AUSTRALIA
The Guardian
Melissa Davey
@MelissaLDavey
Thursday 5 February 2015
The former director of an Orthodox Jewish school “didn’t have a clue” that one of his staff members massaging the genitals of a young student might be a criminal matter, the royal commission has heard.
Rabbi Yosef Feldman said when he found out a teacher’s aide at the Sydney Yeshivah’s Gedolah college had been accused of sexually abusing a child in 2002, his ignorance of secular law meant he didn’t view it as a criminal offence.
Feldman said he was not aware of laws around mandatory reporting of child abuse, and he did not feel he needed training because “sex abuse is not common”.
“My role in general is to look at things from a Jewish law perspective,” Feldman told the royal commision into institutional responses into child sex abuse on Friday. “I’m not in the business of thinking of how society would deal with issues.”
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