NEW YORK
Jewish Daily Forward
By Irwin Kula
Published February 13, 2014, issue of February 21, 2014.
On January 30, a federal court judge threw out the $680 million lawsuit brought against Yeshiva University by 34 former students of its high school for boys who claimed they were sexually abused in the 1970s and ’80s.
The suit also pinpointed Y.U. officials, trustees, board members and faculty as responsible for a “massive cover-up” of the abuse. As expected, the judge pointed out in his 52-page opinion that the statute of limitations had expired decades ago.
I was one of those abused in the early ’70s, though I chose not to be part of the lawsuit. But now that “we are moving forward,” as a Y.U. press release declared, I suggest it is important that the leadership of the self-proclaimed “North America’s Torah-informed institution” (“Torah informed,” for those who may not know, is Jewish insider language for “most authentically religious and ethical”) understand, as should leadership of many religious institutions these days guilty of such crimes, that from God’s perspective there is no statute of limitations.
Decades-long tolerance of abuse of teenage boys is never merely a legal issue. In the court of the ethical, psychological, and spiritual, Y.U., like myriad religious institutions plagued by this behavior, is more than guilty. Y.U has exhibited a real lack of transparency in this case, neither releasing the full text of an independent investigation carried out last year nor making public the names of the board committee members specially appointed to deal with this issue.
Actions like these make the university perpetrators of exactly what allows sexual abuse to continue for years — secrecy. It is a privileging and protecting of institutional reputation over people victimized by Y.U.’s “religious” leadership. (It should be clear that there was no legal reason to keep the full report secret, as it had no bearing on whether or not the statute of limitations had expired. Also, if the ruling had been that the statute of limitations had not expired, Y.U. would have had to disclose the report in discovery anyway.)
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