NEW YORK
New York Daily News
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
The streets of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish section of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, are plastered with leaflets urging support for a rabbi who is accused of the sexual abuse of a teenage girl and attacking her.
Some of the signs depict the 16-year-old’s complaint to police as a danger akin to a rocket attack. Behind them is an all too prevalent faith-based conviction that it’s wrong to bring civil authorities into the insular community’s affairs.
This impulse to close ranks has produced devastating results. While victimization of children and teens is no more prevalent among the Hasidim and similar Jewish sects than in other segments of society, it has gone largely unpunished.
Families and community leaders have been ostracized for contacting law enforcement, and victims have been wrongly deterred from seeking the legal redress to which any person is entitled.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.