Modern day witch trial: Day care owners were falsely imprisoned for 21 years because of satanic abuse hysteria

 AP  Former day care owners who spent 21 years in prison before being freed amid questions over their convictions for child abuse involving satanic rituals are struggling to convince prosecutors that they should be fully exonerated.

Dan and Fran Keller, who divorced in prison, were freed on bond last year when the only physical evidence against them was found to be a mistake. They had been convicted in 1992 after therapists testified that they helped three children recover memories of satanic rituals and sexual abuse at an Austin preschool the Kellers operated.

The Kellers, who always denied the charges, want the courts to throw out their convictions. But a year after they were freed from prison, Travis County prosecutors remain unwilling to proclaim them innocent, the Austin American-Statesman (http://bit.ly/129h789) reported Sunday.[...]

"It's so hard to prove you're innocent when there was never a crime," she said.

The Kellers had been sentenced to 48 years in prison.

During their trial, the only physical evidence came from an emergency room doctor who testified that internal lacerations on one child were evidence of abuse. But in court documents filed in 2013, Dr. Michael Mouw says what he thought were lacerations were actually normal physiology.[...]

Psychologists were behind the accusations

KXAN

That summer, a three-year-old girl at Fran’s Day Care in Oak Hill accused Dan of sexual abuse. Within weeks, more children, all patients of the same child psychologist, made similar claims against both of the Kellers. They were ultimately accused of the satanic, ritual abuse of the children in their care.

“I think they were coerced into making allegations,” said Fran. “Their parents, they were taking them to psychologists. I think the psychologists coerced them into thinking and saying things because the child is not going to say something that didn’t happen. The child is going to listen to who is talking and the seed is planted.”

During their six-day trial, an emergency room medical doctor testified as the prosecution’s expert and provided the only physical evidence in the case. Dr. Michael Mouw, who examined the three-year-old accuser, said she had internal injuries that could only be caused by physical abuse. [...]

Rav Moshe Twersky HY"D — Savior of the American Soloveitchik Dynasty by RaP

update: Sections that were seen as inappropriate have been removed.

Guest post by RaP

"Tzadikim Are Greater In Death Than In Life!" (Talmud) 

An incredible thing has just happened, but few realize it, admit it, or know what to call it. The name "Rabbi Moshe Twersky" ("RMT") was essentially unknown in the broader Haredi world – until the recent Har Nof Massacre. He was the son of the late Rav Yitzchok (Isadore) Twersky ZT"L, son of the Tolner Rebbe of Boston, and of Dr. Atara Soloveitchik, daughter of the famous Rav J.B. Soloveitchik ZT"L in America. RMT was among those murdered in cold blood while in deep prayer in a famous shull in Har Nof.< Within minutes of his murder everyone knew that someone famous was among those martyred on that terrible day. The irony is that until his death he made sure to maintain his "obscurity" and "anonymity" and it seems that really only his immediate family, a few of his elite teachers and mentors, only his very closest students at the Toras Moshe Yeshiva he taught at for at least 20 years, and maybe a handful of his neighbors and some select colleagues knew about him and who he REALLY was. RMT went to extraordinary lengths utilizing genuine humility to be a humble servant of the Lord, seeking no glory for himself, and making sure that to the world at large he was just another one among millions and billions of "everymen"! All of a sudden following his bloody death, the Jewish, Orthodox and Haredi media is paying attention to him in a way that would NEVER have happened in real life, and something he would evidently never had allowed let alone condoned.[...] 

Suddenly, for those who read the Yated, Hamodia, Jewish Press, Mishpacha, Ami, even the Jewish Week, Forward and many others like them, the name of Rav Moshe Twersky, heir to not one but two unique dynasties, the Soloveitchik Talmudic geniuses and the Twersky Hasidic Rebbes becomes known "overnight" and what is told about him is truly a great wonder that appears like a sudden blinding flash of light that is shockingly revealed – paradoxically not during his lifetime, but immediately following his dramatic death.

Suddenly the Haredi media mentions that he was the grandson of Rav Yoshe Ber Soloveitchik (not Rabbi Dr. J. B. Soloveitchik of Yeshiva University as he was known) and the son of the previous Tolner Rebbe of Boston (not Dr. or Professor Isadore Twersky of Harvard University as he was known). [...]

So the "frum" media meanders back and forth. So far not one has mentioned anything about the name of this great man: Moshe? Why? It is very strange indeed. First of all RMT was probably named for his own grandfather Rav "Moshe Soloveichik (1879–1941)...was the second son of renowned Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik and grandson of the Beis HaLevi. He married Pesya Feinstein, daughter of the renowned Rabbi of Pruzany, Rabbi Eliyahu Feinstein, and first cousins with Rabbi Moshe Feinstein" (Wikipedia) – so this is truly the aristocracy of the Torah world. Then there is the name of the yeshiva where RMT was a Rosh Yeshiva at Toras Moshe Yeshiva (affectionately known as "ToMo"), named for Rav Moshe Soloveitchik ZT"L.

So far, the Haredi media is printing a lot of stories and anecdotal tales from relatively minor and obscure sources and avoiding getting into almost any descriptions and history of exactly who and the stature of Rav Moshe Soloveitchik, son of Rav Chaim Soloveitchik ZT"L, and father of the famous Rabbi J.B. Soloveitchik who was known as "the Rav" to his thousands of students. It is known in the Torah world that the "yerusha" of Rav Chaim of Brisk ZT"L was "split" between Rav Moshe Soloveitchik who "inherited" the "Nezikin" part of the family moving first to Warsaw and then to America, while the most famous Rav Yitzchok Zev Soloveitchik ZT"L, known as Rav Velvel, or the Brisker Rov took the "Kodshim" part and went to Eretz Yisroel and founded the well-known Brisker Yeshivos in Israel that still study only Kodshim.

RMT chose to be a disciple of both wings of his mother's family. While "informally" RMT delved into Kabbalah and became known as an informal "[Hasidic] Rebbe" to his students in the Yeshiva Toras Moshe where he taught. RMT was regarded by Rabbi J.B. Soloveitchik as not just one of his four all-time greatest talmidim, but also by the current Brisker Yeshiva of Rav Dovid Soloveitchik SHLIT"A as one of its greatest talmidim.

Thus RMT bridged two continents and much more than that he healed and solidified and made respectable the bonds between the American and Israeli sides of Brisk that had been in a "stand-off" and even a war of words from the time the Israeli Briskers became the arch-Charedim so to speak in the Litvish Torah world, while in America, Rabbi J.B. Soloveitchik who had once been a member of the original Agudah Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah in America left to become the arch-leader of Modern Orthodox Judaism and of the Mizrachi Religious Zionist movement, that split the Soloveitchik family in two distinct segments until now when Rav Moshe Twersky, IN HIS DEATH, has done the seemingly impossible of uniting the families as they move into the ;FUTURE realizing they have more in common than even they realized. This is no less than what happened in the time of Rebbi Akiva, who lost 24,000 students but his REAL "yerusha" and lineage continues through the five talmidim that TRULY continued his line. Rav Moshe Twersky seems to have died as a "korban" for something much greater much like Rebbi Akiva did Al Pi Kiddush HaShem Berabim in the midst of Holy Prayers!

Who would have thought that literally behind the scenes, that Rabbi J.B. Soloveitchik while he was and is rightfully hailed as the rabbi who gave semicha to more Orthodox rabbis in his own lifetime than anyone else and who prided himself on his independence, was nurturing his own highly traditional grandson, the now martyred Rav Moshe Twersky in an entirely different image than what was assumed to be going on. RMT has been revealed for the whole world to see OPENLY as a genuine Illui, Tzadik, Nistar, Mekubal, someone well-versed in every part of the Torah and even in worldly matters on a standard higher than most Talmidei Chachomim of his generation (RMT was only 59 when he was murdered).< And then there is RMT's grandfather on his mother's side Rav Moshe Soloveitchik the leading Rosh Yeshiva at Yeshivas Yitschak Elchonon (RIETS) brought there by the pioneering Rabbi Dr. Bernard Revel. Rav Moshe Soloveitchik was an undisputed great Gaon, Torah giant and all-around genius in his own right, whose sudden death in 1941 propelled his son Rabbi J.B. Soloveitchik to assume the mantle of leadership at RIETS and as one of modernity's leading Talmudists, Jewish Philosophers and Halachists.

The Haredi and Orthodox media is not giving enough, if any, attention to Rav Moshe Soloveitchik and it is a great shame because they are missing a great link. It was Rav Moshe Soloveitchik who brought the Soloveitchik and Brisker dynasty to America.

Now it has been proven that for all the controversy about how and why to deal with the challenges to the Torah World posed by Modernity, Zionism, and Secular Knowledge, at the end of the day there is nothing to be ashamed of because the great "egg" that was finally "hatched" was none other than the greatest of all of this process that is embodied and now enshrined in the Holy Memory and Glowing Torah Light that was Rav Moshe Twersky ZT"L, HY"D, May HKB"H Avenge His Innocent and Pure Spilled Blood that Poured Out In a Sanctuary of Tefila, Avoda and Torah in the Holy City of Yerushalayim!

MK Miri Regev notes that women can be victimizers and not just victims.

Arutz 7    Israel marked the UN's International Day for Eliminating Violence Against Women this week, but one Knesset Committee took the opportunity to note that women can be victimizers and not just victims.

The Knesset's Internal Affairs and Environmental Protection Committee devoted a special session week to the subject of domestic violence, as part of the Knesset's activities marking November 25, the International Day for Eliminating Violence Against Women, which was declared by the UN in 1999.

The day was also marked by the Knesset's Committee for Advancement of Women's Status, but Internal Affairs Committee Chairwoman MK Miri Regev (Likud) took a more inclusive approach than the one exhibited in the Committee for Advancement of Women's Status. The Internal Affairs Committee is charged, among other things, with supervising the Israel Police.

MK Regev remarked to the committee that domestic violence is also perpetrated by women, and that its victims include children and men. In this, she departed from the “politically correct” line that is usually heard in the Knesset on November 25. [...]

Consequences of easy divorce: Divorced Mothers Turning to Prostitution

Arutz 7   Dozens of divorced Israeli mothers have joined the prostitution trade in Eilat, as divorce rates skyrocket.

Dozens of divorced and separated Israeli mothers have joined the sex trade in the southern city of Eilat, according to a report on Channel 2 News's website.

The new trend can be seen as a byproduct of Israel's growing divorce rate, which studies say has reached 40% in just the first ten years of marriage.

According to the report, Eilat brothels disguised as massage parlors used to employ women brought into Israel for prostitution from the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe, but after the security fence was built along the border with Sinai, Bedouin smugglers are no longer able to bring these women into Israel. 

Their place has been taken, in large part, by Israeli women, many of whom are divorced or recently separated mothers. The report quotes several of them as saying that they are able to make 20,000 shekels (over $5,000) or more a month in prostitution, while their former jobs earned them a quarter of that amount. [...]

Under pressure from radical women's groups, Israel has adopted a plethora of policies that encourage women to divorce - including meaningful financial benefits that are offered to separated and divorced women regardless of the circumstances of the divorce.

Fighting Child Trafficking

Huffington Post     by Alec Baldwin

Here is a letter to me from Rob Morris, just back from a recent trip on behalf of his child trafficking rescue organization, Love 146.

Dear Alec,

Just got in from my trip to the Philippines and it was amazing. I think people too often only talk about the horror and despair surrounding child trafficking and exploitation (which is a reality), but not enough about the hope, empowerment and change that is also just as much of a reality.

As I mentioned in my email, while in the Philippines I had the privilege of being part of two weddings for girls who were rescued years ago, were brought to our safe home, went through our program and were reintegrated back into a community. They came back to our safe home because they wanted to have their weddings there. It was amazing and beautiful. It was so humbling and such an honor to be a part of it.

While there, I was also able to spend time with girls who are currently in the safe home as well as several who had graduated from the home and are now living in communities and holding down good jobs. One of the girls I met with is Amanda. Amanda's past of abuse and exploitation began when she was eight. She was eventually trafficked throughout different provinces and even sold on the Internet. She was rescued when she was 14 and then moved from institution to institution. Her greatest desire was to go to school. Because she was unable to attend school in these institutions she ran away and began working in bars and ended up being exploited again.

Rescued again, she came into Love146's care. We lost no time putting Amanda in a home study program in our safe home that would allow her to learn at her own pace. At age 17 she began at a fourth grade level. After just one year, she passed exams that allowed her to skip high school and go on to college. During college we continued to support her with private tutoring. She has now finished her courses and passed qualifying exams to become a professional caregiver. She is now able to work in hospitals, schools, and other facilities with children, adults and the elderly. 

How many times does a girl need to be rescued before she is free? For Amanda, the answer was until she was given access to education. [...]

How do responsible Jewish organizations respond to abuse allegations?

The Jewish Week     The revelation that one of the most respected rabbis in our community is alleged to be an abusive Peeping Tom has come as a shock. Unfortunately, the allegations against Rabbi Barry Freundel in Washington, D.C., are but the latest in a long string of abuse cases that have come to light over the past few decades. The one thing that they all have in common is that they all had warning signs. There were always things that did not seem right or behavior that was bizarre. Many people were holding pieces of the puzzle but there was no one to put them all together. This is the crux of the crisis facing our community. How do we protect our children and institutions from those who seek to abuse others? [...]

In the wake of the 2000 Jewish Week expose by Gary Rosenblatt on the decades’-long abusive behavior by Rabbi Lanner, who was NCSY’s director of regions, the OU formed a commission to investigate. It became clear very quickly that many lay and professional leaders knew about the abusive behavior, but everyone claimed they only knew a piece of the puzzle. No one was putting it all together. Thus was born the NCSY ombudsman. A position was created so that all complaints would be filtered through one person, independent of the organization and therefore unbiased.

Fast forward to January 2005. That was when I became the international director of NCSY and assumed responsibility for the ombudsman. At the time the system was in place but left much to be desired in terms of accomplishing its goals. I realized that when I was handed a folder full of ombudsman complaints. Unfortunately, the files were generally incomplete. The complaints mostly consisted of emails that had been put in a file. There was no systematic filing system for abuse complaints. More importantly, there was no conclusion ascribed to the complaints. It was impossible to know what had happened and how each issue was resolved. This is not uncommon in the Jewish community, where there is much turnover of staff and little institutional memory.

Aside from the filing issues, another pressing matter was brought to my attention. When the NCSY ombudsman was put into place, there were no guidelines in terms of what fell within the discretion of the overseer. Often, after an employee was let go from the organization, inevitable anonymous complaints would be submitted to the ombudsman complaining about that person’s supervisor. This wasted a lot of time and effort on things that should have been handled by the human resources department. [...]

Ferguson grand jury's extraordinary efforts to establish truth - but does it matter?

NY Times  Officer Wilson’s version of events was just one part of a vast catalog of testimony and other evidence that the grand jurors absorbed during the three months that they heard the case. Yet it appeared to have helped convince the jurors, a group of nine whites and three African-Americans, that the officer had committed no crime when he killed Mr. Brown. On Monday, the announcement that there was no indictment set off violent protests, burning and looting throughout the beleaguered St. Louis suburb of Ferguson.

Most grand jury proceedings are swift and simple: a few witnesses are called, the prosecutor makes the case for an indictment and the jurors vote.

But the grand jury in the Wilson case met for an extraordinarily long session, hearing what the prosecutor said was “absolutely everything” that could be considered testimony or evidence in the case. While what happens in the grand jury room is almost always kept secret, Mr. McCulloch insisted on making the transcripts of the proceedings available to the public immediately after the session concluded. Unlike most defendants, Officer Wilson testified before the grand jury.

The grand jurors in the Wilson case met in a St. Louis County courthouse on 25 separate days. They heard 70 hours of testimony from roughly 60 witnesses. And they confronted a jumble of forensics reports, police radio logs, medical documents and tapes of F. B. I interviews with bystanders. [...]

'Vanished' Millionaire Guma Aguiar's Estate Divided among Heirs

Warning letter from his lawyer

 

Arutz 7    Two years after Aguiar mysteriously disappeared, 9 Jerusalem properties worth $44 million to be split between his mother, sisters and wife.

The estate of Guma Aguiar, the Jewish philanthropist who disappeared off Fort Lauderdale in June, 2012, has been divided among his heirs by a Florida court, reports Yediot Aharonot.

The court approved a compromise agreed upon by Aguiar's wife, Jamie, and his mother, Ellen, along with his sisters Adriana and Angelika.

The sides had been in conflict over the estate, with each side claiming all of the estate for itself, and Jamie insisting at first that her husband was still alive. Jamie accused her mother-in-law of wanting to drive a wedge between her and Guma, while Ellen said that the reason Guma went out to sea on the day he disappeared was that he was distraught after Jamie told him she wants to divorce him. Jamie completely denies this version of events.

Rav Belsky as a teacher of Torah and as a role model after a series of problematic events?

For many of us, Rav Belsky has been a role model for many years. He is a giant in Torah knowledge. He has been selflessly and readily available for halachic questions and advice. He is one of the leading experts on kashrus in the world and the basis for the reputation of OU Kashrus. He is also an independent thinker - even going against the accepted wisdom for that which he views as true.

Unfortunately events in recent years have raised major question about his judgment. His strong defense of Kolko of Torah Temima, Kolko of New Jersey where he also strongly attacked the abuse victim's father and falsely accused him of being a moser and a molester. The revelation of his role in the torture of husbands in get cases. Gedolim have denounced him in other divorce cases for questionable tactics. What does that mean about his being a role model and gadol? Why does the OU continue to employ him when his values clearly are inconsistent with theirs?

I have received enough emails that have convinced me that I am not the only one who is strongly bothered by the question. More importantly why this is the elephant in the room that everybody tries not to see? Is he simply too big to fail? See Chazon Ish: Lashon Harah about gedolim

RCA acknowledges R Belsky's views on abuse are problematic

R Belsky's contradictory statements about not going to police for abuse 

Rabbi Goldin president of RCA discusses Rav Belsky's views

Rav Aharaon Schecter and Rav Miller criticize Rav Belsky

Rav Belsky, Mendel Epstein and torturing husbands

Abduction and torture of Rabbi Rubin

Rav Belsky accuses father of being a moser and molester

Torture of Rabbi Avraham Rubin to give a get

Rav Belsky's support of child molesters

Support for Lakewood Kolko

Rav Sternbuch's psak to report Kolko to police

Involvement in the Friedman Epstein divorce case

Friedman case - See page 3 of Rav Gestetner bitul seruv
 

Burying objects with the deceased - what is the source of the practice?

Someone just asked me about the appropriateness of burying objects with the deceased. Below is a description of the Lubavitcher Rebbe's wife being buried with a ring. Similarly Rabbi Shlomo Freifeld was buried with some of the wood of his dining room table as a zechus for the tremendous kiruv work he accomplished at his Shabbos table. Does anyone have a source for the practice?



 From Telushkin, Joseph (2014-06-10). Rebbe: The Life and Teachings of Menachem M. Schneerson, the Most Influential Rabbi in Modern History (Kindle Locations 6683-6687). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Per Chabad custom, no eulogies were delivered. A twenty-member motorcycle police guard escorted the procession from Crown Heights. Also accompanying the Rebbetzin was a ring given to her by her sister Sheina, who was murdered in Treblinka; the Rebbe instructed that the ring be interred with her. The last line on the Rebbetzin’s matzevah (monument), after various honorifics about Chaya Mushka and her parents, mentions her sister, “the righteous Rebbetzin Sheina.

Multiple Personality Hoax - or How psychiatrists messed up the lives of thousands

NY Times   The notion that a person might embody several personalities, each of them distinct, is hardly new. The ancient Romans had a sense of this and came up with Janus, a two-faced god. In the 1880s, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” a novella that provided us with an enduring metaphor for good and evil corporeally bound. Modern comic books are awash in divided personalities like the Hulk and Two-Face in the Batman series. Even heroic Superman has his alternating personas.

But few instances of the phenomenon captured Americans’ collective imagination quite like “Sybil,” the study of a woman said to have had not two, not three (like the troubled figure in the 1950s’ “Three Faces of Eve”), but 16 different personalities. Alters, psychiatrists call them, short for alternates. As a mass-market book published in 1973, “Sybil” sold in the millions. Tens of millions watched a 1976 television movie version. The story had enough juice left in it for still another television film in 2007.

Sybil Dorsett, a pseudonym, became the paradigm of a psychiatric diagnosis once known as multiple personality disorder. These days, it goes by a more anodyne label: dissociative identity disorder. Either way, the strange case of the woman whose real name was Shirley Ardell Mason made itself felt in psychiatrists’ offices across the country. Pre-"Sybil,” the diagnosis was rare, with only about 100 cases ever having been reported in medical journals. Less than a decade after “Sybil” made its appearance, in 1980, the American Psychiatric Association formally recognized the disorder, and the numbers soared into the thousands. [...]

As retold in this latest video documentary from Retro Report, part of a series exploring past news stories and their consequences, the phenomenon burned most intensely for roughly a decade, from the mid-1980s to the mid-'90s. Then it faded from public view, partly the result of lawsuits brought successfully against some psychiatrists, who were found by the courts to have used dubious methods to lead their patients down the path of false memories.[...]

Dr. Wilbur did not write up her findings in some dry professional journal. Instead, she went looking for a large audience, and enlisted a writer, Flora Rheta Schreiber, to produce what became a blockbuster. But as the years passed, challengers began to speak up. One was Herbert Spiegel, a New York psychiatrist who said that he had treated Ms. Mason when Dr. Wilbur was on vacation. Dr. Spiegel described his patient not as a sufferer of multiple personality disorder but, rather, as a readily suggestible “hysteric.” A harsher judgment was rendered in the 1990s by Robert Rieber, a psychologist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, a New York City school where Ms. Schreiber taught English. After listening to tape recordings that he said Ms. Schreiber had given him, he concluded that “it is clear from Wilbur’s own words that she was not exploring the truth but rather planting the truth as she wanted it to be.” Debbie Nathan, a writer interviewed for this Retro Report documentary, piled on still more skepticism in her 2011 book, “Sybil Exposed.” Perhaps inevitably in a dispute of this sort, counter-revisionists then emerged to denounce the doubters and to defend “Sybil” as rooted in reality.

Overwhelmingly, those receiving a diagnosis of the disorder have been women. They typically had rough childhoods. A pattern to their stories — Ms. Mason fell squarely within it — was that they endured horrific physical and sexual abuse when they were little. More than a few claimed to have been the victims of torture at the hands of satanic cults. In many cases, their memories were brought to the surface through hypnotism or with injections of so-called truth serums like sodium pentothal. But were those recollections real? The “Sybil” phenomenon went arm in arm with a reassessment of certain psychiatric techniques. Some studies concluded that people may have become less inhibited with pharmacological intervention, but not necessarily more truthful. Other research found that hypnosis sometimes creates false memories. Those who dismiss Dr. Wilbur’s work as hokum say that induced false memories lay at the heart of her work with Ms. Mason. [...]