Chief Rabbi calls on Jewish leaders to stand down following Child Abuse Royal Commission

AUSTRALIA
SBS

By Nitza Lowenstein
1 DEC 2016

Speaking to SBS Hebrew Radio, Rabbi Dr Benjamin Elton, Chief Rabbi of the Great Synagogue in Sydney and Secretary of the Rabbinical Councils of Australia and New Zealand (Australia’s most senior Orthodox Rabbi) has called on Jewish leaders, who failed to protect child abuse survivors, to stand down from their public positions.

“If somebody has failed to carry out their legal obligations to protect children, then they ought not to be in the position of leadership in the community,” Rabbi Elton says of his and the Rabbinical Council’s stance.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse this week found that the two insular, Ultra Orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch communities discouraged the reporting of child abuse, failed to act when complaints were made, and treated survivors and their families as outcasts.

The findings vindicated victim Manny Waks, the whistleblower who first exposed systemic abuse within the sect.

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