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  Police to Probe Rabbi Elon Affair

By Efrat Weiss
YNet News
February 18, 2010

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3851404,00.html

Rabbi Mordechai Elon
Photo by Gili Eliyahu

Decision to investigate sexual abuse reached after joint top officials meet to discuss affair

The police decided on Thursday to probe sexual harassment charges against Rabbi Mordechai Elon originally submitted to the Takana forum, the Religious Zionist body charged with handling cases of sexual abuse among the movement's leaders.

The decision was unanimously reached after a joint meeting among the police, Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein, State Prosecutor Moshe Lador and Head of Police Investigations and Intelligence Major-General Yoav Segalovitz.

The meeting was held at the request of the police and was meant to inform Weinstein of the proposed decision.

Despite the unanimous agreement to probe the allegations, the decision to launch an investigation is under the sole jurisdiction of the police, and does not require the attorney general's approval.

If the police indeed go ahead and launch an investigation against Rabbi Elon, the Police Investigations and Intelligence Unit will decide who would lead it. In the meantime, the police requested a full gag order to be imposed on the case.

On Tuesday, the police said it needed to receive more complaints against Rabbi Elon in order to have them inspected by its Investigations and Intelligence division.

Rabbi Mordechai Elon, who is among the senior religious Zionist rabbis, is suspected of sexual harassment and was banned from rabbinic and educational activities four years ago by the senior rabbis' Takana forum.

Ynet reveled on Wednesday that a member of the forum said he received death threats following the revelation of sexual harassment accusations made against Rabbi Elon.

Talking to his students at the Har Etzion Yeshiva on Wednesday, Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein said, "I got a letter filled with threats from an associate of Rabbi Elon, who said he would hurt me in any way he could."

 
 

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