Motti Elon I Decided to Remain Silent, The Jerusalem Post, February 16, 2010

Motti Elon: I Decided to Remain Silent

The Jerusalem Post
February 16, 2010

http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=168846

Sexual harassment prevention forum says prominent rabbi dangerous to public.

Rabbi Mordechai (Motti) Elon on Tuesday swore to remain silent in the face of allegations made against him earlier in the day by a rabbinical forum that works to prevent sexual harassment in the national-religious sector.

“I believe that out of this crisis only a great joy will arise and have therefore decided to remain silent,” Elon told supporters at the northern moshav of Migdal on Tuesday, responding to allegations that he may have committed “acts in contradiction to the values of sanctity and morals.”

The “Takana” forum posted an announcement Monday warning that Elon was dangerous to the public and demanded he step down from all rabbinical, educational, and community responsibilities.

The organization referred to the statement as “painful and sad," but said the issue must be brought to a resolution.

The rabbi had relocated from Jerusalem to Migdal some four years ago, citing health reasons as the reason for the unexpected move.

“Meaning to prevent desecration of God’s name, I did things, illogical things,” Elon said Tuesday, referring to his decision to leave Jerusalem and move to the North.

Elon has denied all of the allegations against him and said they derived from one “seriously disturbed” student, reportedly adding that the charges constituted “a blood libel, but I am happy that the truth is beginning to emerge."

The incident has brought media attention to Takana, an organization that deals with complaints of sexual harassment by teachers or administrators in the religious schools system.

The organization’s Web site refers to Takana as “the forum for treatment and prevention of sexual harassment by teachers and authority figures in the religious sector” and says it was founded by a wide group of religious community leaders in 2003 “to create a framework to deal with sexual harassment by teachers and authority figures within the religious community.

The organization states that their guidelines are not meant to replace the authority of the state, rather, that it helps victims who because of personal or other reasons, do not feel comfortable going to the police. The forum says it first informs every complainant of the legal options they have against the alleged attacker. The forum states that for many members of the community issuing a complaint to Takana is seen as a way to report the crime and deal with it, without worrying about the reaction of the religious community.

Rabbi Avi Giser, a member of the secretariat forum of Takana and the chief rabbi of Ofra, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday that Takana serves as a way to address complaints of sexual abuse or harassment for a community in which reporting such acts presents additional problems of its own.

“I don’t think there is a difference in the rates of claims of harassment in the religious community versus the secular community, there is just more pressure [on complainants] in the religious system,” Giser said, saying that in addition to communal pressure, the relations between students and rabbis makes getting to the bottom of complaints more difficult.

“The big difference is in terms of the relationship between rabbis and students. The rabbi is viewed as a very honorable figure and there is often a lot of fear to come out against them. There is also sometimes a sort of innocent belief that some people have that tells them that if the rabbi does something its okay.”

Giser, who refused to comment on the allegations against Elon, denied any insinuation that Takana functions as a means of keeping complaints about harassment in the religious sector “in house”, in order to deal with such issues without police involvement or media attention.

“The reality is exactly the opposite. Our first advice to any complainant who comes to us is to go to the police,” he said.

Giser said the majority of complainants contact them specifically because they can report what happened without it going to the police or being made public.

He said the organization “tries to give support to victims and look into the allegations, and if we believe the accused party is someone who could be a danger to children we work to remove them from this situation.”

The Takana Web site presents a copy of the organization’s code of ethics for dealing with complaints of sexual abuse, mainly focusing on ways to protect the accuser.

The code of ethics calls for forum members to “uphold the privacy of all details of the alleged incident and victim, to treat the victim with empathy and not treat the abuser as presumed guilty”. A forum member also must not let the victim’s “lifestyle” affect the severity with which they treat the allegations.

Also, they must use no actions, public or private, that would encourage the complainant to drop their claims.