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Catholic and Orthodox Jewish leaders' feeling hurt over their liability for protecting child rapists
Earlier this month I read of the case of a former Hassidim woman who was in the middle of a sexual abuse case against her father. The now 27 year-old was a sex slave of her father who first raped her at the tender age of 9. For 18 years she not only was robbed of her childhood, but was robbed of her humanity by a monster that was supposed to care for her and cherish her as her father.
This is not an isolated case, but it's been hard for child rape and pedophilia victims to get the word out and bring their abusers to justice. The Hasidim's cultural insularity makes it incredibly difficult for victims to seek justice or to find help, but that wall of silence around the community is starting to crumble. The bashing of that wall is coming from the community itself but it's meeting a lot of resistance.
Word is out that Orthodox Jewish and Hasidim organizations have created a lobby coalition against the passage of the Child Victims Act:
Albany, NY (AHN) - Roman Catholic and Orthodox Jewish officials in New York are opposed to approval of the Child Victims Act pending before the state legislature. The proposal aims to temporarily remove the statute of limitations for lawsuits concerning sexual abuse of children.
The bill, which had been introduced the past years but blocked by Republicans, has good chances of being approved this time because the Democrats now are the majority. New York Gov. David Paterson supports the bill;
The legislation has the potential of reviving claims filed against Catholic priests and dioceses in the state, but dismissed on account of going beyond the time limit of five years after the victim became 18. Similar laws approved in California and Delaware led to costing the church $800 million to $1 billion as settlements and damage.
New York State Catholic Conference spokesman Dennis Poust said the church believes the bill is designed to bankrupt the Catholic Church. The Catholic officials were joined in opposing the proposal by Hasidic and Sephardic Jewish groups in Brooklyn, which also face abuse claims.
The bill as it has been named is nowhere to be found on the net and it has been even marked with the wrong bill number. I will write about that in a minute but if you want to see it, go to NY State Aseembly Bill A02596 to read about it. The NY State version of the bill is S02586.
What's amazing to me is the outright cry of self-interest coming from these lobbyists, particularly the Catholic contingency : they're afraid the wave of lawsuits will but the Catholic Church out of business. Funny, because the Catholic Church has been an increase of 16% of child rape and pedophilia cases since the scandals of 2007.
An interesting discussion of sex abuse among Hasids
This comes from a member of the Hasidic community:
http://hasidic-feminist.blogspot.com/2009/01/misplaced-trust.html
Sex abuse is bad in any community. I do notice in lists I see of religious sex offenders very few Jews in general, but an over-representation of Hasids. I don't actually know if this is true or if the community just stands out more.
And here is an NPR piece on the topic.
Re: Catholic and Orthodox Jewish leaders' feeling hurt
I have no statistical evidence that Hasidim are more likely to engage in the type of sex abuse discussed in the main post. But it's also possible that the Hasidic and Sephardic communities are opposing the bill because they tend to marry their daughters off very, very young - possibly illegally young, even with parental "consent". That may be the abuse they are trying to hide.
Plotnost' Klyuchevyh Slov
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THX
, Alita.