Yeshivah Community Leaders Knew of Sex Abuse Complaints
By Richard Baker
A Melbourne man found guilty of raping a 15-year-old boy was employed by St Kilda East's orthodox Jewish Yeshivah Centre as a security guard with a gun licence, despite community leaders being aware of complaints about his sexually abusive behaviour. A suppression order over the trial of David Samuel Cyprys, 45, has been lifted, enabling the public to be informed that a County Court jury last month found him guilty of raping the boy five times from 1990 to 1991. He has also pleaded guilty to molesting eight other boys. The lifting of the suppression order has put the focus on senior figures associated with St Kilda East's Yeshivah Centre and College, in particular their failure to act on repeated complaints about Cyprys dating back more than 20 years. Documents from Victoria Police's private security operator licensing and registration area show Cyprys listed his employer as the Yeshivah Centre on his licence forms, which entitled him to carry a firearm and run a security business. One of his licences expires next year and another expired in 2011. Cyprys was employed in the security role, as well as appointed to youth group leadership positions, within the Yeshivah Centre, despite his pleading guilty in 1992 to a charge of indecent assault over an incident in St Kilda in 1991. Court records show Cyprys was fined $1500 and ordered to be of good behaviour. No conviction was recorded. Rabbi Abraham Glick, who was principal of the Yeshivah College at the time of most offences, last year told the Melbourne Magistrates Court that he knew of rumours of Cyprys' offending in the early 2000s. Not only was Cyprys employed and endorsed by the Yeshivah Centre as a security guard, he was appointed a director of the Council of Orthodox Synagogues of Victoria between 2006 and 2009. His presence on this board was recognised in the annual reports of the State Zionist Council of Victoria. The conviction of Cyprys comes months after former Yeshivah College teacher David Kramer was jailed for three years and four months for molesting four boys, aged 10 or 11, between 1989 and 1992. Kramer left for the United States after complaints about his behaviour were made to the school. During Kramer's trial, the court heard how NSW police had received complaints about his conduct in 1996 but no investigation was held. The St Kilda Yeshivah Centre's counterpart in Bondi, Sydney, is also under scrutiny over its handling of historic child sexual abuse complaints, with detectives investigating a former community member's alleged sexual abuse of several adolescent boys. Fairfax Media has revealed this year how senior Bondi Yeshiva Centre leaders were aware of complaints about the accused man's actions during the 1980s but failed to report matters to police. One senior Australian rabbi who failed to stop an alleged paedophile from sexually abusing boys at a Sydney Jewish school said some of the victims may have consented to sexual relations and has warned that involving police now would "open a can of worms". Former senior Sydney rabbi Boruch Dov Lesches made the extraordinary remarks in a recent conversation with a person familiar with a series of alleged child rapes and molestation by a man associated with Sydney's Yeshiva community in the 1980s. In a legally recorded telephone conversation heard by Fairfax Media and provided to NSW detectives investigating the Sydney Yeshiva cases, Rabbi Lesches admitted to counselling the alleged abuser upon learning he had sexually abused a boy a decade his junior. Rabbi Lesches, now one of New York's leading ultra-orthodox figures, said he told the man that both he and the boy would be forced to leave the Yeshiva community if he could not control his urges. "'If not, both of them would have to leave,"' he said.
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