NBC Misreports, Maligning Rabbi on Sexual Abuse Stance

NEW YORK
The Jewish Press

By: Eliyahu Federman
Published: June 30th, 2013

NBC ‘Rock Center‘ did a story on Judy Braun’s book ‘Hush,’ which chronicles Judy’s journey to raise awareness on reporting and discussing sexual abuse in her deeply insular Hasidic community. The book resulted in her being threatened and shunned by her community.

Rabbi Avraham Berkowits was interviewed for the show. But when his views did not fit the story line, NBC deceptively edited his quotes adding grossly misleading voice-overs that implied he believes sex abuse crimes should be handled only by rabbis. This was all a lie.

The transcript of the unedited interview shows that Berkowitz said things like in his community “the Rabbis work together hand-in-hand with the authorities,” “deviants must be punished,” “they’ll be caught.”

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