Chabad Child Sex Abuse and Its Coverups – a Brief Summary

By Shmarya Rosenberg
Failed Messiah
February 14, 2015

http://failedmessiah.typepad.com/failed_messiahcom/2015/02/chabad-child-sex-abuse-a-brief-summary-678.html

After hearing long hours of testimony – often very shocking testimony – from child sex abuse victims and their families, Chabad rabbis and officials including a top Chabad lay leader, the Australian Royal Commission investigating child sex abuse at Chabad institutions has concluded its hearings.

Some highlights:

• Rabbi Meir Shlomo Kluwgant, currently the head of the Organization of Rabbis of Australasia and police chaplain admitted telling a victim that the victim was wrong to have sent a politely worded email to the Chabad community that asked people to cooperate with police investigating the abuse and to contact the police directly if they had been victimized.

Kluwgant's asserted reason for doing this was because he had acted as a broker, bringing together police and top Chabad rabbis to discuss the child sex abuse issue and work out a way forward in which those top rabbis would sign a letter calling on the community to cooperate with the police investigation and to report any child sex abuse to the police. Judaism, Kluwgant said, wants one clear voice sounded in unity – not several voices, even if those several voices are all saying the same thing. The man’s email – Kluwgant claims he did not know the man was victim until later – ruined that.

Kluwgant admitted the email was polite, well written and “brilliant” and Kluwgant said he did not disagree with its content in any way. The only issue, Kluwgant said, is that it was sent. But Kluwgant went on to say that if he had known the man was a child sex abuse victim, he (Kluwgant) would have signed the email letter with him.

This explanation of what was clearly an act of intimidation against the victim was so bizarre it is unlikely any of the commissioners believed it to be true.

Kluwgant claimed not to have heard the testimony of Zephania Waks, the father of victim Manny Waks, about the shunning and harassment his family suffered from Chabad after Manny went public with his abuse. Kluwgant at first said he was in surgery that days and didn’t hear it. When told Waks testified the day before Kluwgant had surgery, Kluwgant said he might have heard a few minute of Waks’ testimony, but that he spent that day preparing for surgery and the next day having it, and therefore didn’t really know much about what Waks said.

Waks’ attorney then asked Kluwgant if he sent a text message to the editor of the Australian Jewish News, Zeddy Lawrence, during Waks’ testimony that said Waks is a “lunatic” who is “killing Chabad.”

Kluwgant looked stunned. And then he admitted he had indeed sent that text message. Audible gasps were heard in the courtroom.

• Rabbi Tzvi Telsner, effectively the chief rabbi of Chabad in Melbourne and the rabbi of Chabad’s largest synagogue, was evasive and often almost hostile during questioning. His answers were not credible. He claimed two drashot (sermons) he gave in his synagogue lashing out and emailers and bloggers (one given just a few days after the above victim’s email was sent out) had nothing to do with that emailer of with any of the victims or with any of the victims’ families – even though the other drasha immediately followed an email sent by the head of one of those families, Zephania Waks, and the first article on child sex abuse in Chabad in the major Australian newspaper The Age, which featured his son Manny’s first public admission that he was raped as boy at Chabad.

When confronted with the fact that many people who heard the sermons thought Telsner was talking specifically about the first victim and about the Waks family, and that a significant number of people in the Chabad community were now harassing and shunning them and other victims, victims’ families and their advocates as a result, Telsner at first tried to claim he hadn’t heard that. Then he said he eventually did hear it. When asked what he did about it, Telsner said something to the effect of, it isn’t my responsibility to go around correcting every wrong belief people have.

Telsner admitted that he never spoke to Zephania Waks, the father of victim (and advocate) Manny Waks, about Waks’ response to those two sermons, even though he knew Waks was upset and even though Waks sat next to Telsner in the synagogue. Telsner also never apologized to Zephania Waks or to Manny Waks or to any other victim or their families, even though almost four years of harassment and shunning took place.

Telsner showed himself to be an arrogant, selfish, hostile man who has little to no empathy for abuse victims – or, very likely, anyone else.

• Rabbi Avrohom Glick, the former principal of Chabad’s Yeshivah College in Melbourne and the head of Chabad’s Va’ad HaRuchni (spiritual committee) in Melbourne, the community’s religio-spiritual overseer, had repeated lapses of memory that defied credulity. He also admitted that the Va’ad HaRuchni had never even discussed child sex abuse until it because an issue in the media. Police had started investigating before that and Glick by his own testimony knew it as did other top Chabad officials, but they never discussed that aspect of child protection or any failings Chabad might have in that area. And then when the issue hit the newspapers, what they discussed was how to contain the growing crisis. Glick also admitted that the Va’ad HaRuchni never reached out to victims, their families or to advocates – even though in the last year of his life the late head of Chabad in Melbourne, Rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Groner, personally formed the va’ad and appointed its members with the specific instructions to act in his stead if he were too ill to do so himself or if he passed away.

• Nechama Bendet, for more than two decades and until recently the Yeshivah Centre’s general manager, had repeated memory lapses that also defied reason.

• Rabbi Yaakov Glasman, a former head of the Rabbinical Council of Victoria (and Glick’s nephew), seemed strong in his opposition to child sex abuse. But his proof for that strength was training that brought in David Pelcovitz, the Orthodox therapist linked to OHEL who has been involved in cases of child sex abuse that were covered up and mishandled. Pelcovitz is considered to be a shill for haredim and OHEL on this issue – both of which have way less than stellar track records on child sex abuse and related crimes.

In response to a question from an attorney, Glasman claimed that it was the ultra-ultra-Orthodox rabbis (which he later clarified in way that would mean Edah Haredit rabbis, Satmar rabbis, etc.) who have problems properly understanding child sex abuse and dealing with it. That, Glasman’s testimony clearly implied, is where the real problem lies. He was also quick to point out all the steps regular ultra-Orthodoxy – i.e., Chabad – had taken over the years to combat child sex abuse. The is, the evidence the Royal Commission heard shows very clearly that those purported steps were ineffective at best, and that Glasman’s cheap attempt to dump the child sex abuse problem on Satmar and allies is hypocritical.

• Rabbi Yosef Feldman’s bizarre testimony is well-documented here, and the rest of what took place over these past two weeks will have to be summarized later.

What is absolutely clear after all this testimony is that none of these Chabad rabbis took any practical steps to help abuse victims and likely repeatedly violated the law on mandatory reporting.

Eventually the Royal Commission will issue its findings and recommendations, and prosecutors may choose to indict rabbis and others who broke the law by failing to report child sex abuse or through harassment of victims and their families and other attempts interfere with the judicial process by hiding evidence or lying under oath.

But these past two weeks have shown anyone willing to look that victims, their families and advocates were right. They were (and still are) being harassed, shunned and revictimized by Chabad. Not only did the child sex abuse take place, Chabad rabbis clearly knew it was taking place and used their power to protect the molesters and rapists. But even now, Chabad’s international leadership in New York has refused to comment on the Australian scandal or apologize for it.

The Royal Commission hearing was cathartic for many victims and their supporters, a seminal event that for many is almost beyond description.

But too many people – Jewish community leaders, American news reporters and reporters and editors for Jewish newspapers worldwide – have largely ignored the story. They’ll treat Chabad no differently now than they did two weeks ago. They’ll fill their papers with Chabad press releases and hang out with Chabad rabbis at the special media parties Chabad periodically throws. They’ll drop by for Shabbos and otherwise act as if nothing happened, as if nothing is wrong. And by doing so they will victimize the all of those people Chabad abused all over again. And for that, they should all be ashamed.