Chabad Student Rape Trial Decision Looms

By Shmarya Rosenberg
Failed Messiah
May 15, 2012

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On Monday, a judge will decide whether or not a man who was a mentor to students at Chabad's flagship yeshiva in Melbourne will stand trial for allegedly raping at least a dozen students, some long after Chabad knew what David Cyprys was allegedly doing. But Chabad did nothing to limit Cyprys' contact with young boys.

David Cyprys, who worked as a security guard and a caretaker at Chabad's Yeshiva College in Melbourne, Australia, is charged with at least 50 total counts of rape and indecent assault, all committed against boys between 1982 and 1991.

According to The Age, a Melbourne court yesterday heard that Cyprys had anally penetrated one teenager at a family home. Police told the court the victim told police "he had covered my mouth to stop me screaming." The boy was allegedly raped before he was 16-years-old. Cyprys allegedly raped the boy on the boy's 16th birthday, as well. Cyprys also allegedly raped the boy in the community's men's mikva, ritual bath.

Cyprys, who is a locksmith, could open all the doors at the college.

Chabad leadership was told about Cyprys' sexual assaults, alleged victims claim, but Chabad's Australia head, Rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Groner, allegedly protected Cyprys and coerced families to be silent about the abuse.

Other leading Chabad figures who were told about the alleged abuse but who did nothing to protect the children in their community from it allegedly includes the school's former principal Rabbi Abraham Glick, who this week changed his testimony to acknowledge that he had, in fact, had some knowledge of the alleged sexual assaults.

But Glick acknowledgement only included a time period after the sexual assaults currently being prosecuted allegedly took place.

Same of the alleged victims and others in the Chabad community of Melbourne have asserted that Glick knew years before that, and that he knowingly allowed Cyprys to have unsupervised contact with children anyway.

Chabad's International leadership based in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York has not issued public comment on the arrest and charges or on the pending extradition of another Yeshiva College employee, David Kramer, who was allegedly helped to flee Australia by Groner more than a decade ago. Kramer went on to sexually abuse boys in St. Louis, Missouri.

But unlike the behavior of Chabad, Rabbi Ze'ev Smason, a St. Louis-based Orthodox rabbi, reported Kramer to police. Kramer was arrested, tried and convicted. He is now at the end of serving a seven year prison sentence.

Smason was the first halakhic advisor of The Awareness Center, The Jewish Coalition against Sexual Abuse and Violence.