UNITED KINGDOM
Hackey Citizen
Josh Loeb
A leading rabbi has said he feels confident there is no child safeguarding scandal “waiting to break out” in the Hasidic Jewish community after the council’s frustration at a lack of regulatory oversight of unregistered schools in Stamford Hill was revealed at a heated public meeting.
Rabbi Avrohom Pinter described as “hysteria” suggestions there might be a “Rotherham-type” situation involving sex abuse in the notoriously insular community but said an arrangement had to be agreed to allow the authorities to assure themselves that all children were safe.
There are believed to be more than 30 unregistered schools currently operating illegally in Hackney, and the council has concerns about large numbers of children from strictly orthodox Jewish families “going missing” from the school system in their early teens.
Because they have been effectively stonewalled by those running these unregistered schools, safeguarding chiefs can not be sure all precautions are being taken to guard against the risk of the sexual abuse of children. Though this could happen in any setting, they said the risk was higher in the ultra-orthodox Jewish community purely by virtue of the lack of official oversight.
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