Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse: Yeshivah Centre

By Shannon Deery
Courier-Mail
November 29, 2016

https://goo.gl/bXXzbS

MELBOURNE’s Yeshivah Centre has been slammed for covering up sexual abuse in a damning report handed down by the child abuse royal commission today.

The findings come almost two years after the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse started its probe into the orthodox Jewish community’s Melbourne and Bondi centres.

In its 112 page report the commission rejected key testimony given by some of the centre’s top officials and found the community had covered up child sex abuse over several decades.

It also found:

— VICTIMS and other members of the community were discouraged from reporting abuse,

— THERE was a marked absence of supportive leadership for survivors of child sexual abuse and their families, and

— THE leadership did not create an environment conducive to the communication of information about child sexual abuse.

“The evidence strongly suggests many leaders within the community focused insufficient attention upon the community’s concerns and the intersection between the secular criminal law and Jewish law,” the report said.

“It is perhaps unsurprising that a community described in the evidence as being insular would be concerned by communication with those external to the community about child sexual abuse reportedly perpetrated by Jews. That is particularly so given principles of Jewish law forbidding communication about Jews to non-Jews.”

Former Yeshivah head Rabbi Dovid Groner, who was allegedly told of abuse as early as 1984, was behind a widespread cover-up, the commission found.

“The evidence before us establishes that Rabbi Groner’s response to reported incidents of child sexual abuse was wholly inadequate.

“The nature and frequency of reports to Rabbi Groner strongly suggest a pattern of total inaction.”

The commission started its Yeshivah probe in February 2015.

Current senior rabbi Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Telsner was also criticised for his handling of abuse with accusations he had covered up sex crimes and shunned victims.

The commission was told Rabbi Telsner had lectured the tight-knit community about speaking out without permission and had used sermons to target prominent victims.

He sparked widespread outrage when he told the hearing he believed paedophiles and gay people could be “cured”.

The commission rejected much of the evidence of Rabbi Telsner, who is the son-in-law of Rabbi Groner.

“We are satisfied that there was a marked absence of supportive leadership for survivors of child sexual abuse and their families within Yeshivah Melbourne,” it said.

“Halachic principles were stridently — even if incorrectly — applied. Criticism of those who spoke out was forceful. There were many occasions upon which Yeshivah Melbourne, the Committee of Management and Rabbi Telsner could have spoken in support of survivors of child sexual abuse and their families.

“The leadership did not create an environment conducive to the communication of information about child sexual abuse. If anything, the mixed messages were likely to have produced inaction.

“If the Yeshivah Melbourne, the Committee of Management and Rabbi Telsner had shown leadership, survivors of sexual abuse and their families and supporters might have received a very different

response from the members of the Yeshivah Melbourne community.”

The commission found that for the period from 1984 to 2007, the Yeshivah College Melbourne did not have adequate policies, processes and practices for responding to complaints of child sexual abuse.