A child sex abuse scandal in Australia’s Jewish community has spilled into America, as a pending extradition, arrests in Australia and a slew of cover-up allegations put that community’s response to molestation under scrutiny.
Australian police are seeking to extradite convicted child molester David Kramer, currently in jail in Farmington, Mo., on suspicion of having abused children at a Chabad school in Melbourne during the 1990s. [...]
Waks, 35, who has been the catalyst for revelations about the Melbourne abuse scandal, told the Forward he was molested by Velvel Serebryanski, son of a prominent Chabad rabbi, at two Melbourne synagogues during the late 1980s.
Serebryanski, who goes by the name Zev Sero in New York, did not deny the allegations when a Forward reporter asked him about them at his Brooklyn home. [...]
The accusations against Serebreyanski are 16 years old. He has visited Australia several times since. Does this indicate that the gov't didn't find the story all that compelling?
ReplyDeleteWhy was one boy allegedly victimized by a number of men in unrelated incidents? Why him? Is there some kind of profile that makes someone more likely to be a victim? Or is only one accusation authentically the way he remembers, and the others products of the emotional baggage?
Still, the notion of a rabbi protecting his own by sending a potential danger to some place where they won't know the risk is just plain scary. Did they think they knew how to assess and dismiss the possibility that the risk was real? And if so, how did they attempt to do so?
Micha,
ReplyDeleteYou and I both know Zev. I haven't discussed this with him, nor do I know whether there are other allegations against him apart from Menachem Waks. In the meanwhile, if Zev did perpetrate this, I expect that he would come forth and make himself available to the authorities if they decide to press charges against him. I have seen enough, unfortunately, to expect the unexpected and to not use any "rules of logic" or "common sense" in trying to understand both the phenomenon of molesters, let alone the frailty of their victims.