AUSTRALIA
Jerusalem Post
By TAMARA ZIEVE \ 12/06/2016
Australian Rabbi Shimshon Yurkowicz announced Tuesday that he had resigned as a member of the Orthodox Rabbinic bodies in Australia following damning findings by a royal commission into the responses of two Jewish institutions to allegations of child sexual abuse within their communities.
The two institutions investigated were the Yeshiva Center and the Yeshiva College in Melbourne, Victoria, and the Yeshiva Center and the Yeshiva College in Bondi, Sydney, New South Wales.
“The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has highlighted over the last few years the unfortunate and inexcusable mistakes that were made in the past,” said Yurkowicz, as he announced his resignation from the Rabbinical Council of Victoria and the newly formed Rabbinical Council of Australia and New Zealand.
In a letter to his Chabad Malvern community, he said: “I understand that during the time I was on the committee of management and a trustee of the Yeshiva Center [since 2006], victims of child sexual abuse, and others, have suffered, and I sincerely apologize for that. I no longer have any involvement in the Yeshiva Center, and have been asked to resign my membership from these rabbinic groups because of the position I held at that time.”
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