NEW YORK
Forward
Daniel J. Solomon
December 14, 2016
For four decades, a Jewish man says he did not tell anyone that a counselor at Camp Ramah in the Berkshires forced him to perform a sex act in the woods one summer as a boy. But now that his alleged abuser has been convicted in the sexual abuse of several children in Canada, the unnamed victim is filing a lawsuit against the Jewish sleepaway camp and its parent organization, the Jewish Theological Seminary.
“I was trying to punish myself for putting myself in this position and not doing anything about it,” the anonymous man told the Daily News, who said that the episode drove him to depression, trust issues, alcoholism and numerous suicide attempts. “The fact is: This went on for years and nobody stopped it.”
The lawsuit, filed several weeks ago in Manhattan federal court, alleges that the New York-based camp engaged in a cover-up of the counselor’s sexual abuse. It names JTS and the National Ramah Commission, both of which oversee Camp Ramah in the Berkshires as well as more than a dozen other camps that form the Ramah network.
Neither JTS nor Ramah returned calls for comment from the Forward.
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