Friday, April 1, 2011

Increased awareness of sexual abuse amongst Orthodox women


Haaretz

Last Wednesday, the day after former President Moshe Katsav was sentenced, Tirza Frenkel, vice-principal of Tehilla, a state-religious girls' high school in Jerusalem, was planning to discuss the case in her 12th-grade civics class. But even earlier, she says, students stopped her in the hall and asked her to address the matter.

Frenkel has a reputation at the school for devoting a lot of attention to sexual abuse, in general, and to the Moshe Katsav affair in particular. The issue preoccupied students throughout the trial (which began in the summer of 2009 ), she says, and discussions were held in classrooms at high points in the proceedings, such as after the verdict.

"I used the case in civics classes to describe court proceedings, to explain what a plea bargain is and why Katsav turned it down - and to discuss sexual abuse," Frenkel says. "In Orthodox parlance, we talk about how every woman was created in the divine image, and therefore has a right to her body and must not be violated."

She told her students that "the personal message to all of you is that you has the right to safeguard your body and to do with it as you see fit, and nobody has the right to demand anything else." [...]

3 comments:

  1. I wouldn't take a Haaretz article seriously.

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  2. Anyone know what happened to that Israeli Chasidic female-principal who was chased out of Melbourne for sexually abusing girls in her school?

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  3. Dovy- Yes last I heard, she was living in Emmanuel. She is apparently being monitored, but how much can be done by watching her movements, is anybody's guess.
    Also, I did hear she was running a gan there, but again, when no formal charges have been made, you can't do much else, in terms of intervention.

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