Child abuse case leads to Chareidi protests

The accusations against the mother of child abuse been fully represented in the secular press along with a conjectured psychiatric diagnosis. In short she has been put on trial convicted and executed. However there is a second side of the story which alledges that the doctors have misdiagnosed and mistreated the child and that the insensitive manner of arresting her in public was disgusting.

Whichever version of events is true - there is no question that this is a public relations disaster for the Chareidi community. However the release of private and confidential information as well as rumors to the secular press - by the police, social workers and hospital - are not acceptable in a modern society even if the facts are in agreement with the hospital. This is not the first time that the secular forces have felt a need to violate confidentiality to have the chareidim vilified in the press and public opinion.

The obvious solution should be a joint committee - of Chareidi representatives and hospital official - to investigate the facts - not only of whether there was abuse - but how and why confidential information was given to the press. Even if the facts of abuse are correct - and they haven't been proven - this public campaign by the secular forces is not appropriate but neither are the disgusting riots which only serve to validate the campaign of villification against the chareidi population

JPost

[...] The woman's family claims the child has cancer and that his skeletal appearance is due to chemotherapy treatments, a claim vehemently denied by doctors, who have said that since the mother's arrest, the child's condition has improved and that he has begun to put on weight.

Dudu Zilbershlag, the family's media adviser, told Army Radio on Thursday morning that they had medical documents proving their claim and would reveal them in a matter of hours.

Dr. Yair Birnbaum, deputy director-general of the Hadassah Medical Organization, said that the boy had gained 20 percent of his weight since nearly two weeks ago, when the mother was arrested. [...]

JPost

"Jerusalem's 'Eda Haredit' will boycott Hadassah Ein Karem Hospital, since its medical team fabricates libels against our community members and abuses them," declared Yoel 'Yoelish' Kraus, the 'operations officer' of the staunchly anti-Zionist haredi communal organization.

Speaking on Army Radio Wednesday morning, Kraus's statement came after a night of haredi riots in the capital, protesting the arrest of a Jerusalem woman apparently suffering from a psychiatric disorder, whose arrest for allegedly near-starving her three-year-old son to death was made public by police on Tuesday.

The mother of four, a member of the extreme Natorei Karta hassidic sect in Jerusalem who is five months pregnant, is suspected of severely abusing her child for two years, until he weighed a mere 7 kilograms, according to police investigators.

She was arrested last week during a meeting with a social worker.

In response, scores of haredi protesters took to the streets Tuesday night, setting garbage bins on fire on Rehov Bar-Ilan and in the Mea She'arim neighborhood, snarling traffic in the area, Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said. [...]