Child Abuse - Protecting our children/R' Yakov Horowitz

Jewish Press reports (excerpt):

It is difficult to describe the sickening, gut-wrenching sensation I experience when I get phone calls from parents whose children were sexually abused or from adults who have carried the horrible scars of childhood abuse for decades, often shredding their relationships and ruining their lives. And, I am sad to report that those calls are getting more frequent as time goes on.

L’maan Hashem – what will it take for us to take this issue seriously? How many more indictments of frumpedophiles will it take for us to cut through the denial and deal with the fact that we have a real problem? Not a Jewish problem, but a human one. (As I’ve written in the past, abuse and molestation are issues that all communities face. It only becomes a Jewish problem when we choose to bury our heads in the sand and ignore it.) How many more suicides or drug overdoses do we need to endure before we will start understanding that this is one of the pressing challenges that we need to squarely face? And, in my opinion, sexual abuse is by far the leading cause of high-end drug use and ruined lives of the teens in our community.

The saddest thing of all is that the steps that need to be taken to prevent today’s innocent children from future abuse are not terribly complicated. From my vantage point; all it takes is to:

1. Raise the awareness level by having community leaders write and speak about this issue in a forthright and unequivocal manner

2. Teach our parents and educators how to speak to their children about personal privacy. And this can be easily done in a modest, Torah-appropriate manner.

3. Develop the righteous indignation to finally protect our children by sending a clear message that those who molest them will be treated like the rodfimand murderers they are – reported to the authorities, arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

This is not only a school issue; it is a communal one. Abusers are far more likely to be family members or kids on the block, rather than educators. This is not to say that schools should not address this matter squarely; rather to note that simply dealing with it in the limited scope of school will not eradicate the scourge of abuse. We are all in this together and it will take broad-based initiatives to improve things.

Is there any more sacred obligation than protecting the children entrusted to our care? Shame on us, for failing to treat it as such.