gestures to indicate what happened to him. Even for people who are able to speak about such experiences, there is often an inordinate amount of shame involved in the disclosure.

One woman recounted her parents' reaction to her revelation that she had been repeatedly raped by her brother:

[You] know damn well that anything sexual is not discussed in a frum household. My mom and dad, they moved on, dismissed it like it never happened. [My mother] does not know that such actions screw you for life. She is in denial. I don't know if it's only my parents or all frum parents. My father, after he was told, did mention he wants to kill my brother, that's all. I was told [by a non-family member] to buy a book and read it, regarding incest. On my wedding day, my father found it and was so upset that I was reading such a sexual book. Oh, come on, it's ok for your fucking son to fuck me, but it ain't ok to heal through reading such a book.

One highly regarded Manhattan psychiatrist, who treats many ultra-Orthodox patients and who spoke on condition of anonymity in order not to compromise his therapeutic relationships, told me he had noted a good deal of what he called "casual incest"—sexual activity between siblings— among his patients. He attributed this to the fact that boys reaching puberty are denied what would be considered healthy contact with females apart from close relatives and, with masturbation considered sinful, end up acting out sexually with whomever was available. Of course, no one suggests that there are more abusers in the ultra-Orthodox world than in the general population. Research by psychologist Dr. Michelle Friedman, appearing last summer in the annual student journal of Yeshiva Chovevei Torah, Milin Havivin, found that Orthodox girls and teens report rates of sexual abuse similar to that of their secular counterparts. The main difference is that, for a variety of reasons, within the ultra-Orthodox world abuse if it does occur is more likely to go unchecked, allowing abusers to remain in business longer, creating more victims.

Why the silence?

Bringing shame on one's family is a significant obstacle to reporting abuse and prosecuting abusers. Because most marriages are arranged on the basis of individual and familial reputation, public knowledge that a person has been a victim of abuse severely compromises his or her options for making a "good match." The stigma of abuse taints not only the victim but siblings and other relatives as well. As a result, those who have been abused (and their families) have a tremendous incentive to keep the abuse a secret. One woman told me that her father, learning that she had been raped by a respected member of the community, threatened to burn her with a hot pan if she ever told anyone in the community about it; she was 10 years old at the time. Another serious impediment to rooting out abuse is the communal prohibition against mesira, betraying the community to outside authorities. Once punishable by death, mesira is still taken seriously, discouraging most people from reporting abuse to the police. When I asked her whether she had ever considered going to the police, one woman who was molested replied, "I don't think so! It does not work like that in the frum world. You shall not be a moser, which means no telling on others; suffer in silence." This attitude is pervasive, despite a recent ruling by Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, a Jerusalem rabbi considered by the ultra-Orthodox to be one of the most respected interpreters of Jewish law. Elyashiv's ruling held that it is permissible to hand over a child abuser to the American police in cases where "It is clear that [the person] has committed a foul deed, and that this [informing] constitutes a sort of repair of the world." However, even in light of this clear ruling, the fear of being branded an informer remains strong, and is often exploited by those in power as a means of silencing victims, protecting the community's "good name"—and protecting the abuser in the process.

Many parents privately express concern about this issue, and claim they would like their leaders to prevent sexual abuse in institutional settings, and to deal with it effectively when it does occur. Most also say, though, that they themselves are unlikely to speak up about their concerns, let alone "inform" to the police on an abuser. Further, most admit that they would not allow one of their own children to marry a known victim of abuse.

While the outside world responds to such reports with shock, there is no denying the role played by the larger society in enabling this state of affairs. In the name of deeply held American commitments to religious freedom, these communities have been allowed to flourish with little outside oversight.

A combination of ignorance and nostalgia often makes these very stringently observant and closed communities immune to serious scrutiny by fellow citizens—particularly liberal Jews who may idealize or romanticize this way of life, or politicians who appreciate the fact that ultra-Orthodox leaders can and do deliver votes in a bloc.

Unlike their public-school counterparts, administrators in ultra-Orthodox schools and other non-public schools are not required to run background checks on teachers, and because clergy are exempt from being mandated reporters, ultra-Orthodox teachers (most of whom are rabbis, at least in boys' schools) are not legally required to report suspected cases of abuse. And where distortions of Jewish law and custom may be invoked to prevent people from taking legal action, and educational options are limited, there may be little motivation for self-policing, aside from the obvious: the health and welfare of young people. Instead, this past August, a few months after the original magazine article appeared, the teacher accused of sexual molestation was spotted escorting young campers to a water park in Connecticut, and a reliable source told me that he has since been soliciting parents to sign their children up for a similar outing next summer. At Rosh Hashanah, he was also reportedly asked to blow the shofar in his shul, an honor accorded only the most respected members of the community. One can only imagine how his victims must feel about that. Å°

Hella Winston is author of Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels. She received her PhD in sociology.

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www.theawarenesscenter.org Offers comprehensive information and Jewish resources on sexual violence, a speakers' bureau and a certification program for Jewish community leaders. In the two weeks following the New York magazine article, The Awareness Center received over 60 calls from (mostly male) survivors who'd never before told anyone they were abused as children.

www.jsafe.org Run by Rabbi Mark Dratch, JSafe is aimed at addressing the issues of domestic violence and child abuse in the Jewish world through newsletters, conferences and comprehensive training for people working in Jewish organizations.

jewishsurvivors.blogspot.com A blog administered by anonymous Jewish survivors of sexual abuse provides general information on childhood sexual abuse, sexual assault and rabbinic misconduct.

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Inside the eruv: Are some Orthodox discreet or closing their eyes?

By Eugene L. Meyer and Richard Greenberg

JTA - January 10, 2006

http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=17472&intcategoryid=4

NEW YORK (JTA) Within Jewish circles, much of the focus on sexual predators has centered on the Orthodox community, particularly its more fervently religious precincts, where some contend that clergy sex abuse is more hidden and possibly more widespread than elsewhere.

Whether or not those contentions are true, the problem in that community was spotlighted by two recent episodes. They are among several incidents, emanating from across the denominational spectrum, that JTA examined in this six-part investigation of the Jewish community's response to clergy sex abuse.

The first of two episodes that JTA tracked in the fervently Orthodox, or haredi, community involved a fierce debate over remarks by a haredi rabbi who reportedly suggested that his community sweeps the issue "under the carpet." The second involved the arrest of a haredi rabbi and teacher, who was charged with sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of a minor.

On Thanksgiving, at the annual national convention of Agudath Israel of America, a haredi advocacy organization, Rabbi Matisyahu Salomon, a featured speaker, ignited a controversy with his discussion of the haredi response to clergy sex abuse.

Salomon, a dean of Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood, N.J., one of the world's largest yeshivas, said, according to an Agudath Israel spokesman, that haredim are indeed guilty of "sweeping things under the carpet."

What he meant was open to interpretation. Salomon declined comment, but according to the Agudath Israel spokesman, Rabbi Avi Shafran, Salomon meant that rather than ignoring or covering up sexual misconduct, as detractors maintain, haredi officials deal with it discreetly to protect the dignity of the families of perpetrators and victims.

The response to Salomon's remarks was swift and often heated, with several Web site and blog contributors arguing that the rabbi's comments should be taken literally that is, haredi officials often look the other way when clergy sex abuse takes place in their midst.

Shafran, who accused the online detractors of making glib and sweeping generalizations without corroborating evidence, termed the comments "abhorrent."

Other communities were criticized as well on one Web site.

"Denial, secrecy, and sweeping under the carpet are not unique to charedi, Orthodox, or Jewish institutions," wrote Nachum Klafter, a self-described "frum psychiatrist," in a Nov. 26 posting on the Web site haloscan.com. "They are typical reactions of well-intentioned, scandalized human beings to the horrible shock of childhood sexual abuse."

Eleven days after those remarks were posted, a haredi rabbi, Yehuda Kolko, was arrested and charged in connection with the alleged molestation of a 9-year-old boy and a 31-year-old man, both former students of his during different eras at Brooklyn's Yeshiva-Mesivta Torah Temimah. Kolko, 60, had long served the yeshiva as a teacher and an assistant principal.

Kolko, meanwhile, is named in at least four civil suits filed over the past eight months by his alleged victims, including the 9-year-old boy. The most recent litigation, which seeks $10 million in damages from Torah Temimah, was filed in New York state court the day before Kolko was arrested. It alleges not only that Kolko molested the 9-year-old during the 2003-04 school year, but that the school administration covered up the rabbi's pedophilia for 25 years.

The suit charges that Rabbi Lipa Margulies, identified as the leader of Torah Temimah, knew of many "credible allegations of sexual abuse and pedophilia against Kolko," yet continued to employ him as an elementary school teacher "and give him unfettered access to young children."

Avi Moskowitz, the attorney representing Torah Temimah, said: "The yeshiva adamantly denies the allegations in the complaints and is sure that when the cases are over, the yeshiva will be vindicated."

Another one of the lawsuits brought against Torah Temimah was filed in May by David Framowitz, now 49 and living in Israel. In that $10 million federal litigation Framowitz, who was joined by a co-plaintiff also seeking $10 million, alleged that he was victimized by Kolko while he was a seventh- and eighth-grader at Torah Temimah.

Although the lawsuit, which named Kolko as a co-defendant, referred to Framowitz only as "John Doe No. 1," he has since dropped his anonymity and gone public with his story.

"That's the only way that people would believe that there's actually a problem, if they knew that there's a real person out there who was molested," Framowitz told JTA in a recent telephone interview. "There are many other victims out there, and I want people to know that this really exists."

Framowitz grew up in part in fervently Orthodox communities in Brooklyn where rabbinic sex abuse, he said, is rarely reported. And when it is reported, he added, rabbinic courts seldom have the expertise or the inclination to deal with it effectively.

After his own reports of abuse were met with disbelief and inaction, Framowitz said he chose to "deeply bury" his painful memories of the alleged incidents.

"I never really got over it," he said, "but I was able to get on with my life."

An accountant by trade, Framowitz made aliyah several years ago, and now lives in the West Bank community of Karnei Shomron with his wife and four adult children. They have one grandson.

Framowitz said he decided to speak out publicly about his experience after he learned through the Internet in the fall of 2005 that Kolko was still teaching young boys. He said he is relieved that Kolko has been arrested and charged, although in connection with reported incidents unrelated to his alleged victimization.

"It's a relief knowing that the story is finally out there," Framowitz said, "and that maybe Kolko will be prevented from being around other kids."

JTA tried unsuccessfully to reach Kolko, who along with Framowitz was the focus of a May 15 New York magazine story that said "rabbi-on-child molestation," according to several sources, "is a widespread problem in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community and one that has been long covered up."

Attorney Jeffrey Herman, who is representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuits stemming from Kolko's alleged misconduct, was quoted in the New York magazine piece saying that the clergy abuse situation in the haredi community "reminds me of where the Catholic church was 15 or 20 years ago. What I see are some members of the community turning a blind eye to what's going on in their backyards."

Sifting the evidence

Hard numbers are not available to determine if clergy sex abuse is more widespread in haredi communities than in other Jewish locales. However, several insiders said there is anecdotal evidence that abuse often goes unreported there. The reason, they said, is that many individuals in those communities, which are noted for their insularity, resistance to modernity and reverence for religious leaders, are loath to confront rabbis for fear of being publicly shunned.

Shafran said he doubts that clergy sex abuse is more prevalent in the fervently Orthodox world than elsewhere. Asked whether victims there are afraid to report abuse, he said, "I hope it's not true. But it's easy to see how someone would be reluctant to publicly report such an issue."

He said modesty, which is prized by many haredim, might preclude the open discussion of matters "that are part of the average radio talk show agenda."

Others believe that underreporting of clergy sexual misconduct may in fact facilitate abuse.

"Offenders have learned to hide behind" the reluctance of victims to speak out, said Brian Leggiere, an Orthodox Jew and a psychiatrist in Manhattan who has treated both perpetrators and victims of sexual abuse. He added, though, "The situation is changing for the better, but very slowly. Each community is different, so it's hard to generalize."

In some neighborhoods, Leggiere pointed out, public safety is beginning to gain traction as an ideal worth defending, as is the notion that professional therapy or other forms of treatment for sex abuse victims, as well as for perpetrators, should not be stigmatized.

Judging the judges

Among many Orthodox Jews, the preferred forum for adjudicating communal disputes is a beit din, a rabbinic court. But critics say such panels often try to dissuade sex abuse victims from pursuing their complaints, a charge vigorously denied by Shafran. But, he added, "In cases where there is some degree of doubt, the beit din has a responsibility to counsel against going to authorities until there is proven criminal activity."

Mark Dratch, a modern Orthodox rabbi who chairs the Rabbinical Council of America's Task Force on Rabbinic Improprieties, said that if the beit din "is used to make the community safer, that's appropriate. If that relationship is used to bypass the justice system, I think that's wrong, particularly in cases of suspected criminal activity.

"The problem in the ultra-Orthodox community is people go to the beit din and not to civil authorities. There is a very complicated relationship between rabbis and civil authorities," he said. "It doesn't always work appropriately."

Dratch, who now directs JSafe, a nonprofit organization addressing abuse in the Jewish community, said he has "pleaded with members of Agudah to expose the dangers of clerical and familial abuse. I said if you don't expose, victims have no place to turn."

Agudath Israel has not promulgated anti-abuse policies for its affiliated congregations, Shafran conceded, "nor have there been complaints" of sexual misconduct at Agudath Israel-affiliated congregations. But he added, "I wouldn't rule out that one day there would be such guidelines. The Talmud teaches us that we should stay away from even the appearance of impropriety."

Agudath Israel does have binding behavioral guidelines that apply to its youth groups and its five summer camps, which serve about 2,000 youngsters, according to Shafran.

Yehuda Kolko worked at one of those camps, Camp Agudah in Ferndale, N.Y., decades ago, according to Shafran, apparently long before the behavioral guidelines existed.

The federal lawsuit filed in May states that while Kolko was at Camp Agudah, he repeatedly molested Framowitz, who was a camper there in the summers following his seventh- and eighth-grade years at Torah Temimah.

Framowitz's co-plaintiff "John Doe No. 2," an adult male living in the United States alleged that he also was abused by Kolko, but only at Torah Temimah. The lawsuit contends that the administrations at both the camp and the school knew Kolko was a pedophile and did nothing about it.

Shafran declined comment on the litigation, which is being divided into two complaints, one for each plaintiff, according to attorney Herman. The complaint initiated by Framowitz has been dismissed on the plaintiffs initiative but will be refiled, Framowitz and Herman said.

An attorney representing Kolko in the federal litigation declined comment on behalf of his client.

Elsewhere in Orthodoxy

The modern Orthodox community was deeply scarred by the sex abuse scandal involving Rabbi Baruch Lanner, a former regional director of the National Conference of Synagogue Youth, a branch of the centrist Orthodox Union.

Lanner was sentenced in 2002 to seven years in prison for sexually abusing two female students during the 1990s while he was their principal at a yeshiva high school in New Jersey.

However, a 2000 report by a special O.U. commission found that Lanner had also sexually abused women and teenage girls, and physically abused boys and girls while he was a leader at NCSY. The case attracted widespread attention, in part, because the report said some O.U. and NCSY leaders had failed to take action for several years to halt Lanner's misconduct.

Ultimately, according to organization insiders, O.U. Executive Vice President Rabbi Raphael Butler resigned under pressure in the wake of the scandal.

Both the O.U. and the NCSY have upgraded behavioral guidelines and enhanced anti-abuse training programs, according to officials at both organizations. The NCSY policies, which cover 17 pages and were revised most recently in October, are binding on at least 25,000 individuals, including NCSY professionals, volunteers and program participants. The guidelines spell out prohibited conduct in detail, and include step-by-step instructions for filing an abuse complaint.

Both O.U. and NCSY officials said they are not aware of any complaints of sexual misconduct toward youths since the NCSY guidelines were upgraded a few years ago.

The Chabad-Lubavitch movement has no written conduct guidelines applying specifically to its estimated 4,000 global emissaries, known as shluchim, or its approximately 3,000 multi-use facilities that double as synagogues and are usually referred to as Chabad Houses.

However, many Chabad Houses have adopted behavioral policies originally formulated for the movement's schools, according to movement spokesman Rabbi Zalman Shmotkin.

In addition, according to Shmotkin, shluchim must strictly abide by the Shulchan Aruch, the 16th-century code of Jewish law that prohibits non-married or unrelated adults of the opposite sex from being secluded with each other.

On the school front

Some of the denominational policies examined by JTA are designed to guard against situations that could result in inappropriate contact with minors, regardless of their sex. They mandate, for example, that at least two adults be present when a child is receiving private religious instruction.

A non-seclusion requirement is among many anti-abuse provisions included in mandatory school behavioral policies adopted by Chabad about five years ago. The policies cover approximately 2,000 personnel at some 350 Chabad schools attended by about 24,000 students.

The policies also instruct school officials to consult two recognized rabbinic authorities one Chabad-affiliated and one not regarding the centuries-old Jewish legal injunction known as mesirah, which in some instances prohibits Jews from reporting Jewish perpetrators to non-Jewish authorities.

Mesirah has been blamed for the reticence of some Orthodox sex abuse victims to go public with their complaints. In a spring 2004 article in the anti-abuse publication Working Together, Dratch of JSafe said that in cases of child sex abuse, "the consensus of contemporary Jewish religious authorities is that such reporting is religiously mandatory."

Three years ago, several safeguards were adopted by Torah Umesorah-The National Society for Hebrew Day Schools, a service organization the largest of its kind in the United States that provides religious educational materials for nearly 200,000 Orthodox students spanning that denomination's ideological spectrum.

The Torah Umesorah guidelines, which were presented to school principals, warn teachers and other staffers to refrain from sexually immodest behavior or speech and from inappropriate touching. They also prohibit school personnel from being secluded with students.

But the guidelines are nonbinding because each of the hundreds of schools served by Torah Umesorah are self-governing.

"We're a service agency, not a governing agency," Rabbi Joshua Fishman, the organization's executive vice president, told JTA.

Elliot Pasik, a New York attorney and children's rights advocate, said the way in which the guidelines were distributed calls into question Torah Umesorah's commitment to protecting students from sexually predatory teachers and other staffers.

The guidelines were accompanied by a Sept. 24, 2003, cover letter signed by Fishman that said in part: "This document should be maintained with a sense of confidentiality. It should only be shared with your educational administrative and teaching staff."

Perhaps as a result of that directive, Pasik said few, if any, parents he knows with children attending schools serviced by Torah Umesorah were told about the rules unless they called the Torah Umesorah national office in Manhattan. Pasik's children have attended yeshivas affiliated with Torah Umesorah.

Furthermore, he added, "I have personally spoken with several teachers and they knew nothing about these guidelines."

Asked to respond, Fishman declined comment, except to say, "We believe that molesters should be reported."

Pasik said the situation shows the need for a centralized governing body perhaps a state or federal agency that can hold schools accountable for the safety of students.

"It's hard for people in any organization to govern themselves," he said. "We're not being patrolled or governed by anybody."

Pasik recently lobbied for passage of legislation in New York that authorizes non-public schools to require fingerprinting and FBI background checks for prospective employees. The measure was enacted Aug. 16.

The larger issue of child molestation in the Orthodox community was addressed in a one-page statement accompanying the Torah Umesorah guidelines.

Issued by the organization's rabbinical board, the statement says in part that "a small number of individuals have caused untold pain to many children. In addition to the sins which they have committed, they have created painful memories in the minds of their victims, memories which can have a devastating lifetime impact."

The statement urges "everyone to use every means to stop these violations of children, including, at times, exposing the identities of the abusers and even their incarceration. At times, our primary intent may not be to punish the perpetrators, but rather to help them. Therefore, it is preferable, wherever appropriate, to force them to undergo appropriate professional therapy."

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Rabbi faces more charges of sex abuse

By Thomas Tracy

The Brooklyn Graphic (Courier-Life) - January 11, 2007

http://www.brooklyngraphic.com/site/printerFriendly.cfm?brd=2384&dept_id=552852&newsid=17701988

.

Wagons filled with discontent and outrage are circling Flatbush's Yeshiva Torah Temimah as more and more students, both past and present, allege that the school did nothing to stop wayward sexual abuse by a prominent rabbi, even after they had been repeatedly told about the teacher and the spiritual leader's sinful actions.

Despite the clouds of discontent that hang over the school at 555 Ocean Parkway, officials are tight-lipped about the allegations, the lawsuits as well as the arrest of Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, who was charged last month with abusing a nine-year-old boy from the school.

On January 4, lawyers for Yeshiva Torah Temimah were handed their fourth lawsuit in one year – this one on behalf of an unidentified child and his parents who claim that the school covered up allegations that Kolko sexually abused him during the 2004-2005 school year.

The student and his family are seeking $10 million in reparations for the alleged abuse.

Neither the school nor attorneys representing the school returned calls for comment about the latest lawsuit.

Troubles for Torah Temimah began in May of last year when two former students of the school, who are now well into their 40s and 50s, came forward, claiming that they had been sexually abused by Kolko when they had attended the school.

Both men, who were identified only as John Doe #1 and John Doe #2 in court papers, alleged that they were sexually abused by Kolko, but when they reported the abuse to the school, they alleged that administrators did nothing, claiming, in effect, that the students "were not actually abused."

Their parents were allegedly warned that if they continued with their complaints or had the authorities investigate the complaints, "other children in their families would be expelled from the yeshiva and prevented from attending other yeshivas in the New York area," according to the suit filed by Jeffrey Herman of the Miami-based law firm Herman and Mermelstein.

"[Yeshiva Torah Temimah] received multiple, credible reports that Rabbi Kolko was sexually abusing other young boys who he came into contact with," Herman stated in his suit. "But instead of accepting responsibility or at a minimum conducting a good faith investigation, [administrators] willfully engaged in a campaign of intimidation, concealment and misrepresentations designed to prevent victims from filing civil lawsuits."

Most of the alleged "cover-ups" were conducted by Rabbi Lipa Margulies, the leader of Torah Temimah at the time, who also happened to be a neighbor to the parents of one of the plaintiffs.

The third person to bring a lawsuit against Rabbi Kolko and Torah Temimah did so in August of last year, claiming that he had been sexually abused in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

During an interview with Jewish Week, the plaintiff, identified only as John Doe #3, said that he felt he was special because Rabbi Kolko paid so much attention to him.

Then the abuse started, alleged the plaintiff, a 31-year-old former soldier who now lives in South Carolina.

"I hate that he took away my innocence," the plaintiff told Jewish Week. "I blame so much on him."

Since all of the alleged abuse took place over 20 years ago, Kolko managed to escape any criminal charges from his victim's allegations.

That all changed in December 7, when a nine-year-old boy claimed that the rabbi had sexually abused him.

Kolko, 60, of the 1200 block of East 22nd Street, was charged with four counts of sex abuse and endangering the welfare of a minor.

Upon his arrest, officials at Yeshiva Torah Temimah told reporters that Rabbi Kolko was no longer affiliated with the school.

In previous interviews, school officials claimed that they never looked into any of the allegations against Kolko because they were never given enough evidence to warrant an investigation.

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Arrested, charged, sued for $10 million

By EUGENE L. MEYER AND RICHARD GREENBERG JTA

Long Island Journal - January 12, 2007

http://www.ijn.com/archive/2007%20arch/011207.htm

NEW YORK — Early last December, Rabbi Yehuda Kolko was arrested and charged in connection with the alleged molestation of a 9-year-old boy and a 31-year-old man, both former students of his during different eras at Yeshiva-Mesivta Torah Temimah. Kolko, 60, had long served as a teacher and an assistant principal there.

Kolko is also named in at least four civil suits filed over the past eight months by his alleged victims, including the 9-year-old boy.

The most recent litigation, which seeks $10 million in damages from Torah Temimah, was filed in New York state court the day before Kolko was arrested.

It alleges not only that Kolko molested the 9-year-old during the 2003-04 school year, but that the school administration covered up the rabbi's pedophilia for 25 years.

The suit charges that Rabbi Lipa Margulies, identified as the leader of Torah Temimah, knew of many "credible allegations of sexual abuse and pedophilia against Kolko," yet continued to employ him as an elementary school teacher "and gave him unfettered access to young children."

Avi Moskowitz, the attorney representing Torah Temimah, said: "The yeshiva adamantly denies the allegations in the complaints and is sure that when the cases are over, the yeshiva will be vindicated."

Another one of the lawsuits brought against Torah Temimah was filed in May by David Framowitz, now 49 and living in Israel.

In that $10 million federal litigation Framowitz, who was joined by a co-plaintiff also seeking $10 million, alleged that he was victimized by Kolko while he was a seventh- and eighth-grader at Torah Temimah.

Although the lawsuit, which named Kolko as a co-defendant, referred to Framowitz only as "John Doe No. 1," he has since dropped his anonymity and gone public with his story.

"That's the only way that people would believe that there's actually a problem, if they knew that there's a real person out there who was molested," Framowitz told JTA in a recent telephone interview. "There are many other victims out there, and I want people to know that this really exists."

Framowitz grew up in part in Orthodox communities in Brooklyn where rabbinic sex abuse, he said, is rarely reported. When it is reported, he said, rabbinic courts seldom have the expertise or the inclination to deal with it effectively.

After his own reports of abuse were met with disbelief and inaction, Framowitz said he chose to "deeply bury" his painful memories of the alleged incidents.

"I never really got over it," he said, "but I was able to get on with my life."

An accountant, Framowitz made aliyah several years ago, and now lives in the West Bank community of Karnei Shomron with his wife and four adult children. They have one grandson.

Framowitz said he decided to speak out publicly about his experience after he learned through the Internet in the fall of 2005 that Kolko was still teaching young boys.

He said he is relieved that Kolko has been arrested and charged, although in connection with reported incidents unrelated to his alleged victimization.

"It's a relief knowing that the story is finally out there," Framowitz said, "and that maybe Kolko will be prevented from being around other kids."

JTA tried unsuccessfully to reach Kolko.

Sifting the evidence

Rabbi Avi Shafran, spokesman for Agudath Israel, an Orthodox advocacy organization, said he doubts that clergy sex abuse is more prevalent in the fervently Orthodox world than elsewhere. Asked whether victims there are afraid to report abuse, he said, "I hope it's not true. But it's easy to see how someone would be reluctant to publicly report such an issue."

He said that modesty, which is prized by many haredim, might preclude the open discussion of matters "that are part of the average radio talk show agenda."

Shafran acknowledged that "for a person whose whole life revolves around the community," the ostracism that results from publicly confronting a leader of that community "can be worse than death."

Others believe that underreporting of clergy sexual misconduct may in fact facilitate abuse.

"Offenders have learned to hide behind" the reluctance of victims to speak out, said Brian Leggiere, an Orthodox Jew and a psychiatrist in Manhattan who has treated both perpetrators and victims of sexual abuse.

He added, "The situation is changing for the better, but very slowly. Each community is different, so it's hard to generalize."

In some neighborhoods, Leggiere pointed out, public safety is beginning to gain traction as an ideal worth defending, as is the notion that professional therapy or other forms of treatment for sex abuse victims, as well as for perpetrators, should not be stigmatized.

Judging the judges

A mong many Orthodox Jews, the preferred forum for adjudicating communal disputes is a beit din, a rabbinic court.

Critics say such panels often try to dissuade sex abuse victims from pursuing their complaints, a charge vigorously denied by Shafran. But, he added, "In cases where there is some degree of doubt, the beit din has a responsibility to counsel against going to authorities until there is proven criminal activity."

Mark Dratch, a modern Orthodox rabbi who chairs the Rabbinical Council of America's task force on rabbinic improprieties, said that if the beit din "is used to make the community safer, that's appropriate.

"If that relationship is used to bypass the justice system, I think that's wrong, particularly in cases of suspected criminal activity.

Dratch, who now directs JSafe, a nonprofit organization addressing abuse in the Jewish community, said he has "pleaded with members of Agudah to expose the dangers of clerical and familial abuse. I said, if you don't expose, victims have no place to turn."

Agudath Israel has not promulgated anti-abuse policies for its affiliated congregations, Shafran conceded, "nor have there been complaints" of sexual misconduct at Agudath Israel-affiliated congregations.

But, he added, "I wouldn't rule out that one day there would be such guidelines. The Talmud teaches us that we should stay away from even the appearance of impropriety."

Agudath Israel does have binding behavioral guidelines that apply to its youth groups and its five summer camps, which serve about 2,000 youngsters, according to Shafran.

Yehuda Kolko worked at one of those camps, Camp Agudah in Ferndale, NY, decades ago, according to Shafran, apparently long before the behavioral guidelines existed.

The federal lawsuit filed in May states that while Kolko was at Camp Agudah, he repeatedly molested Framowitz, who was a camper there in the summers following his seventh- and eighth-grade years at Torah Temimah.

Framowitz's co-plaintiff — "John Doe No. 2," an adult male living in the US — alleged that he also was abused by Kolko, but only at Torah Temimah.

The lawsuit contends that the administrations at both the camp and the school knew Kolko was a pedophile and did nothing about it.

Shafran declined comment on the litigation, which is being divided into two complaints, one for each plaintiff, according to attorney Jeffrey Herman.

The complaint initiated by Framowitz has been dismissed on the plaintiffs' initiative but will be refiled, Framowitz and Herman said.

An attorney representing Kolko in the federal litigation declined comment on behalf of his client.

The modern Orthodox community was deeply scarred by the sex abuse scandal involving Rabbi Baruch Lanner, a former regional director of the National Conference of Synagogue Youth, a branch of the Orthodox Union.

Following a series of investigate reports by the Jewish Week of New York, which broke the reportorial taboo on extensive reporting of sexual abuse by rabbis, Lanner was sentenced in 2002 to seven years in prison for sexually abusing two female students during the 1990s while he was their principal at a yeshiva high school in New Jersey.

A 2000 report by a special OU commission found that Lanner had also sexually abused women and teenage girls, and physically abused boys and girls while he was a leader at NCSY.

The case attracted widespread attention, in part, because the report said some OU and NCSY leaders had failed to take action for several years to halt Lanner's misconduct.

Ultimately, according to organization insiders, OU Executive Vice President Rabbi Raphael Butler resigned under pressure in the wake of the scandal.

Both the OU and the NCSY have upgraded behavioral guidelines and enhanced anti-abuse training programs, according to officials at both organizations.

The NCSY policies, which cover 17 pages and were revised most recently in October, are binding on at least 25,000 individuals, including NCSY professionals, volunteers and program participants.

The guidelines spell out prohibited conduct in detail, and include step-by-step instructions for filing an abuse complaint.

Both OU and NCSY officials said they are not aware of any complaints of sexual misconduct toward youths since the NCSY guidelines were upgraded a few years ago.

The Chabad-Lubavitch movement has no written conduct guidelines applying specifically to its estimated 4,000 global emissaries, known as shluchim, or its approximately 3,000 multi-use facilities that double as synagogues and are usually referred to as Chabad Houses.

However, many Chabad Houses have adopted behavioral policies originally formulated for the movement's schools, according to movement spokesman Rabbi Zalman Shmotkin.

In addition, according to Shmotkin, shluchim must strictly abide by the Shulchan Aruch, the 16th-century code of Jewish law that prohibits non-married or unrelated adults of the opposite sex from being secluded with each other.

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Is molestation being swept underneath the Eruv?

Hidden horrors in the haredi community

By Eugene L. Meyer and Richard Greenberg, Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Jewish Journal - January 12, 2007

http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/preview.php?id=17077

Within Jewish circles, much of the focus on sexual predators has centered on the Orthodox community, particularly its more ultra-religious precincts, where some contend that clergy sex abuse is more hidden -- and possibly more widespread -- than elsewhere.

Whether or not those contentions are true, the problem in that community was spotlighted by two recent episodes in the fervently Orthodox, or haredi, community. The first involved a fierce debate over public remarks criticizing his community by a haredi rabbi. The second involved the arrest of a haredi rabbi and teacher, who was charged with sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of a minor.

On Thanksgiving, at the annual national convention of Agudath Israel of America, a haredi advocacy organization, Rabbi Matisyahu Salomon, a featured speaker, ignited a controversy with his discussion of the haredi response to clergy sex abuse.

Salomon, a dean of Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood, N.J., one of the world's largest yeshivas, said, according to an Agudath Israel spokesman, that haredim are indeed guilty of "sweeping things under the carpet." What he meant was open to interpretation.

Salomon declined comment, but according to the Agudath Israel spokesman, Rabbi Avi Shafran, Salomon meant that rather than ignoring or covering up sexual misconduct, as detractors maintain, haredi officials deal with it discreetly to protect the dignity of the families of perpetrators and victims. The response to Salomon's remarks was swift and often heated, with several Web site and blog contributors arguing that the rabbi's comments should be taken literally -- that is, haredi officials often look the other way when clergy sex abuse takes place in their midst.

Shafran, who accused the online detractors of making glib and sweeping generalizations without corroborating evidence, termed the comments "abhorrent."

Other communities were criticized as well on one Web site.

"Denial, secrecy and sweeping under the carpet are not unique to charedi, Orthodox or Jewish institutions," wrote Nachum Klafter, a self-described "frum psychiatrist," in a Nov. 26 posting on the Web site, haloscan.com. "They are typical reactions of well-intentioned, scandalized human beings to the horrible shock of childhood sexual abuse."

Eleven days after those remarks were posted, a haredi rabbi, Yehuda Kolko, was arrested and charged in connection with the alleged molestation of a 9-year-old boy and a 31-year-old man, both former students of his during different eras at Brooklyn's Yeshiva-Mesivta Torah Temimah. Kolko, 60, had long served the yeshiva as a teacher and an assistant principal.

Kolko, meanwhile, is named in at least four civil suits filed over the past eight months by his alleged victims, including the 9-year-old boy. The most recent litigation, which seeks $10 million in damages from Torah Temimah, was filed in New York state court the day before Kolko was arrested. It alleges not only that Kolko molested the 9-year-old during the 2003-04 school year, but that the school administration covered up the rabbi's pedophilia for 25 years.

The suit charges that Rabbi Lipa Margulies, identified as the leader of Torah Temimah, knew of many "credible allegations of sexual abuse and pedophilia against Kolko," yet continued to employ him as an elementary school teacher "and give him unfettered access to young children."

Avi Moskowitz, the attorney representing Torah Temimah, said: "The yeshiva adamantly denies the allegations in the complaints and is sure that when the cases are over, the yeshiva will be vindicated."

Another one of the lawsuits brought against Torah Temimah was filed in May by David Framowitz, now 49 and living in Israel. In that $10 million federal litigation, Framowitz, who was joined by a co-plaintiff also seeking $10 million, alleged that he was victimized by Kolko while he was a seventh- and eighth-grader at Torah Temimah. Although the lawsuit, which named Kolko as a co-defendant, referred to Framowitz only as "John Doe No. 1," he has since dropped his anonymity and gone public with his story.

"That's the only way that people would believe that there's actually a problem, if they knew that there's a real person out there who was molested," Framowitz said in a recent telephone interview. "There are many other victims out there, and I want people to know that this really exists."

Framowitz grew up in part in ultra-Orthodox communities in Brooklyn, where rabbinic sex abuse, he said, is rarely reported. And when it is reported, he added, rabbinic courts seldom have the expertise or the inclination to deal with it effectively.

After his own reports of abuse were met with disbelief and inaction, Framowitz said he chose to "deeply bury" his painful memories of the alleged incidents.

"I never really got over it," he said, "but I was able to get on with my life."

An accountant by trade, Framowitz made aliyah several years ago, and now lives in the West Bank community of Karnei Shomron with his wife and four adult children. They have one grandson.

Framowitz said he decided to speak out publicly about his experience after he learned through the Internet in the fall of 2005 that Kolko was still teaching young boys. He said he is relieved that Kolko has been arrested and charged, although in connection with reported incidents unrelated to his alleged victimization.

"It's a relief knowing that the story is finally out there," Framowitz said, "and that maybe Kolko will be prevented from being around other kids."

JTA tried unsuccessfully to reach Kolko, who along with Framowitz, was the focus of a May 15 New York magazine story that said "rabbi-on-child molestation," according to several sources, "is a widespread problem in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, and one that has been long covered up."

Attorney Jeffrey Herman, who is representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuits stemming from Kolko's alleged misconduct, was quoted in the New York magazine piece saying that the clergy abuse situation in the haredi community "reminds me of where the Catholic Church was 15 or 20 years ago. What I see are some members of the community turning a blind eye to what's going on in their backyards."

Sifting the Evidence

Hard numbers are not available to determine if clergy sex abuse is more widespread in haredi communities than in other Jewish locales. However, several insiders said there is anecdotal evidence that abuse often goes unreported there. The reason, they said, is that many individuals in those communities, which are noted for their insularity, resistance to modernity and reverence for religious leaders, are loath to confront rabbis for fear of being publicly shunned.

Shafran said he doubts that clergy sex abuse is more prevalent in the ultra-Orthodox world than elsewhere. Asked whether victims there are afraid to report abuse, he said, "I hope it's not true. But it's easy to see how someone would be reluctant to publicly report such an issue."

He said modesty, which is prized by many haredim, might preclude the open discussion of matters "that are part of the average radio talk show agenda."

In fact, Shafran acknowledged that "for a person whose whole life revolves around the community," the ostracism that results from publicly confronting a leader of that community "can be worse than death." Others believe that underreporting of clergy sexual misconduct may in fact facilitate abuse.

"Offenders have learned to hide behind" the reluctance of victims to speak out, said Brian Leggiere, an Orthodox Jew and a psychiatrist in Manhattan who has treated both perpetrators and victims of sexual abuse. He added, though, "The situation is changing for the better, but very slowly. Each community is different, so it's hard to generalize."

In some neighborhoods, Leggiere pointed out, public safety is beginning to gain traction as an ideal worth defending, as is the notion that professional therapy or other forms of treatment for sex abuse victims, as well as for perpetrators, should not be stigmatized.

Judging the Judges

Among many Orthodox Jews, the preferred forum for adjudicating communal disputes is a beit din, a rabbinic court. But critics say such panels often try to dissuade sex abuse victims from pursuing their complaints, a charge vigorously denied by Shafran. However, he added, "In cases where there is some degree of doubt, the beit din has a responsibility to counsel against going to authorities until there is proven criminal activity."

"The problem in the ultra-Orthodox community is people go to the beit din and not to civil authorities," said Mark Dratch, a Modern Orthodox rabbi who chairs the Rabbinical Council of America's Task Force on Rabbinic Improprieties.

"There is a very complicated relationship between rabbis and civil authorities," he said. "It doesn't always work appropriately."

Agudath Israel has not promulgated anti-abuse policies for its affiliated congregations, Shafran conceded, "nor have there been complaints" of sexual misconduct at Agudath Israel-affiliated congregations. However, he added, "I wouldn't rule out that one day there would be such guidelines. The Talmud teaches us that we should stay away from even the appearance of impropriety."

Agudath Israel does have binding behavioral guidelines that apply to its youth groups and its five summer camps, which serve about 2,000 youngsters, according to Shafran. Kolko worked at one of those camps, Camp Agudah in Ferndale, N.Y., decades ago, according to Shafran, apparently long before the behavioral guidelines existed.

The federal lawsuit filed in May states that while Kolko was at Camp Agudah, he repeatedly molested Framowitz, who was a camper there in the summers following his seventh- and eighth-grade years at Torah Temimah.

Framowitz's co-plaintiff -- "John Doe No. 2," an adult male living in the United States -- alleged that he also was abused by Kolko, but only at Torah Temimah. The lawsuit contends that the administrations at both the camp and the school knew Kolko was a pedophile and did nothing about it.

Shafran declined comment on the litigation, which is being divided into two complaints, one for each plaintiff, according to attorney Herman. The complaint initiated by Framowitz has been dismissed on the plaintiffs' initiative but will be re-filed, Framowitz and Herman said.

An attorney representing Kolko in the federal litigation declined comment on behalf of his client.

Elsewhere in Orthodoxy

Both the Orthodox Union (OU) and the National Conference of Synagogue Youth (NCSY) have upgraded behavioral guidelines and enhanced anti-abuse training programs, according to officials at both organizations. The NCSY policies, which covers 17 pages and were revised most recently in October, are binding on at least 25,000 individuals, including NCSY professionals, volunteers and program participants. The guidelines spell out prohibited conduct in detail, and include step-by-step instructions for filing an abuse complaint.

Both OU and NCSY officials said they are not aware of any complaints of sexual misconduct toward youths since the NCSY guidelines were upgraded a few years ago. The Chabad-Lubavitch movement has no written conduct guidelines applying specifically to its estimated 4,000 global emissaries, known as shluchim, or its approximately 3,000 multiuse facilities that double as synagogues and are usually referred to as Chabad houses. However, many Chabad houses have adopted behavioral policies originally formulated for the movement's schools, according to movement spokesman Rabbi Zalman Shmotkin.

In addition, Shmotkin said, shluchim must strictly abide by the Shulchan Aruch, the 16th century code of Jewish law that prohibits nonmarried or unrelated adults of the opposite sex from being secluded with each other.

On the School Front

Some of the denominational policies are designed to guard against situations that could result in inappropriate contact with minors, regardless of their sex. They mandate, for example, that at least two adults be present when a child is receiving private religious instruction.

A nonseclusion requirement is among many anti-abuse provisions included in mandatory school behavioral policies adopted by Chabad about five years ago. The policies cover approximately 2,000 personnel at some 350 Chabad schools attended by about 24,000 students.

The policies also instruct school officials to consult two recognized rabbinic authorities -- one Chabad-affiliated and one not -- regarding the centuries-old Jewish legal injunction known as mesirah, which in some instances prohibits Jews from reporting Jewish perpetrators to non-Jewish authorities.

Mesirah has been blamed for the reticence of some Orthodox sex abuse victims to go public with their complaints. In a spring 2004 article in the anti-abuse publication, Working Together, Dratch said that in cases of child sex abuse, "the consensus of contemporary Jewish religious authorities is that such reporting is religiously mandatory."

Three years ago, several safeguards were adopted by Torah Umesorah-The National Society for Hebrew Day Schools, a service organization -- the largest of its kind in the United States -- that provides religious educational materials for nearly 200,000 Orthodox students spanning that denomination's ideological spectrum.

The Torah Umesorah guidelines, which were presented to school principals, warn teachers and other staffers to refrain from sexually immodest behavior or speech and from inappropriate touching. They also prohibit school personnel from being secluded with students.

But the guidelines are nonbinding, because each of the hundreds of schools served by Torah Umesorah are self-governing.

"We're a service agency, not a governing agency," said Rabbi Joshua Fishman, the organization's executive vice president.

Elliot Pasik, a New York attorney and children's rights advocate, said the way in which the guidelines were distributed calls into question Torah Umesorah's commitment to protecting students from sexually predatory teachers and other staffers.

The guidelines were accompanied by a Sept. 24, 2003, cover letter signed by Fishman that said in part: "This document should be maintained with a sense of confidentiality. It should only be shared with your educational administrative and teaching staff."

Perhaps as a result of that directive, Pasik said few, if any, parents he knows with children attending schools serviced by Torah Umesorah were told about the rules, unless they called the national office in Manhattan. Pasik's children have attended yeshivas affiliated with Torah Umesorah. Furthermore, he added, "I have personally spoken with several teachers, and they knew nothing about these guidelines."

Asked to respond, Fishman declined comment, except to say, "We believe that molesters should be reported."

Pasik said the situation shows the need for a centralized governing body -- perhaps a state or federal agency -- that can hold schools accountable for the safety of students.

"It's hard for people in any organization to govern themselves," he said. "We're not being patrolled or governed by anybody."

Pasik lobbied for passage of legislation in New York that authorizes nonpublic schools to require fingerprinting and FBI background checks for prospective employees. The measure was enacted Aug. 16.

The larger issue of child molestation in the Orthodox community was addressed in a one-page statement accompanying the Torah Umesorah guidelines. Issued by the organization's rabbinical board, the statement says in part that "a small number of individuals have caused untold pain to many children. In addition to the sins which they have committed, they have created painful memories in the minds of their victims, memories which can have a devastating lifetime impact."

The statement urges "everyone to use every means to stop these violations of children, including, at times, exposing the identities of the abusers and even their incarceration. At times, our primary intent may not be to punish the perpetrators, but rather to help them. Therefore, it is preferable, wherever appropriate, to force them to undergo appropriate professional therapy."

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Rabbi Yehuda Kolko accused of molesting boy

By Scott Shifrel

New York Daily News - September 13, 2007

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime_file/2007/09/13/2007-09-13_rabbi_yehuda_kolko_accused_of_molesting_-2.html

A rabbi in a tallith, black hat and handcuffs was hauled before a Brooklyn judge hours before the Jewish New Year yesterday for allegedly molesting another boy at a Midwood yeshiva.

Rabbi Yehuda Kolko - already out on $10,000 bail on charges of sexually assaulting two other male students - rocked back and forth on his feet as his lawyer argued with the judge about bail on new charges that he molested a first-grader at the school in 2005.

"This is the holiest time of the year and to [increase] bail at this time is punitive," lawyer Jeffrey Schneider said, arguing that the charges stemmed from a malcontent who had it in for the 61-year-old Kolko. "[The higher bail is] just bizarre."

"Counselor, you chose this time to surrender him," Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Cassandra Mullen shot back.

She raised the bail to $50,000 bond, $25,000 cash.

Kolko's wife, Edith, brought the cash within the hour and he was released in time to pray at evening Rosh Hashanah services.

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Rabbi Hit With New Perv Rap

By ALEX GINSBERG

New York Post - September 13, 2007

http://www.nypost.com/seven/09132007/news/regionalnews/rabbi_hit_with_new_perv_rap.htm

September 13, 2007 -- A Brooklyn rabbi already facing trial for allegedly molesting two students was charged yesterday with fondling a third.

Rabbi Joel Kolko, an administrator and a teacher at a Midwood yeshiva, posted $25,000 additional bail a few hours before sundown signaled the start of Rosh Hashanah.

He had been free on $5,000 bail, awaiting trial on charges he touched a 6-year-old boy in one of his classes, as well as a now-31-year-old former student who confronted the rabbi about abuse he claimed occurred decades ago.

The new sex-abuse and child-endangerment charges focus on a 2005 incident in which Kolko alleged fondled the genitals of a first-grade boy.

Lawyer Jeffrey Schwartz scoffed at the new accusations, saying they were fabricated by a disgruntled former student now dragging the rabbi's name through the mud on an Internet blog, The Unorthodox Jew, and trying to recruit new victims to bring cases.

"In 21 years of trying criminal cases, both as a prosecutor and a defense attorney, I have never seen a case so weak," Schwartz told the judge, adding that his client had taken and passed two polygraph tests and been cleared by a rabbinical court.

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Brooklyn Rabbi Faces Sexual Abuse Charges

Associated Press - September 13, 2007

http://www.wcbs880.com/pages/939675.php?

NEW YORK (AP) -- A rabbi of an all-boys Orthodox school who has been charged with sexually abusing two students is accused of fondling a third.

Rabbi Yehuda Kolko faced a Brooklyn judge Thursday on new charges of sex abuse and child endangerment. He is accused of molesting a first-grader in 2005 at the Yeshiva-Mesivta Torah Temimah, where he worked for several years.

Kolko's attorney, calling the case against his client weak, said the charges stemmed from an angry student who had it in for the 61-year-old rabbi. The attorney also criticized the high bail set by the judge, $50,000 bond or $25,000 cash.

The rabbi's wife posted the cash bail and Kolko was released Thursday.

Kolko had already been free on $5,000 bail, awaiting trial on charges he sexually abused two young students, one decades ago and one more recently.

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BREAKING: Lawyers Against Kolko Seek Additional Victims; Trial Set For March 31

by Hella Winston, Special to the Jewish Week

Jewish Week - March 14, 2008

http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c36_a4904/News/New_York.html

Lawyers representing "several men" and "two young boys" who were allegedly sexually molested by a teacher at Yeshiva Torah Temimah in Brooklyn sent a letter March 13 to the families of more than 600 male students who had Rabbi Yehuda Kolko as an instructor.

The letter, from attorneys Jeffrey Herman and Michael Dowd, is "seeking any information that may be helpful to these important cases, including information that staff at Torah Temimah and/or [founder and head of school] Rabbi [Lipa] Margulies was aware of allegations against Rabbi Kolko."

According to the letter, "Two of the boys allege they were abused by Rabbi Kolko while attending the yeshiva during the past few years. Others allege they were abused by Rabbi Kolko at the yeshiva during the 1980s."

_________________________________________________________________________________

Letter from Attorney Jeffrey M. Herman

By Jeff Herman and Michael Dowd

March 13, 2008

_________________________________________________________________________________

NY yeshiva sued over 'sexual abuse'

By MICHAL LANDO

Jerusalem Post - April 2, 2008

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1206632388524&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

A Brooklyn yeshiva and its head administrator are being sued for $10 million over alleged sexual abuse by a rabbi who taught there for several decades.

The lawsuit is the fifth to be filed against Yeshiva Torah Temimah and administrator Lipa Margulies alleging sexual abuse by Rabbi Yudi Kolko.

Kolko was arrested for a second time in September for allegedly molesting a boy at the yeshiva, and then released on bail.

He was previously charged with four counts of sexual abuse, including two felony counts, and with endangering the welfare of a child.

The latest case involves the alleged sexual abuse of a minor, identified as John Doe No. 6, who was enrolled at Torah Temimah between the ages of 11 and 13.

Lawyers say he was sexually abused by Kolko on a number of occasions at several locations, including inside the rabbi's car, and at the yeshiva in his office at the yeshiva and in the basement.

According to the lawsuit, John Doe says that often, when Kolko would press himself up against him in a sexual manner, he would ask, "Does it hurt?"

Attorneys Adam Horowitz and Michael Dowd allege that Margulies knew of allegations that Rabbi Kolko was sexually abusing boys at Torah Temimah years before John Doe No. 6 was a student there.

"Despite the fact that Rabbi Margulies knew of allegations that Rabbi Kolko was sexually abusing children and was unfit to be a Rabbi or teacher at Torah Temimah, he took no action to protect the young male students at his school and continued to give Rabbi Kolko unfettered access to young children," the lawyers said in a press release.

The alleged abuse dates back to the 1980s, and the lawsuit claims Margulies engaged in "tactics of intimidation, threats and coercion and misrepresentations" over years with the "intent of squelching any complaints."

"In this case, our contention is that there were countless instances of notice to Rabbi Margulies about the conduct of Kolko," Dowd said. "His response has been threatening people who made complaints."

Such cases could be compared to recent allegations against the Catholic Church, said Jeffrey Herman, a lawyer involved in previous lawsuits filed against the yeshiva.

"It's similar in the sense of an insular community where these things, unfortunately, allegations that have been around for a long time, never made it to the judicial court system outside the community," Herman said.

What was different in the yeshiva case, according to Herman, was the lack of an "institutional" cover-up.

"This is one yeshiva, which has no connection to other Jewish institutions," he said.

The attorney for Yeshiva Torah Temimah, Avraham Moskowitz, told The Jerusalem Post he had not yet been served with the lawsuit.

In the past, Moskowitz has denied all allegations against the yeshiva. Regarding an earlier lawsuit in 2006, Moskowitz told JTA that the yeshiva "adamantly denies the allegations in the complaints and is sure that when the cases are over, the yeshiva will be vindicated."

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Yeshiva Fired, Then Paid, Rabbi Charged With Abuse

Kolko got big bucks from Torah Temimah while `on leave'; lawyers suggest it's hush money.

By Hella Winston/ Larry Cohler-Esses

http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c36_a7198/News/New_York.html

A Brooklyn rabbi charged with having sexually molested his students has collected almost $70,000 from Yeshiva Torah Temimah and entities linked to it since the school put him on administrative leave 22 months ago.

Rabbi Yehuda Kolko received payments ranging from $3,000 to $9,000 per month between May 2006 and December 2007, according to court records obtained by The Jewish Week.

The court records also suggest that before Rabbi Kolko left the school, he received tens of thousands of dollars above his reported yearly income at the school's direction.

Rabbi Kolko faces trial on charges of molesting two boys at the school and attacking an adult former student within the past several years. He remains free on $60,000 bail since his arrest and indictments

in December 2006 and September 2007. A trial date has not yet been set.

Four former students have also filed separate civil suits against Torah Temimah, alleging they were molested by Rabbi Kolko and that the school covered it up. The suits seek damages totaling $50 million.

This week, a fifth plaintiff came forward. Identified in his complaint only as John Doe No. 6, the former student, now in his mid-20s, alleges Rabbi Kolko molested him when he was between the ages of 11 and 13. The abuse, he claims, took place in the yeshiva's basement and in Rabbi Kolko's private office, among other places.

As with the previous plaintiffs, the new one alleges that Rabbi Lipa Marguiles, the school's chief administrator, "knew of allegations that Rabbi Kolko was sexually abusing boys at Torah Temimah years before" but failed to act.

Unlike the other suits, this one names Rabbi Marguiles personally as a defendant.

Michael Dowd, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, voiced concern Tuesday that the newly disclosed payments might influence Rabbi Kolko to remain silent about any knowledge or neglect by the school or Rabbi Marguiles regarding his alleged conduct. He noted that the yeshiva was effectively subsidizing Rabbi Kolko's criminal legal defense while the school itself was being sued by his alleged victims for neglect.

Dowd, who represented plaintiffs in suits against the Catholic Church involving sexual abuse, said he saw the same pattern of continued payments in those cases.

"These child abusers could literally sink the institutions with the[ir] knowledge," he said, explaining what he saw as the motivation for payment.

Still On The Payroll

It was in May 2006 that Yeshiva Torah Temimah announced it had put Rabbi Kolko on "administrative leave . . . on advice of counsel and by mutual agreement." The announcement came shortly after two of the civil suits were filed, followed by a New York magazine exposé alleging years of child molestation by the rabbi and a decades-long cover-up by the yeshiva.

Despite Rabbi Kolko's departure, canceled checks and other financial records show the yeshiva or entities linked to it continued to pay the rabbi substantial sums almost every month.

After repeated questions from The Jewish Week about the money, and repeated statements empahsizing the schools break with the rabbi, his attorney, Avi Moskowitz, said the funds were severance payments.

Significant gaps remain in the financial records. But from June 2006 — a month after his "administrative leave" was first announced — through August 2006, Rabbi Kolko received at least $6,000 per month from the yeshiva.

Attorneys for his alleged victims are still seeking yeshiva financial records for September and October 2006. But in November 2006, there was a change. That month a $6,000 check came from Yonasan Tendler, a Torah Temimah parent. The check was written out to "C. Grosnass," apparently Rabbi Kolko's married daughter, Chana Grosnas.

There is no record, once again, regarding payments in December 2006. But a payment for $9,000 in January 2007 came to Rabbi Kolko from Congregation Tzorchei Amcho, a Brooklyn-based religious charity headed by Tendler. Rabbi Kolko continued to receive payments, of $3,000 per month, from this charity through July 2007. In several cases, the charity paid Rabbi Kolko this sum the day after receiving an identical amount from the school.

After this, except for September, where there is another gap, the payments resumed from the yeshiva directly: $6,000 in August and October; and $3,000 in November and December, the last month for which records are available.

Regardless of who issued the checks and who received them, Yeshiva Torah Temimah can be assumed to have organized the payments, with Rabbi Kolko as the beneficiary. The yeshiva turned the records of these payments over to the court in response to a discovery request seeking all disbursements to Rabbi Kolko or his "agents" from the school or its "related entities or agents."

Reached at home, Tendler, the head of the charity, which he described as a free loan fund, said, "I don't think [Kolko] received any payments from the organization and I don't have anything to talk about. Keep well." In a follow-up call, he added: "I don't know why payments made from a free loan fund or whatever should be a matter of public record."

After checking with the school, Moskowitz, its attorney, said the checks to Kolko after his departure were severance payments, issued on the basis of a "halachic concept," or religious law, that mandates one month's pay for every year served for laid-off employees.

Moskowitz noted that Rabbi Kolko had worked at the school for about 35 years.

(That concept is not universally accepted. A Modern Orthodox Bet Din ruled in 2002 that such payments are not religiously required.)

Court records show that in 2006, the school reported Rabbi Kolko's salary to the IRS as a little more than $1,000 per month. Moskowitz did not respond to a detailed message asking how this comported with the payments of $3,000 to $9,000 per month to Rabbi Kolko in the months following his departure.

Asked about the payments to Rabbi Kolko via Tendler and Congregation Tzorchei Amcho, his religious charity, Moskowitz said that the yeshiva had borrowed money from the fund to pay Kolko's severance.

"They had a payroll to keep, and they didn't have the money for it," he said. "He [Tendler] fronted the money."

As for the payments the yeshiva made to Tendler's free loan fund the day before the fund made payments in the exact same amount to Kolko, Moscowitz said: "The yeshiva has borrowed money from this free loan society and they pay back all the time."

Halachic Justification

It is unclear just when Yeshiva Torah Temimah terminated its ties with Rabbi Kolko, necessitating severance payments.

Moskowitz said initially that Rabbi Kolko "was put on administrative leave at the beginning of the school year" in 2006 — a termination time at odds with the school's May 2006 announcement. Asked to explain the meaning of "administrative leave," Moskowitz said, "Kolko was taken out of the classroom ... until they [could] figure out what to do. He is not employed by them."

Yet, when pressed on Rabbi Kolko's status, Moskowitz said, "He is not on leave. The employment relationship has been terminated."

Asked whether Kolko had been fired, Moskowitz said that the yeshiva "obviously anticipated that he is not going back there. The relationship has been severed."

Attempts to reach Rabbi Kolko at home were unsuccessful and calls to his civil attorney, Robert Mercurio, were unreturned. Jeffrey Schwartz, Rabbi Kolko's criminal attorney, said he was not familiar with the financial terms of Kolko's departure from the school.

But David Framowitz, an alleged victim of Kolko and the subject of the New York magazine piece, said he was "totally shocked and appalled to hear that Yeshiva Torah Temimah has been and is still paying Rabbi Kolko a monthly salary since supposedly firing him in May 2006. YTT has been misleading the public for almost the past two years with this lie. ... Is this what parents are paying their hard earned tuition for?"

Tax Discrepancies On Pay

Meanwhile, the records filed in response to the discovery request show another anomaly. Prior to his departure, Rabbi Kolko apparently was paid sums by the school or entities linked to it far in excess of the salary the school reported to the IRS.

In 2005, the records show, Torah Temimah reported Rabbi Kolko received $10,067 in wages, tips and other compensation. But financial transaction reports filed with the court show the school paid him $73,400, in multiple payments of varying size each month, all of them described as "reimbursement." Moskowitz said these payments were actually Rabbi Kolko's salary, dismissing their being labeled "reimbursement" as "an internal accounting issue."

In 2006, an employee earnings statement for Rabbi Kolko lists his "reg[ular] salary" from the school for the months of June through August as $1,000 per month. But an additional statement shows him getting the same amount during this period from the Religious Education Association, a religious charity founded and controlled by Rabbi Marguiles, the yeshiva administrator.

Financial transaction records also filed with the court show checks that appear to correspond with these outlays. Deductions seem to have left Rabbi Kolko with $1,844 per month from these two sources, for a total of $5,532 during the three months in question. Additionally, the transaction records show, the school disbursed another $12,900 to Rabbi Kolko, once again, all listed as unspecified "reimbursements."

For the entire year of 2006, these records show, Rabbi Kolko received more than $53,800 from the school and from Rabbi Marguiles' charity — considerably more than the $1,000 per month listed as his school salary.

Moskowitz, the yeshiva's attorney, did not respond to repeated detailed messages seeking clarification of these discrepancies. But in earlier interviews, he strongly defended the school's payments to Rabbi Kolko after his departure.

"You mean that they give somebody that has not been convicted of anything, who worked for an institution for 35 years and then gets laid off, [severance] is newsworthy?" he said. "I don't think so." Rabbi Kolko, he noted, has not so far been convicted of anything.

Dowd, the attorney for those claiming Rabbi Kolko had molested them, would have none of this. "If you want, hold the money someplace . . . and then pay him later on if he is exonerated," he said. "Who is going to complain then? But the idea that he's being bought in order to defend himself, and if you will, his defense is being paid by the school that was charged with the protection of the children that he abused, it's an outrage."

Noting the New York City Department of Education's policy of suspending teachers charged with sexual misconduct without pay, Dowd said, "I would hope that a yeshiva would hold itself to a higher standard than the New York City school system. ... The only severance that he should have received was a boot out the door."

Hella Winston teaches sociology at Queens College. Larry Cohler-Esses is editor at large.

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Fifth Sex Suit Filed Against N.Y. Yeshiva

JTA - March 31, 2008

http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/107824.html

http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/preview.php?id=19172

A fifth lawsuit was filed against a New York yeshiva alleged to have covered up the molestation of several students by a rabbi. Two Miami attorneys filed the $10 million suit Monday against Yeshiva-Mesivta Torah Temimah in Brooklyn alleging that their client, identified only as John Doe No. 6, was abused on multiple occasions as a student in the mid-1990s by Rabbi Yehuda Kolko. The suit claims that the yeshiva's head administrator, Rabbi Lipa Margulies, who is also named as a defendant, should have been aware of credible accusations against Kolko for at least 25 years prior to the plaintiff's alleged abuse. Several former students have accused Kolko, a former teacher and assistant principal at the school, of sexual abuse.

At least four other pending lawsuits have alleged that the school knew of Kolko's activities and took no action to protect the students. Kolko was the subject of a 2006 story in New York magazine, which said that molestation of young boys by rabbis was a "widespread problem" in the ultra-Orthodox community. He is also facing criminal charges brought by the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office.

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Rabbi avoids jail on molest rap

By Scott Shifrel

New York Daily News - Tuesday, April 15th 2008

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2008/04/15/2008-04-15_rabbi_avoids_jail_on_molest_rap.html

A rabbi charged with molesting boys at a Midwood, Brooklyn, yeshiva took a plea deal on Monday that will spare him any jail time after the case fell apart for prosecutors.

Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, 62, who still faces five lawsuits, pleaded to misdemeanor endangering the welfare of a child in exchange for three years' probation.

The case unraveled after prosecutors found that an adult accuser had been charged with making up unrelated accusations against others, a law enforcement source said.

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No Sex Charge For Kolko; Boys' Parents Foiled By DA

Hynes' office dissuaded families ready to let their children testify about alleged abuse.

New York Jewish Week - April 17, 2008

by Hella Winston and Larry Cohler-Esses

http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c37_a7822/News/National.html

Questions about Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes' willingness to press cases in the Orthodox community are now being reignited.

In a surprise move, Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, the Brooklyn yeshiva teacher charged with having sexually molested his students, pleaded guilty Monday to two lesser counts of child endangerment and was sentenced to three years' probation.

Under the plea agreement, Rabbi Kolko, 62, made no admission of sexual wrongdoing. He will not have to register as a sex offender, and pleaded guilty only to a misdemeanor — not a felony.

Before the plea bargain, Rabbi Kolko, of Yeshiva Torah Temimah in Flatbush, had been facing felony charges of touching two first-graders in their sexual areas and forcing an adult former student to touch him during a visit to the school. Five former students have also filed suit against the prominent yeshiva, alleging school administrators knew about Rabbi Kolko's molestation of students over many years but sought to conceal it and intimidate students who spoke out.

Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes would give no public explanation of why he suddenly dropped the high-profile molestation case. But its collapse resurrected questions in some quarters about Hynes' competence or his political will in pursuing allegations of wrongdoing involving prominent institutions and individuals in Brooklyn's politically powerful Orthodox community.

Those questions were underscored by contradictions between the alleged victims' account of how Hynes' office secured their agreement to the plea deal and the account offered by the government.

A law enforcement source told The Jewish Week that parents of the two child witnesses had reveresed their decision to allow the children to testify that Rabbi Kolko had molested them.

The source said this fatally weakened the prosecution's case in the wake of the discovery that the alleged adult victim had made false claims in an unrelated matter.

But the alleged victims offered starkly different accounts.

"My son was ready to go to trial, and we feel he would have done an excellent job," the father of one of the children said. "The damage, pain and emotional stress Joel Kolko caused my family, and especially my son — we will never forgive him for this. ... We are sorry to hear [the molestation] charges against him will not proceed."

The father, whose child is now 10, said that it was Hynes' prosecutors who pressed him — not the other way around — to keep his son from testifying. The father said he eventually agreed when the prosecutors told him they could better pursue not just Rabbi Kolko but school administrators and the school itself via an alternative route.

"I know all the hotshots at the DA," the father said. "They actually want to get him on something more serious."

He declined to say what they told him this was. But a source close to the families of both alleged child victims who has been intimately involved in the case said the prosecutors spoke to the father about going after Rabbi Kolko and Rabbi Lipa Margulies, the yeshiva's founder and administrator, on tax fraud charges, based on recently obtained school financial records that were reported by The Jewish Week. That would preempt any need for testimony from his son.

But, according to the source, the same prosecutors offered a very different rationale when they approached the family of the second child and convinced the parents they need not put their son forward.

"The DA told them that they think it's best to do a plea deal because the other child was too young and his family was not allowing him to testify," the source said. "This family was also ready and willing to put their child on the stand to testify and face Kolko. In fact, they believed, while difficult for their son to endure, it would be cathartic and benefit him."

The family declined to speak with a reporter. But the source, who has been with the family through the entire legal process, said they had asked him to speak for them. He spoke on condition of anonymity, citing fear that the children, wo have not been publicly named, could be identified through him.

"This child's parents were from day one ready to have their son testify if it was necessary," he stated. "And they were ready to go to trial. They had come to terms with the reality that their son was going to testify on the stand."

Both children, in fact, remain as plaintiffs in the civil suit against Yeshiva Torah Temimah, and are expected to be witnesses in that case, according to Michael Dowd, a plaintiffs' attorney in that case.

Dowd said the plea deal would not harm his prospects for success in the civil suit since the guilty plea would allow him to press Rabbi Kolko on the stand for specifics on what acts he committed that had endangered children.

Meanwhile, Rabbi Kolko's alleged adult victim told The Jewish Week that prosecutors informed him two months ago they had no intention of putting the children on the stand in their criminal case.

"They said they will not put kids on the stand," he related. "They said the reason why you are so important is because you are an adult, and you can explain yourself, and therefore you are extremely important; that the kids are not going to go on the stand because they can't explain themselves."

He said the prosecutors' remarks came during a discussion in which they told him that a false affidavit he had submitted to government authority in 2000 — in which he had denied knowledge of wrongdoing by a friend — now made it too risky to put him on the stand.

"They told me at the end, we're unsure what we're going to do at this point," Rabbi Kolko's alleged adult victim said. He said he heard nothing further until an article appeared in The New York Daily News Monday reporting on the plea deal.

Told that the father of one child had told The Jewish Week he wanted his son to testify, the law enforcement official who said the children's families had changed their minds replied,

"Oh, really? I know one of them didn't want their kid to testify. I thought it was both."

The law enforcement source explained later that the real problem was that "there was a kid who didn't want to testify at all, and there was a kid whose parents wanted him to testify only by closed-circuit TV."

"If you have a victim who won't testify, that's going to be a real hard case to try," he said. "And the idea that this one victim would only testify if they get a closed-circuit TV — judges rarely approve those kinds of things. So, it didn't seem like the safest bet."

But the father of the alleged child victim said, "We already had the closed-circuit TV set up. ... It had been approved [by the court].

"It's crap," he said of the law enforcement official's account.

Hynes Back In The Spotlight

Jeffrey Schwartz, Rabbi Kolko's attorney, said he and his client were satisfied with the case's outcome.

"Endangering the welfare of a child could mean anything," he said. "It could mean that [Rabbi Kolko] took the kids to a park and didn't watch them on the sliding post. It's not a sex offense. He doesn't have to register as a sex offender. There's nothing else attached to it except the three years of probation. There are no conditions. He just has to lead a law-abiding life and stay out of trouble."

But for some, the collapse of the molestation charges recalled earlier cases involving high-profile figures in Brooklyn's Orthodox community that Hynes was accused of failing to pursue with vigor.

Rabbi Avrohom Mondrowitz was indicted in 1984 on four counts of sodomy and eight counts of sexual abuse in the first degree after years as a school counselor in the Brooklyn

Orthodox community. When he fled to Israel, Hynes' predecessor, Elizabeth Holtzman, pushed for his extradition. But Hynes dropped the effort when he was elected, in 1989. He said Israel's extradition treaty with the United States made the effort futile — a position the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv explicitly rejected.

Hynes renewed the effort in 2006 under prodding from new individuals who, after attention from several media outlets about the Rabbi Kolko case, came forward alleging Rabbi Mondrowitz had molested them as students, too. Hynes' renewal of the extradition request, combined with the efforts of advocates and media pressure in Israel led to Rabbi Mondrowitz's arrest there last year. A court has ruled him extraditable. But he awaits a final appeal on this ruling that is to take place May 29.

In an indication of the kind of resistance such efforts by Hynes face in parts of Brooklyn's highly organized ultra-traditionalist Orthodox neighborhoods, Rabbi Herbert Bomzer, president of the Rabbinical Board of Flatbush, told the Jewish weekly The Forward flatly: "If he [Rabbi Mondrowitz] has managed to get to Israel and is protected by the law there — then leave it alone."

The case of Shai Fhima, a 13-year-old Jewish boy whose non-Orthodox parents said he was kidnapped by an ultra-traditional Orthodox rabbi giving him bar mitzvah lessons, also brought scrutiny to Hynes as it dragged on through the 1990s. The parents accused Hynes of failing to press the case vigorously because he did not want to alienate Orthodox leaders. A judge ultimately rejected the plea agreement Hynes reached with the rabbi that would have imposed only probation and community service.

In another case, police in 1993 reported that Augustine Hazim, a Puerto Rican man, was beaten in Borough Park by a group of Orthodox Jews after his motorcycle came close to striking a child. It took seven months for the District Attorney's office to conduct a lineup, according to police officials and Hazim's lawyer, The New York Times reported. The district attorney's office told Hazim that a witness had developed a "memory lapse" and only one man was ever arrested.

Pattern Of Inaction Charged

Michael Lesher, an attorney and community advocate specializing in child sexual abuse cases, said he could cite at least two other cases "off the top of my head" in which Hynes failed to diligently pursue child sexual abuse cases in the Orthodox community.

"I say it reluctantly that there has been a pattern of inaction by Charles Hynes' office in cases of this kind," said Lesher. "That's a statement I make based upon hard evidence in specific cases. ... I must at this point consider it to be a politically motivated pattern."

Hynes' office did not respond to two detailed messages seeking reaction to this critique.

Marci Hamilton, a professor of constitutional law at Yeshiva University's Cardozo School of Law and author of the forthcoming book, "Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect Its Children," termed the outcome of the Kolko case "the worst of all possible worlds."

"It's such a joke," she said. "It's really a travesty of justice the way it's been handled."

"The sad part," said Hamilton, "is that . . . more children are going to be endangered. They really have not solved any of the public's legal problems with this person, and the tragedy is that you end up with communities not vigorously going after the clergy in their own communities. Then it's their communities that suffer, [and] the children who are most likely to be at risk in the future are the children within the same community.

"That's a tragedy that has repeated itself in one religious organization after another," she said.

Hella Winston teaches sociology at Queens College. Larry Cohler-Esses is editor at large.

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