AUSTRALIA
ABC – The World Today
ELIZABETH JACKSON: At the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse the head rabbi of Melbourne’s Yeshivah Centre has denied preaching against victims reporting their abuse to police.
But Rabbi Zvi Telsner says he apologises if he caused any victim or their family pain.
Victims have told the royal commission that they and their families were ostracised by the Yeshivah leadership and community after reporting their abuse to police.
Our reporter Samantha Donovan is covering the royal commission in Melbourne and she joins us now.
Sam, what exactly did the rabbi say in these sermons?
SAMANTHA DONOVAN: Well, to explain the lead-up Elizabeth, in 2011 a furore erupted in Melbourne’s ultra-orthodox Jewish Yeshivah community when a victim of child sex abuse at Yeshivah College, Manny Waks, went public with allegations that several boys including himself had been abused at the school.
And he alleged to a newspaper that the Yeshivah leadership had covered it up and named Yeshivah’s head rabbi, Rabbi Groner, as having done nothing to remove a serial abuser from the school.
Manny Waks and another witness, AVB, have told the royal commission that they urged other victims to go to the police and that this angered Rabbi Groner’s brother-in-law, Zvi Telsner, who by this time had taken over as head rabbi after Rabbi Groner’s death.
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