CANADA
The Canadian Jewish News
By Sheri Shefa, Staff Reporter – May 16, 2016
There are two questions New York-based child psychologist David Pelcovitz is often asked by child protective service professionals about the Orthodox community that makes him cringe.
“The first question they usually ask me, is, ‘What is it about you guys that you care more about the perpetrator than the victim?… This is when I want to take my yarmulke off,” said Pelcovitz, who spoke Sunday to roughly 100 educators and concerned parents at Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto Congregation about the impact of sexual abuse on children and how to protect them from it.
“The second question they ask… is, ‘What is it about you guys that you seem to have a higher rate of sibling sexual abuse? Older brothers with younger sisters? We’re seeing this as an epidemic in the New York community, and I know it happens here… we have to be aware of that. Part of it is that we need to do better sexual education with our kids. We don’t talk to our kids about sexuality.”
The presentation by Pelcovitz, a highly regarded clinical psychologist who specializes in childhood trauma and abuse, and is co-editor of Breaking the Silence: Child Abuse in the Jewish Community, came just a few months after Stephen Joseph Schacter, who taught at Eitz Chaim Schools between 1986 and 2004 and what is now Robbins Hebrew Academy from 2004 to 2006, was charged with possession of child pornography, gross indecency, sexual interference, sexual exploitation and sexual assault.
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