NEW YORK
The Sun
Editorial of The New York Sun | May 14, 2012
The latest engagement in the campaign of the secular state to undercut religious authorities and drive back their sphere of influence has erupted in New York over how to handle child molestation cases that occur in the city’s Orthodox Jewish communities. Mayor Bloomberg has just joined a chorus of Democratic politicians asserting that persons who suspect misbehavior should go straight to the police rather than their rabbis. The mayor, according to the New York Times, wants “any abuse allegations” to be “brought to Law enforcement.” The newspaper suggests that he is uncomfortable with those who wish first to check with their rabbis.
In entering this contretemps with this advice the mayor has made an error of judgment. His statement was given to the Times in the context of a story it issued Friday on how the district attorney at Brooklyn, Charles Hynes, has been handling molestation cases. The mayor, according to the Times, has joined those who criticize the D.A. for failing to object to the position of the Agudath Israel of America, a major organization that represents fervently religious Jews. Its policy is, as characterized by the Times, that members of its community see a rabbi before reporting allegations of sexual misconduct to the police.
No one, least of all Orthodox Jews, denies that child molestation cases occur in the Jewish communities, just as they do in other religious and secular populations. The role of the rabbi when consulted in cases of suspected abuse, the executive vice president of the Aguda, David Zwiebel, wrote to the Times the other day, is “not to dissuade the individual from reporting to the secular authorities, but simply to ascertain that the suspicion meets a certain threshold of credibility.” No doubt this was the point Rabbi Zwiebel made to Mr. Hynes when, over the summer, the two met on this head.
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