Pediatrician in Abuse Case Killed Himself

NYTimes

Dr. Melvin D. Levine, a nationally known pediatrician who was found dead last week, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, a medical examiner said on Friday.

Dr. Levine, 71, was found in the woods near his Rougemont, N.C., home with a gunshot wound to his forehead. His death was reported a day after a class-action sexual abuse and malpractice suit was filed against him in Boston. [...]

Rabbi Akiva said not to live in community run by rabbis

Pesachim (112a): There were seven things that Rabbi Akiva instructed his son Rabbi Yehoshua,…Do not live in a town whose leaders are Torah scholars [because they are absorbed in their studies and not with community affairs – Rashi]…

Brooklyn Rabbi-Therapist Accused Of Molesting client Since She Was 12

CBS News

A father was convinced his 16-year-old daughter was having a relationship with a 17-year-old boy, so the father set up a hidden camera in the house. What he recorded shocked him — what he saw the daughter doing to please the young man.

They are Orthodox Jews, in Brooklyn. The father had already taken the daughter to seek counseling with Rabbi Nechemya Weberman in years past. Just as he had taken her older sister. It is a common practice in the community for a respected person to be a counselor, or serve as a therapist. Weberman is affiliated, police said, with Brooklyn’s United Talmudic Community, a yeshiva.

Now, the father went to the Brooklyn DA’s office with the tape, and Rabbi Weberman. The Brooklyn DA’s office has set up special channels of communication to bridge cultural gaps that might be beneficial to both sides. However, the more that investigators talked to the parties involved — especially when they spoke with them separately — the more that there were questions which indicated something was not right. Around Feb. 16, the girl told a counselor at school that the rabbi has been raping her for years. The counselor reported it, and when the investigators talked to her again, she claimed there were at least 16 incidents at 263 Classon Avenue, in the Clinton Hill section of Brooklyn, which serves as Weberman’s home and office. It is where the counseling sessions took place. The girl told investigators it began in 2007, when she was 12; and continued through 2010. [...]

Abuse Suspects, Your Calls Are Taped. Speak Up.

NYTimes

The men charged with beating, stabbing or burning their wives or girlfriends have plenty to say. Lately, their words have been used against them in New York courts as never before.

“I need you to prepare the kids to start lying,” one man said to his girlfriend. He had been charged with burning her face with a hot iron as she knelt in view of their children.

Another cooed “baby” to the girlfriend he was charged with grabbing by the hair and scratching with keys. “Whatever you do,” he directed, “do not speak to the D.A.”

A third insisted to his brother that he was surprised at all the blood after he used a kitchen knife on the woman he had been with since they were teenagers. “I just stuck her like a little,” he said. [...]

Foster care is not the best choice for most children with problem families

NYTimes

In my column this week I examined the work of an organization called Youth Villages, which offers intensive in-home services to help children in the foster care system return to their families, or extended families, wherever it is possible to do so safely. My point was to highlight the fact that this approach, which is vastly underutilized and underfunded, is proving to be superior to the current practices in the child welfare system. It’s now common for youth to remain in foster care or residential treatment for years. When they age out of these systems, many are unable to live successfully as adults.

Readers raised legitimate questions, including whether this strategy is safe. A number expressed doubts — even consternation — at the idea that Youth Villages could consider the troubled families who get entangled in the child welfare, mental health and juvenile justice systems as suitable for raising children. “For those hundreds of thousands of cases in which the parents create the unsafe environment, children should be removed from homes” explained Lucas from Champaign, Ill. (48). “[T]hat is, unless the author can justify leaving infants in the care of low-functioning addicts or toddlers in the care of convicted child sex offenders.” [...]

Internet:Human moderation for children's sites

NYTimes

Recently, though, the Webosaurs founder, Jacques Panis, decided that leather armor should be available only to premium members, who pay about $6 a month. Players with free membership would be denied that attire.

Then the Metaverse Mod Squad stepped in. The company employs moderators around the country who monitor the Webosaurs site to keep its users safe and happy.

In this instance, it told Webosaurs that if the change were made, the free users might abandon the Webosaurs world or turn on one another. In the end, the dinosaurs kept their armor, and Webosaurs avoided the possibility of alienating some of its 1.5 million registered users. [...]

Inside the private world of London's ultra-Orthodox Jews

Telegraph

On my way to meet Isaac Kornbluh, who runs the Schomrim neighbourhood patrol (the word means 'guardians’) in the Haredi Jewish enclave in Stamford Hill, I managed to misplace his address and found myself lost.

The Haredi – strictly-Orthodox Jews who trace their ancestry to 18th-century Eastern Euope – are one of the most close-knit, insular and private communities in Britain. More than 20,000 live in Stamford Hill, in north-east London. But it is a community, it seems, in which everybody knows everybody, and where a stranger is noticed.

As I fumbled through my notebook, a woman stopped. 'You look lost,’ she said helpfully. Ah, I wanted Isaac? First left, then right, number 16. [...]

Religious gays offered subsidized therapy to change sexual tendencies

YNET

Association of religious homosexuals sets up fund subsidizing treatments aimed at changing sexual tendencies. 'There is no clear ruling in the world of research that one can or cannot change,' explains organization's director [...]

Rav Sternbuch: Worthy Investments

Fish & Milk: Scribal Error determines halacha?

From Daas Torah - translation copyrighted

Aruch HaShulchan (Y.D. 87:15): ... Both fish and grasshoppers are not prohibited to be eaten together with milk – even rabbinically. It is clear that it is permitted to cook fish together with milk and eat the combination. In fact is the established practice in all Jewish communities to do. However you should be aware that there is a textual error that occured in the great halachic work, the Beis Yosef, which mistakenly states that one should not eat fish and milk together because it is dangerous (Orech Chaim 173:2). There the Beis Yosef had in fact intended to mention that meat and milk is dangerous together (not fish and milk). This textual error has already been pointed out by the Rema in Darchei Moshe. However some authorities wish to rule according to this error because they say that in fact in medical books it states that fish and milk are an unhealthy combination. But in fact that is not so, because Rabbeinu Bachye writes in his commentary to Mishpatim that the danger is eating fish together with cheese because it causes leprosy – and not fish and milk. Furthermore if fish and milk were dangerous than why wasn’t this mentioned in the Shulchan Aruch? Furthermore the whole world eats fish and milk and it is considered a quality meal. There is fact is no one who is concerned for this and it is possible to eat them together without any concern. [See Tosfos at the end of the first chapter of Mo’ed Koton]

Police captain reassigned for refusing to attend Islamic event

Fox News

The Tulsa Police Department is investigating a captain who refused an order to assign officers to attend an upcoming Islamic event because he said it would violate his religious beliefs.

Capt. Paul Fields was reassigned after he refused to order officers under his command to attend the Islamic Center of Tulsa’s Law Enforcement Appreciation Day, a spokesman for the department said.

“It is my opinion and that of my legal counsel that forcing me to enter a Mosque when it is not directly related to a police call for service is a violation of my Civil Rights,” Fields wrote in an internal police department memo obtained by Fox News. [...]

Abuse Case Tests Ohel’s Adherence To Reporting Laws

Jewish Week

As the story of child sexual abuse in the Orthodox community has unfolded over the last several years, the issue of when, and even whether, to report such allegations to law enforcement has emerged as perhaps the most important and the most complicated.

One of the focal points of this debate — report to secular authorities or deal with the problem from inside the community — has become Ohel Children's Home and Family Services, a social service agency based in Brooklyn. Ohel has earned high praise in the community for the services it provides for foster children. Its work dealing with sexual abusers, however, is much more controversial, with many advocates and observers accusing the agency of functioning in a way that does more to protect the reputation of the community than the safety of its children. [...]