Please reread the transcript of Rabbi Berkovitz talk about satanic abuse in Sanhedria Murchevet - then read this article regarding the allegations of satanic abuse in Nachlaot. Sounds familiar doesn't it. It is also interesting that Rav Berkowitz thought the allegations in Nachlaot were too unbelievable to be true - until he started hearing the same unbelievable allegations in his neighborhood.
BTW does anyone know who is Rav Berkovitz's relying on for his views and understanding? Any relationship to those who were involved in Nachlaot? Please note that of all the hundreds of charges of satantic child abuse and all the trials and even convinctions - all have been thrown after being reconsidered
Of interest I received a call today from someone who politely asked me to take down the recording of Rav Berkovitz as well as the transcript. I told him if he can convince Rav Sternbuch that they need to be taken down - I would be willing to comply - otherwise they stay.
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The neighborhood of Nahlaot in Jerusalem is
less a single neighborhood than a cluster of smaller semi-distinct
neighborhoods that, beginning in the 1870s, grew incrementally as the
city’s population expanded beyond the Old City. Batei Rand and Batei
Broydes are two of these clusters, each with a few hundred residents.
Both are overwhelmingly Haredi and built around semi-enclosed
courtyards. The apartments are continuous and are stacked on two levels,
the upper one accessible via a shared, wrap-around balcony. Most of the
apartments are single-entrance and open into the courtyard, so there is
little privacy, and the residents are, for the most part, very poor.
Most families don’t own their home, but instead lease it on extremely
favorable terms from a charitable organization. Many of the families
have been in the neighborhood for generations, and the area, marked by
labyrinthine cobblestone alleyways, Jerusalem stone, and gardens, has
long been beloved by those that live there.
“It was the most quaint, amazing, incredible, peaceful, loving
community,” a former resident recently told me. “A place where religious
and secular got along with each other. It was like an example of what
Israel could be.”
All of this changed in October 2010, when a 44-year-old man named Binyamin Satz was arrested. Satz is mentally handicapped, and
court documents
note that he is on state disability, has schizophrenia, Tourette’s
syndrome, and “a non-specific eating disorder.” According to his lawyer,
Roy Politi, he eats “only bread and cheese, but not when they are
touching.” Politi told me that Satz weighs less than 90 lbs. A neighbor
described Satz as “very strange, very slight,” with an “extremely
pronounced twitch from his shoulder to head.” Politi described Satz as
“functioning like a 12-year-old kid.” [...]
To date, more than 70 children, nearly all from
Haredi families in the tight-knit community of Nahlaot, have been
interviewed by Social Services and have claimed to suffer severe sexual,
psychological, physical, and ritual abuse at the hands of nearly 60
individuals. At least another 50 children have claimed abuse, though
they were not interviewed by Social Services. The children have
identified the perpetrators either by name or by telling
characteristics: the one with the ponytail, the one who exercises, the
filmer, the one with a walker, the one who wears a knitted kippah, and
so on. Those accused include American immigrants, middle-aged men,
elderly women (nearly half of those accused are female), geriatric
couples, teenagers, mother-son teams, mentally handicapped individuals,
at least one Arab, suspected Christian missionaries, and, more recently,
a few prominent members of the community, including a rabbi. Some of
those who have been identified by one or more children are unaware, or
appear to be unaware, that they have been accused.
There was no hint of pedophilia in the
community before October 2010. But the Haredi community in Nahlaot now
believes that the highly organized ring has been operating secretly for
years—possibly generations—and is governed by an elaborate hierarchy.
According to community members with whom I’ve spoken over the past year,
they believe that a small number of masterminds, including the
70-year-old Vorst, a convert to Judaism who directs Ohel Sarah Imenu, an
organization that facilitates Haredi conversions, used formerly abused
teenagers and mentally handicapped locals as scouts for the victims.
Community members believe that these scouts watched the children and
parents from outdoor locations that offered prime vantage points—under
the guise of tending gardens, doing calisthenics, or panhandling—and
memorized their schedules, recording when the children would be
unsupervised. The pedophiles noted the schedules of various homeowners,
residents of Nahlaot claim, and they allegedly snuck into dozens of
apartments and sheds in the neighborhood in order to abuse the children,
who have pointed out these locations to their parents. Many are
convinced that there are Christian missionary motivations at play here
and that false converts have infiltrated their community. A number of
locals told me they believe that the videos and media produced by the
pedophile ring are being sold for tens of thousands of dollars or more.
The Nahlaot situation is already widely referred to as the
worst pedophile case in Israel
’s
history. This is a phenomenal understatement. If true, this would be,
in terms of the number of perpetrators and the scope of conspiracy,
unprecedented in known criminal history. Indeed, not only that: It would
be the first proven instance of an association generally acknowledged
to be the great white whale of sex crimes. “To be perfectly blunt,” said
Dorothy Rabinowitz, a member of the
Wall Street Journal’s editorial board who won a Pulitzer Prize for her
extensive coverage of such cases, “there is no such thing as a pedophile ring.” [....]
By late 2010, dozens of children had told
their parents they were abused, and the circle of accused kept growing.
The acts reported by the children, nearly all between the ages of 3 and
9, are incredibly horrific and often very bizarre. Virtually none of the
allegations involve only one molester and one victim; the children have
consistently claimed multiple offenders and multiple victims. There are
reports of orgies involving as many as 20 adults and more than a dozen
children. There were, allegedly, frequent raping and forced sodomy of
children as young as 2 years old. The children claim that various
objects—including large branches, semi-automatic rifles, screwdrivers,
and other carpenter’s tools—were forcibly stuck up their anuses and
other orifices; that knives were held to their throats; that they were
told that if they didn’t voluntarily return to be raped, they would be
“chopped up into little pieces,” or that their entire families would be
murdered. They claim that they were shown, by way of threat, the guns
that would be used for this purpose and told that cameras had been
installed in their homes to ascertain their silence. The children claim
that they were, on various occasions, bound up and beaten, held on top
of open flames, lashed with sticks, burned with chemicals, given soft
drinks spiked with hallucinogens, and injected with drugs.
The majority of the allegations include reports
of video-recording and photography, and the children say they were
forced to watch pornographic movies and violent sexual encounters
between their abusers. Some children say they were abducted at night
from their homes, viciously abused, and returned to their beds. Others
say they were abducted from school and then returned. Babysitters were
said to be threatened with severe physical punishment or death unless
they brought the children in their care to the pedophiles. There are
reports of witches, magic doors, secret basements, and large dogs used
to intimidate the children. Many allegations include elements of ritual
and Christian abuse, including forced prostration and benedictions,
sexual acts involving massive iron crosses, and various other forms of
foreign worship. Some children say they were taken to a nearby church,
where they were abused by priests, as well as other undercover
Christians.
But after a few confused and shell-shocked
months, the community began to organize itself in late 2011. Parents
began raising awareness via
personal blogs and websites, spearheading
fundraising campaigns for therapy and legal fees, and organizing various sympathetic newspaper and radio
reports.
Most significantly, the community found a central organizing force in
Altea Steinherz, an American therapist who lives in Rechavia, a
neighborhood adjacent to Nahlaot. Steinherz, who specializes in
addictions and eating disorders, began devoting herself on a volunteer
basis to the alleged victims and their cause. “This [case] is not going
to go away by itself,” Steinherz told me.
Steinherz arranged interviews with police and lawyers for most of the
families, many of whom, according to Steinherz, “simply have no idea
what to do in a situation like this.” Steinherz does not have a degree
in psychology or abuse counseling; she has a certificate called a CASAC,
which certifies her to do alcohol- and substance-abuse counseling.
Nevertheless, in late 2011 she emerged as the strategist and spokesman
for the cause: directing the collection and dissemination of
information, raising awareness and support, and coordinating the
collection of testimonies and any available evidence. She’s also
organized PR and media campaigns—critical work, since many of the Haredi
residents of Nahlaot don’t have the Internet.[...]
Cases similar to Nahlaot’s, many whose
particulars are even more extreme, have occurred frequently in the past,
particularly in the 1980s and early 1990s, with as many as 500 or more
children reporting horrific and fantastic abuse at the hands of dozens,
or even hundreds, of adults. In order to classify and recognize these
cases, the FBI’s Kenneth Lanning, who worked in the Behavioral Science
Unit from 1981 until 2000, developed a
model
that describes what he termed “multi-dimensional sex rings.” (This
term, Lanning admits, never really caught on; more frequently used is
“ritual abuse,” “organized abuse,” or “satanic/sadistic ritual abuse.”)
The model delineates four criteria: multiple offenders and multiple
victims who are considerably younger than “standard” pedophile victims;
the victims are controlled and coerced primarily through fear; the abuse
occurs in communities that are insular and ultra-conservative; and at
least some of the abuse in question is extreme, grotesque, or
incorporates ritualistic aspects.
A study of past cases reveals startling similarities: The accusation
always begins with a single complaint and is always parent-driven. The
children’s accounts contain fabulous or impossible elements—magic
tunnels, bullets that find their target, walls and people that
disappear, and so on. The conspiracies being alleged are far-reaching
and highly improbable. There are untrained professionals involved
driving the investigations. There are nearly always claims of video
recording and of being forced to watch porn and adults having sex.
This history is relevant because, to borrow
Lanning’s term, a multi-dimensional sex ring has never once been
substantiated. Never, despite the enormity of the crimes in question,
and despite the numbers of times they’ve been alleged, has any
independently corroborated evidence been found. Many of the children who
testified in these cases have, as adults, recanted their testimonies,
and courts have, over the years, turned over convictions that were based
purely on children’s testimonies. In the most famous of these cases—the
McMartin preschool trial
in California, which ran from 1984 through 1990 and in which more than
350 children claimed they had been abused at their daycare center—every
single allegation was thrown out. [...]
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