AUSTRALIA
Australian Jewish News
THE new boards of Yeshivah-Beth Rivkah Schools Ltd (YBRSL) and Chabad Institutions Victoria Ltd (CIVL) were urged this week to “act decisively and expeditiously to address those issues emanating from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse … so that the community can truly move forward from this stain”.
The elections of the boards – the first ever held, after a new constitution was adopted this year – are seen as a move towards transparency in the wake of the scathing findings of the Royal Commission, which slammed the way key Yeshivah leadership figures handled the crisis.
Welcoming the conclusion of the election process, child sexual abuse victims’ advocate Manny Waks called for the new boards to “take immediate and decisive action to end their association” with three individuals in particular, who he claimed had failed the victims: Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Telsner, who resigned as the Yeshivah Centre’s senior rabbi last year after admitting that his conduct towards victims and their families had not been in line with the values of Yeshivah, but who still performs religious leadership functions; Rabbi Chaim Tzvi Groner, the only member of the former board who did not resign and who holds a seat on both of the new boards; and Nechama Bendet, the former Yeshivah general manager and board member who remains in a senior management role.
Responding to Waks’s call, Bendet yesterday told The AJN, “I vehemently deny that I breached any legal or moral obligation to victims of child sex abuse.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.