NEW YORK
Zaakah
Rabbi Yaacov Behrman wrote an op-ed in The Forward on Friday where he says that, although he doesn’t agree with Agudah’s stance that cases of sexual molestation need rabbinical permission to be brought to the authorities, he also doesn’t agree with Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes recent move that would make rabbis mandated reporters of such crimes.
Rabbi Behrman sets out to argue against DA Charles Hynes new push to make rabbis mandated reporters, but before he gets to that point he takes a long detour and first defends Agudah’s policy.
He begins by explaining Agudah’s reasoning behind their stance that cases of child molestation must be brought to rabbis first:
“Although in the overwhelming majority of cases, abuse allegations turn out to be accurate, there has been a minority of cases in which innocent individuals were wrongly charged with abuse crimes. These individuals were vindicated only after lengthy proceedings. Therefore, some rabbis feel that in a case where there are no witnesses to the abuse and there is only one victim, who is a minor, a rabbi should assess the validity of the allegations before the accusations are brought to the police.”
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.