AUSTRALIA
ABC News
By Sarah Farnsworth
Child abuse victims and their families have been abused and ostracised by people within the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community for breaking the Chabad code of silence, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has heard.
The role of the Jewish law and the concept of Mesirah, the religious code dictating Jewish people do not report or “hand over” other Jewish people to the authorities, will form part of the inquiry into abuse at the Yeshivah centres in Melbourne and Bondi.
One victim told the inquiry he was groomed by serial child abuser David Cyprys in the 1980s while he was a student at the Yeshivah College.
He told the inquiry the then head of the Yeshivah, Rabbi Dovid Groner, said “I thought we’d fixed him”, when he was told of the abuse.
The victim, known only as AVA, said he had absolutely no doubt people at Yeshivah knew Cyprys had a penchant for young boys.
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