AUSTRALIA
The Guardian
Melissa Davey
@MelissaLDavey
Thursday 5 February 2015
A senior religious figure within New York’s Orthodox Jewish community, Rabbi Boruch Lesches, has been asked to appear before Australia’s royal commission into institutional responses into child sex abuse.
Lesches had been contacted and asked to provide a statement or appear via video link but was yet to respond, counsel assisting Maria Gerace told the commission at Melbourne’s county court on Friday.
Lesches was a former senior figure and rabbi within Sydney’s Yeshivah community, and currently heads the Lubavitch community in Monsey, New York.
Child abuse victims told the commission this week that Lesches had dismissed their abuse allegations when they gained the courage to tell him what they had suffered within Yeshivah centres and their schools in the late 80s and early 90s.
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