Arutz 7Rape case shocks Jerusalem haredi community
Jerusalem prosecutors filed an indictment against a rabbi who served as a mashgiach at a yeshiva in the city, for a series of rapes carried against a number of female relatives over the course of several years.
The accused began his horrific campaign of abuse when his first victim was just six years old, and continued abusing her and other female relatives by various means of coercion and manipulation.
According to the indictment, the regarded his young victims as mere playthings to satisfy his perverted lusts, and took advantage of their naivete and vulnerability to gain total emotional control over them.
The indictment describes how he abused his position of respect within the community, and the fact that he had supported the immediate family of his primary victim (known as "A.") financially in the past.
He had attempted to justify his actions by perversely claiming they were not only permitted under Jewish law, but mandated. In some cases he even went as far as to claim his acts of abuse served to "purify" his victims spiritually and atone for sins their souls committed in "past lives", or to cure them of physical ailments.
In one particularly extreme incident relayed in the indictment, the accused secretly recorded leading haredi Rabbi Chaim Kaniyevsky issuing a halakhic ruling on a totally unrelated subject, then played it back to the accused and claimed the rabbi was in fact endorsing the abuser's actions, in order to persuade her against speaking out.
כתב אישום חמור הוגש נגד משגיח בישיבה בירושלים בגין שורת עבירות חמורות שביצע במשך שנים בבנות משפחתו מאז שהיו ילדות • "הפך את הנפגעות לכלי לסיפוק יצריו ותאוותיו" (חדשות, חרדים)
כתב אישום חמור הוגש היום (חמישי) אל בית המשפט המחוזי בעיר נגד רב ומשגיח בישיבה בעיר, בגין עבירות קשות של התעללות ותקיפות אכזריות במשך שנים בבנות משפחתו מאז היו ילדות קטנות.
יצוין כי מנזה מספר שנים שהחשוד אינו משמש כמשגיח בישיבה ועסק שם בעבודה אחרת. כתב האישום הוגש על ידי פרקליטות מחוז ירושלים, באמצעות עו"ד ארז פדן ועו"ד מרים בן גל.
על פי כתב האישום מעשיו של הנאשם ,שהינו דמות רוחנית מוכרת, החלו בהיותה של אחת המתלוננות כבת 6 ונמשכו במשך שנים ארוכות גם בבנות משפחה נוספות, תוך שימוש במצגי מרמה ומניפולציות מסוגים שונים.
הנאשם טען על פי כתב האישום באוזני הילדות כי המעשים מותרים על פי
Kikar HaShabbat - discussion of his "spiritual" development abuse technique
Update: I noticed today that the saplings had in fact not been broken and taken for burning - perhaps the boys took their "avodah" elsewhere after I objected. If so then the claim that this was just a case of "boys will be boys" is obviously wrong.
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As soon as Pesach is over, it is common to see groups of young boys – roaming the neighborhood looking for flammable material to add to their personal bonfire. It is truly amazing to see the cooperative efforts to drag heavy boards or tree branches a number blocks to where they construct the structure for their "medura".
While it would be nice to say they are budding kabbalists for whom the Rashbi is a major inspiration in their life or that they have parents who tremble when they study the Zohar – that is not really what is happening. The issue is more akin to the excitement of avoda zara and the once a year opportunity to be allowed to make a really big fire using material that they have exerted tremendous energy and ingenuity to gather.
On my way from shul today I witnesss the sight of trees moving very strangely. When I got closer I saw a group of about 10 eight year old yeshiva boys trying to break down a series of ten foot saplings that were growing by the fence that enclosed the grounds of an apartment building. I went over and told them to stop it – which they did. They were genuinely puzzled and asked what the problem was.
I asked them who gave them permission to destroy living trees. Is this your building? Did your parents tell you that you could do this? When they realized what was bothering me they called out enthusiastically in unison, "It's for Lag B'Omer!"
I said why are the laws of stealing or damaging public property being ignored?
Again they answered cheerful in unison, "It's for Lag B'Omer". Obviously they felt sorry that I couldn't comprehend such an elementary fact. But they respectfully and patiently answering the irrelevant questions of someone who simply didn't get it.
At that point I just left. They could not conceive that anything could stand in the way of a proper bonfire. It didn't matter that these young saplings would grow to be shade trees in a few years that would give pleasure on hot summer days. It didn't matter that the green saplings would probably not burn. It didn't matter that they hadn't consulted with the residents of the apartment building to see if it was o.k. All that mattered to them was that the saplings were made of wood and that their bonfire required wood. All that mattered was the exciting challenge of finding out how to bend and break these young trees relying entirely on their childish strength and youthful enthusiasm. Once a year they knew they could break anything that might be flammable without regard to whom it belonged to or what damage they were causing.
The Torah is being burned to celebrate Lag b'Omer.
Employers and landlords who don’t use pronouns such as “ze/hir” to refer to transgender workers and tenants who request them — may be subject to fines as high as $250,000.
The Commission on Human Rights’ legal guidelines mandate that anyone who providing jobs or housing must use individuals’ preferred gender pronouns.
As the regulations, updated late last year, point out, some transgender individuals prefer to use pronouns other than he/him/his or she/her/hers.
Examples of less prominent pronouns that some transgender people may choose, according to the city, are: “ze,” which is the third person singular, such as he and she; and “hir,” which is the third person plural, similar to they.
The legal enforcement is in line with the city’s guidance on discrimination based on gender identity or expression.
“Gender expression may not be distinctively male or female and may not conform to traditional gender-based stereotypes assigned to specific gender identities,” the city advises.
An employer or landlord could be considered in violation of the guidelines if there is “intentional or repeated” refusal to use a person’s preferred pronoun after that person has made it clear which one they prefer.
Penalties of up to $250,000 can be imposed for violations that are deemed to be the result of malicious intent.
The idea of using pronouns other than “he/she” has come to light in the past decade as more people are identifying with “non-binary” gender roles, meaning not traditional male/female.
A Brooklyn man featured in a Time magazine cover story on immigration reform was sentenced Wednesday to 15 years in prison for sexually exploiting a boy with brain cancer and possession of kiddie porn videos.
Roy Naim, 32, faced life in prison without the possibility of parole under the federal sentencing guidelines, which Brooklyn judge Nicholas Garaufis called “incredibly excessive and irrational,” particularly in this case.
“Congress wants to make a show of their outrage, but they’re not doing justice,” Garaufis said, “and if the Sentencing Commission doesn’t want to do justice, they should all just resign.” [...]
Naim, an Israeli national who came to the U.S. as a child and overstayed his visa, was convicted by a jury in Brooklyn Federal Court last year.
He was charged with scheming with a sicko sidekick in Louisiana — who operated a Web site called BoysonWeb.com — to make sexually explicit videos of underage boys. The victims were duped into believing they were communicating with teenage girls.
One victim was a teen suffering from a brain tumor who attended a camp for children with cancer where Naim was a counselor.
Naim’s creepy cohort, Jonathan Johnson, was sentenced to 21 years in prison, but he cooperated with law enforcement in his case. [...]
Naim’s lawyers pointed out the unfairness that former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who was a serial molester of boys, was recently sentenced to only 15 months in prison.
“No one on the planet Earth has ever said Roy ever laid a hand on them,” defense lawyer Arthur Aidala said. [..]
Krav Maga, the close-combat method conceived in secrecy by the Israeli army, has kicked its way firmly into civilian life and with Hollywood's help, has become the ultimate form of self-defense.
"The idea is to be able to quickly hit the aggressor's vulnerable spots and to defend yourself with whatever is available - a beer bottle or a stick," explains Elad Nimni, who teaches Krav Maga in the IDF.
"Or, if you're doing military Krav Maga, you can use a gun instead of your body, because your body can get damaged and that hurts," he tells AFP, wearing military fatigues, his muscles rippling under a tight black t-shirt.
Although Krav Maga - which is Hebrew for 'contact combat' - borrows techniques from boxing, wrestling and jiu jistu, it differs from all other combat sports in one way: there are no rules.
Krav Maga is all about saving your own skin, and anything goes.[...]
The parasha talks about the Hebrew slave who sells himself to work for a 'master ' because of economic problems and poverty. The Hebrew slave was not a slave in the generally accepted sense of the word. He was rather an ' indentured servant ', who was not free to resign from his employment. Because the Hebrew slave feels degraded and has lost most of his self- esteem, the Torah forbids the master to work him like a slave, and subjugate him through hard labor. לא תעבוד בו עבודת עבד, לא תרדה בו בפרך ויראת מאלוקיך. You are not allowed to assign him degrading tasks that would be given only to a slave and that highlight his position as a slave like putting on his master's shoes or carrying his master's personal effects to the bathhouse. He is not allowed to give him futile and unproductive ' busywork ' where the goal is to keep him busy rather than productive , so he feels his servitude and it breaks his body and spirit just like the Egyptian slave masters acted towards the Hebrew slaves in Egypt. It could be simple tasks as boiling water where there is no need for it or giving tasks with no time limit such as keep digging around this tree until I come back. Even if your Hebrew slave thinks there is purpose in what he is doing, but your intention is ' busywork', you should fear God, because God will hold you accountable as He knows what is in your heart.
Although these laws do not apply today, there are many lessons to be learned that give us guidance and insight as how to interact over whom we may be allowed to exercise authority. The Hebrew slave himself teaches us that it is better to work rather than to take charity. The question is - how should we treat people – such as family members or poor people who live with us in our homes, employees, students and army cadets etc. . . . There is no question that forcing a person against his will to engage in hard and degrading work is not allowed except in the case of criminals. Rashi says that a king or prince must not rule over his people with rigor and coercion. However, where a person is willing to do the work, like in the case of an army cadet who wants to prove his obedience and compliance without having his body and spirit broken, hard and degrading labor would be permitted. He could always quit if he wanted to. The question is where a person is asked by an influential, public figure or a person who has authority, to do things for him, not in the scope of their working relationship. The person will usually comply with the request because he cannot say no and usually will feel uncomfortable, embarrassed or not at ease about the request.
Here , Rabeinu Yona in his work – Sha'arei Teshuvah , part 3:60 on the verse – and 'your brothers, the children of Israel you shall not subjugate him through hard labor ' – says 'that one should not subjugate a fellow man , and if they fear him or are ashamed to violate his word , he should not command him to do anything , great or small , not even to warm up a flask or go on an errand in the city to buy a loaf of bread unless it is according to their will and benefit. But a man who does not behave himself properly may be commanded as desired.' A person should not take advantage of his status, position or authority, impose on people and try to get people to do things not in the contractual context.
רבינו יונה – שערי תשובה ח:ג- ס 'ובאחיכם בני ישראל איש באחיו לא תרדה בו בפרך ' (ויקרא כה, מו). לא ישתעבד אדם בחבריו, ואם אימתו עליהם או שהם בושים להחל דברו, לא יצוה אותם לעשות קטנה או גדולה, אלא לרצונם ותועלתם, ואפילו להחם צפחת מים או לצאת בשליחותו אל רחוב העיר לקנות עד ככר לחם, אבל אדם שאינו נוהג כשורה מתר לצוותו לכל אשר יחפץ:
There is discussion whether Rabeinu Yona is saying that a person transgresses the negative commandment of not subjugating a fellow man - ' ובאחיכם בני ישראל איש באחיו לא תרדה בו בפרך'
or is he only talking about moral and ethical behavior which in a sense is worse than merely transgressing a negative command. Here we are talking about character, compassion, morality, de'rech eretz = the right way to treat people which preceded the giving of the Torah.
The Rambam in his halachic work says something similar. He talks about the right to subjugate a heathen slave with forced hard labor where the purpose is to enforce discipline, absolute obedience and compliance, but if that is not necessary , one should be compassionate and generous in one's behavior and act in a wise and intelligent way, be merciful and just, not weigh heavily on him the burden of your demands , he should listen to the concerns of his slave and treat him well like Job ,so he will look up to you ' like the eyes of servants unto their masters' hand and the eyes of the maid unto her mistress' hand '– Psalms 123:2.One should follow the example of Abraham , keep the righteous and merciful laws of the Torah and try to emulate God who is merciful to all his creations.
רמב"ם הלכות עבדים ט:ח - מותר לעבוד בעבד כנעני בפרך ואע"פ שהדין כך מדת חסידות ודרכי חכמה שיהיה אדם רחמן ורודף צדק ולא יכביד עולו על עבדו ולא יצר לו ויאכילהו וישקהו מכל מאכל ומכל משתה חכמים הראשונים היו נותנין לעבד מכל תבשיל ותבשיל שהיו אוכלין ומקדימין מזון הבהמות והעבדים לסעודת עצמן הרי הוא אומר כעיני עבדים אל יד אדוניהם כעיני שפחה אל יד גבירתה וכרן לא יבזהו ביד ולא בדברים לעבדות מסרן הכתוב לא לבושה ולא ירבה עליו צעקה וכעס אלא ידבר עמו בנחת וישמע טענותיו וכן מפורש בדרכי איוב הטובים שהשתבח בהן אם אמאס משפט עבדי ואמתי בריבם עמדי הלא בבטן עושני עשהו ויכוננו ברחם אחד ואין האכזריות והעזות מצויה אלא בעכו"ם עובדי ע"ז אבל זרעו של אברהם אבינו והם ישראל שהשפיע להם הקב"ה טובת התורה וצוה אותם בחקים ומשפטים צדיקים רחמנים הם על הכל וכן במדותיו של הקב"ה שצונו להדמות בהם הוא אומר ורחמיו על כל מעשיו וכל המרחם מרחמין עליו שנאמר ונתן לך רחמים ורחמך והרבך:
As parents, spouses, teachers and employers we should be aware of the teachings of the Rambam and Rabeinu Yona and focus on cooperation, collaboration, inspiring others and supporting their autonomy rather than focusing on compliance and obedience, and treating people in a way maybe more appropriate for a heathen slave. We should solve problems in a collaborative way addressing both our and the others' concerns including the concerns of children. We should always ask ourselves if the tasks we give children are in themselves worth doing and important and are not perceived and experienced as ' busywork ' or unnecessary burden imposed on the child. The Steipler responded to his daughter - the reason I did not wake you up is that my job is not to impose on people , even though it is your job to help and honor a parent.When we bring kids into the decision making process and reflecting on what is needed to run a caring and efficient home or developing a love for learning, we will find allies to work with, rather than try to control and motivate them with carrots or sticks. We really have to ask ourselves if what we ask is really for their benefit and meeting their needs or are we more concerned with our need for control. Teachers should avoid asking kids for e.g. to do personal errands such as going to the kiosk for them. Homework is one area which is very problematic as the research, especially for junior school shows no benefits for homework, overwhelms struggling kids and as 'busywork' removes the joy of learning for high achievers. Even reading for pleasure loses its appeal when children are told how much, or for how long, they must do it. Treating kids with respect and taking them seriously is not only for them, but will impact on our efforts to emulate the ways of God.
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The Rabeinu Yona and especially the Rambam whose words are brought in a shortened form in the Shulchan Aruch remind us that while we follow Halacha, what guides our behavior , informs our values and helps us set limits and boundaries are the guiding principles which the Rambam and Shulchan Aruch and of course the Torah share with us. Often, in conflict situations we focus on the din in the Shulchan Aruch and especially our rights and forget what Hashem really wants from us. R' Isaac Sher explains that the difference between going to a secular court of law , even if they judge according to Torah law , is that people go there to defend their rights and win , while people who go to Beit Din should go with the intention to find out how Hashem wants them to behave in this situation. We are told that the Beit Ha'mikdash was destroyed because people followed the din of the Torah instead of going – לפנים משורת הדיו. It is the ' guiding principles ' which enable us to go ' לפנים משורת הדין - not easy.
A groom in Saudi Arabia filed for divorce minutes after his wedding when his bride refused to put down her cell phone and pay attention to him, local media reported Tuesday.
The couple retired to a hotel room following the ceremony, where a relative said the unnamed woman rebuffed the man’s intimate advances. The bride said she wanted to respond to her friends’ texts and other messages congratulating them on their wedding, according to Gulf News.
“The groom asked her to delay the messages, but she refused and became angry,” the relative added. “When he asked her if her friends were more important than he was, the bride answered that they were.”
The argument quickly escalated before the groom demanded a divorce. A reconciliation committee agreed to take the case to see whether the husband and wife could resolve their differences. But the groom insisted he wanted the marriage to end.
Of the many words Donald Trump has uttered over the last nine months — all the insightful insults and blustery boasts, all the syntax-slaying murk that sometimes boomerangs back into sense and all the hateful hate that doesn’t — last month brought a new flash of negative élan. Trump was speaking at a rally in Harrisburg, Pa., when he took stock of his own demeanor as a candidate.
“Now, my wife is constantly saying, ‘Darling, be more presidential.’ I just don’t know that I want to do it quite yet,” he told a packed, ready-to-rock house. “At some point I’m going to be so presidential that you people will be so bored. And I’ll come back as a presidential person, and instead of 10,000 people, I’ll have about 150 people, and they’ll say, ‘But, boy, he really looks presidential!’ ”
When we’re thinking about voting for president, we’re also thinking about what’s “presidential.” I never know quite what that means, except that, like the sitcom-wife version of Melania Trump in her husband’s anecdote, I kind of do. It connotes carriage and posture and intelligence. It captures dignified comportment and a degree of knowledge. It’s the ability to depict leadership, from lecterns to tarmacs. It’s partly cosmetic — is this person tall, passably fit, loosely attractive, warm? — and almost entirely presentational. It’s the seriousness a candidate has to project in order to be taken seriously, only without seeming dour or battery-operated. “Presidential” used to be something to aspire to. All of that authority, know-how, gravitas, good posture and moral rectitude — it seemed so important, so adult, so American.
But Trump has tapped into something else about “presidential”: If it’s a performance, then it can be switched on and off as needed. You can trace this tactic as far back as, improbably, Franklin D. Roosevelt. In her book “Voting Deliberatively: F.D.R. and the 1936 Presidential Campaign,” Mary E. Stuckey writes that, during the summer months before the election: “F.D.R. concentrated on being presidential. So determinedly nonpolitical was he, in fact, that Roosevelt didn’t actually acknowledge he was running for re-election until late September.” But when he finally did campaign, Roosevelt “came out swinging” against his Republican opponents. In Stuckey’s rendering, “presidential” requires remaining above the fray that running for president invariably requires leaping into.[...]
By the late 20th century, “presidential” had become entirely bound up in technological savvy, and Reagan, as could be expected from a former president of the Screen Actors Guild, was an artist when it came to optics. Brian Balogh, a professor at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia and co-host of the radio show “BackStory With the American History Guys,” told me that “Reagan’s stroke of genius was to continue running against the establishment while he was actually the president.” This was a man who, during his 1984 re-election bid, had Air Force One land just outside the Daytona International Speedway to attend the Fourth of July Firecracker 400. “A lot of people,” Balogh said, “would say that was unpresidential.” A decade later, the nation would be in the midst of an ongoing fit over all things “unpresidential,” thanks to Bill Clinton’s sax playing, his stated preference for briefs over boxers (on MTV!), his extramarital affair.[...]
Obama’s demeanor has always suggested that he believes in the office; Trump’s has always suggested that he doesn’t. If Trump is a student of history, he has surely surmised that “presidential” is a kind of fraud, one he can put to farcical ends on the campaign trail. In order to seem presidential, he’ll just have to pause being “demagogic,” “sexist,” “authoritarian,” “bigoted” and “nationalistic.”
And once he officially gets the nomination, his final opponent will bring “presidential” to another crossroads. The national data set for the concept has been almost entirely male. But has any 2016 candidate checked off the “presidential” boxes more dutifully than Hillary Clinton? She embodies both the authority and the stodginess of the term. She’s serious, sturdy, studied and commanding. Unlike Trump, she has a track record of public service. She is also, arguably, the face of what a sham that gravitas can be; people simply don’t trust her.
Americans don’t yet know what to do with a presidential woman. Neither, it seems, does Clinton. Trump is making “anti-presidential” look easy, while she’s making the real thing look hard. That neurotic quality is what Kate McKinnon, on “Saturday Night Live,” pours into her strange, affectionate incarnation of Clinton: wanting the job so badly that she can seem pathologically presidential. She just happens to be running against somebody happy to act as if he doesn’t really want it at all.
The Obama administration’s directive last week instructing public schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms of the gender they identify with has set off an intense debate.
Many politicians and parents have raised alarms about privacy and warned of predatory boys sneaking into girls’ bathrooms. But others say that such accommodations are critical protections for a vulnerable population.
For all of the heated debate, a central fact remains elusive: How many students are we talking about?
No one knows for sure. Researchers have not figured out how to obtain consistent, reliable answers from teenagers, much less younger children.
The best estimates are that the population is small, probably under 1 percent of adolescents. [...]
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Transgender Bathroom Debate Turns Personal at a Vermont High School
The way A J Jackson tells it, he kept his head ducked down and pretended to fiddle with his cellphone as he walked into the boys’ bathroom and headed for a stall at Green Mountain Union High School here.
But the way some of his classmates see it, A J was still Autumn Jackson, a girl in boys’ clothing, who had violated an intimate sanctum, while two boys were standing at a urinal, their private parts exposed.
“It’s like me going into a girls’ bathroom wearing a wig,” Tanner Bischofberger, 15, a classmate of A J Jackson’s, who was not one of those in the bathroom, said this week. “It’s just weird.” [...]
And the dispute has driven apart young people who grew up together and were once friends.
Some say the new rule opens the door to sexual predators disguised as someone they are not. Others say it just violates tradition. A society has rules for a reason, and this is one of those rules, that’s just the way it is, they say.
But on a more basic level, students at Green Mountain are complaining that a small vocal minority of gay, lesbian and, as far as they know, one — or maybe two — transgender students among them are trampling on the rights of the majority to decide what the rules of conduct should be. [...]
Mr. Jackson has gradually been making the transition from a vivacious girl with a big smile and long wavy locks to a husky boy with chopped hair dyed several shades of green, snakebite piercings in his lips and gauges embedded in his earlobes. His chest is visibly bound, and because he has not yet started taking male hormones — he plans to do that, and also to have “top surgery,” he says — his face is smooth and still has feminine contours. He once thought he was lesbian, and is still attracted to girls.[...]
Hank Mauti, a school board member and retired sawmill worker from Andover, said he wondered why Mr. Jackson would feel compelled to use a boys’ bathroom when there were six single-use gender-neutral bathrooms in the school.
“What about the little boy that reported it?” asked Mr. Mauti’s wife, Wanda, repeating the rumor, in an interview in their home, under a trophy of a moose that Mr. Mauti shot. “As far as I can tell, his discomfort hasn’t been addressed.” [...]
Melania Trump, the wife of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, on Tuesday suggested that journalist Julia Ioffe “provoked” the anti-Semitic abuse she faced from Trump fans after publishing negative profile about her.
“I don’t control my fans,” Melania said in an interview with DuJour. “But I don’t agree with what they’re doing. I understand what you mean, but there are people out there who maybe went too far. She provoked them."
Ioffe, who is Jewish, received calls from people playing Hitler speeches, told that she “should be burned in an oven,” “be shot in the head,” and was sent photoshopped images of her in a concentration camp uniform.
In a statement released last week, ADL’s CEO Jonathan Greenblatt urged Trump to denounce the barrage of anti-Semitic comments by some of his supporters on social media. “The onus is now on Donald Trump to make unequivocally clear he rejects those sentiments and that there is no room for .. anti-Semitism in his campaign and in society,” Greenblatt said.
Trump refused to condemn his fans in an interview with CNN.
“You hated this article in ‘GQ’ about your wife, Melania. Julia Ioffe wrote it. Since then, some of your supporters have viciously attacked this woman, Julia Ioffe, with anti-Semitic attacks, death threats. What’s your message to these people when something like that happens?” Wolf Blitzer asked the presumptive Republican presidential nominee during an interview on Wednesday. “I’ll tell you, I haven’t read the article, but I hear it was a very inaccurate article and I heard it was a nasty article… They shouldn’t be doing that with wives. I mean they shouldn’t be doing that,” he responded. [...]
It is important to keep in mind that just as there is the horror of child abuse - there is also the horror of false accusations. The following article describes some of the victims of crusading prosecutors and child protective services who manipulated children into giving false testimony and destroying their own parents. Despite the fact that most of these witch hunt convictions were overturned - sometimes after the innocent spent decades in jail - the people responsible for these serious miscarriages of justice are unrepentant and are still convinced that they were right. Caring for children and being horrified by child abuse - does not justify the wrong that is done to get a conviction of anyone who is accused of child abuse.
For a more realistic appreciation of the horrors of having your own children taken away and pressured into giving false testimony that resulted in sentences of over 200 years for each of the parents - there a movie depicting an actual case "Just ask my children". The innocent parents remained in jail for 12 years while their children were in 16 different foster homes - until their sentence was overturned.
===================================== NY Times byMAGGIE JONES
There are several ways to view the small white house on Center Street in Bakersfield, Calif. From one perspective it's just another low-slung home in a working-class neighborhood, with a front yard, brown carpeting, a TV in the living room. Now consider it from the standpoint of the Kern County district attorney's office: 20 years ago, this was a crime scene of depraved proportions. According to investigators, in the living room with brown carpeting and a TV, boys between the ages of 6 and 8 were made to pose for pornographic photos. On a water bed in the back bedroom, the boys were sodomized by three men, while a mother had sex with her own son.
But look at the house once again -- this time, through Ed Sampley's eyes. Twenty years ago he was one of the boys molested in the house where sex abuse was part of the weekend fabric. That's what he told Kern County investigators. That's what he told a judge, a jury and a courtroom of lawyers. The testimony of Sampley and five other boys was the prosecution's key evidence in a trial in which four defendants were convicted, with John Stoll, a 41-year-old carpenter, receiving the longest sentence of the group: 40 years for 17 counts of lewd and lascivious conduct.
Now for the first time in 20 years, Sampley is back in the driveway of that small white house. "It never happened," he tells me. He lied about Stoll, an easygoing divorced father who always insisted the neighborhood kids call him John rather than Mr. Stoll and let them run in and out of his house in their bathing suits, eat popcorn on the living-room floor and watch "fright night" videos.
Last January, Sampley and three other former accusers returned to the courthouse where they had testified against Stoll. This time they came to say Stoll never molested them. They are in their late 20's now. They have jobs in construction, car repair, sales. A couple of them have children about the same age as they were when they testified. Although most of the boys drifted apart after the trial, their life stories echo with similarities. Each of them said he always knew the truth -- that Stoll had never touched them. Each said that he felt pressured by the investigators to describe sex acts. A fifth accuser isn't sure what happened all those years ago but has no memory of being molested. During the court hearing to release Stoll, only his son Jed remained adamant that his father had molested him, though he couldn't remember details of the abuse: "I've been through many years of therapy to try to get over that," he told the court.
Maggie Bruck, co-author of "Jeopardy in the Courtroom: A Scientific Analysis of Children's Testimony" and a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, says no long-term psychological studies exist that track groups of children involved in alleged sex-abuse rings, in part because of confidentiality issues. But Bruck has studied follow-up interviews of children involved in cases similar to the notorious McMartin preschool trial. Some kids continue to believe they were abused. Bruck suspects it's because their families or therapists have reinforced the stories of abuse. "The children say they don't remember the salient, allegedly terrifying details," she told me. "But they are sure it happened."[...]
"They told me that John Stoll was a bad man and I needed to help put him in prison so he wouldn't hurt any more children," Sampley says. "They said everything would be O.K. if I just told them something had happened." And at some point -- Sampley doesn't remember when or exactly why -- he changed his story. He told them yes, Stoll had done something very bad to him. And Stoll had done worse things to other boys.
By then, the investigators were convinced they were on the trail of another sex ring. Kern County prosecuted the first major child-sex ring in the United States in 1982, and within two years the investigations of Stoll and the McMartin teachers in Manhattan Beach, Calif., were under way. The hysteria began creeping across the country, to Maplewood, N.J. (Wee Care Day Nursery), to Malden, Mass. (Fells Acres), and to Great Neck, Long Island, where the documentary "Capturing the Friedmans" takes place.[...]
Prosecutions of child sex-rings later led to dozens of studies about interviewing techniques, many of which suggested that with a little coaxing, children tell adults what they think the grown-ups want to hear -- especially if it means they will go home sooner or be rewarded for providing information. Several years ago two Chicago boys, 7 and 8, were accused (and later exonerated) of killing 11-year-old Ryan Harris. In part, the boys were enticed by a McDonald's Happy Meal to confess.
James Wood, a psychologist at the University of Texas at El Paso who studies interview techniques used with children, says investigators should use nonsuggestive prompts to help kids to narrate their own stories. "They shouldn't tell children they have information from other witnesses," he says. Or praise them when they provide information. Or express disapproval when they don't. Murillo, who retired from the D.A.'s office a couple of years ago, won't talk about her investigations in detail, but she did say: "We never pressured the children. Those boys were telling the truth when they first testified."[...]
Bakersfield isn't a town that welcomes challenges to law enforcement. Though it's just two hours north of Los Angeles, the city feels more like Texas than California, surrounded by miles of oil and agriculture fields. Many residents are proud of the small-town conservative flavor. On its Web site, the Kern County D.A. office highlights having "the highest per-capita prison-commitment rate of any major California county," and the longtime district attorney, Ed Jagels, a subject of the book "Mean Justice," by Edward Humes, is considered one of the toughest prosecutors in the state. (Jagels declined comment for this article.) "You have to understand the power of Ed Jagels," says Michael Snedeker, an attorney who helped overturn 18 convictions of Bakersfield defendants in sex-ring cases and co-author of "Satan's Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt" with the journalist Debbie Nathan. "He is more important than the mayor in that city. He's more feared than J. Edgar Hoover on his best day."
In three years during the 1980's, Jagels and his predecessor prosecuted eight sex rings involving 46 defendants. Consider the example of Scott Kniffen, who agreed to be a character witness for his friends Alvin and Deborah McCuan, accused of molesting their own children. Within weeks, Kniffen and his wife, Brenda, were under arrest for supposed involvement in the same sex ring. They were subsequently convicted. (Their convictions were reversed 12 years later). Or consider Jeffrey Modahl. He was a single dad of two daughters who suspected two relatives had molested his girls. After Modahl asked Velda Murillo for help, Murillo's suspicions turned to him. He was sentenced to 48 years in prison for running a family sex ring that included tying his preadolescent daughters to hooks in a bedroom. (No evidence of hooks was ever found.) "Velda said, 'Tell us what happened and you'll go home,"' remembers Carla Jo Modahl, who was 9 when she testified against her father and subsequently tried to commit suicide several times after his conviction. "I didn't understand what would happen. I didn't realize it until everyone was in prison." Carla was scared that if she recanted her testimony, she, too, would be imprisoned. Still, when she was 12, she told a judge she'd lied on the witness stand. The judge didn't believe her, and her father remained in prison for a dozen more years -- until his conviction was finally reversed.[...]
The convictions of most other defendants in Kern County molestation rings were overturned -- including Margie Grafton's and Tim Palomo's -- as appellate judges issued often harsh rebukes of the county's overzealous prosecutions [...]
Certainly prosecutors aren't chasing phantom sex rings as they once did, and investigators are more educated about proper interview techniques, but some of the investigative tactics and the mind-set from that era still linger. In England and Israel, sex-abuse investigators routinely videotape their interviews. In the United States, only a minority of prosecutors and investigators are required to do so, and the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, an organization of child-protection workers, has never officially supported recording interviews. Some members have claimed it confuses juries.
"It's shameful -- they should have taken a stance on it a long time ago," says Wood, the University of Texas psychologist and an Apsac member. "If you want to know what really happened, without an audiotape of the interview it's like trying to diagnose lung cancer without an X-ray." If Murillo and Ericsson had recorded the interviews, life might have turned out differently for Stoll and his co-defendants, as well as for his accusers. The McMartin trial ended without convictions after the jury saw videotapes of therapists' suggestive questioning of kids.
Still, discredited child-sex rings like McMartin actually may not be a bogeyman of the past. Some parents, therapists and child-protection professionals continue to believe ritual sex abuse took place at McMartin preschool. "In 10 to 15 years, there will be an attempt to rehabilitate the ritual abuse scare," Wood says. "You can bet on it." [..]
Jerusalem Magistrates Court Justice Anna Schneider ordered the evacuation of three East Jerusalem properties Tuesday, as they were found to have been purchased by Jews before 1948 but then invaded by Arabs.
The three properties in question were purchased in the thirties by the Arica family, Jews who immigrated to Israel from Syria. In 1948, the family fled after the Jordanians tried to kill and rape the sons and daughters of the family while the men fought on various fronts.[...]
But the property was eventually restored due to the effort of Jerusalem City Council member Aryeh King. [...]
On Tuesday, Schneider ruled that the Arab residents were unable to prove their rights to the property, and that the documents were highly likely to have been forged.
"The defendant failed to prove that the rent was paid," she added. "He did not even present one receipt for the rent."
For these and other claims which arose during the hearing, the justice deemed the tenant's claims against King "irrelevant."
"The defendant must vacate the leased property and is not entitled to any compensation," she added, noting that the tenants "have no one to blame but themselves."
The judge further ordered the defendant to pay court costs and attorneys' fees amounting to 15,000 shekels ($3928).
The outbreak occurred in an Orthodox Jewish community in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, according to officials, with 75 cases reported so far.
Of the patients affected, 72 percent of them had not been vaccinated against the disease, officials said. The patients range from infants to children up to 10 years old.
פסק דין חדש ותקדימי התקבל בבית הדין הגבוה, לפיו בסכות בתי הדין בארץ לעכב יציאה מהארץ של סרבן - אף אם אינו אזרח ישראל
תקדים - בית הדין הרבני הגדול קבע כי בסמכות בתי הדין הרבניים להוציא צווי עיכוב יציאה מהארץ גם למי שאינם אזרחים ישראלים.
הדיינים הרב אליהו הישריק, הרב יצחק אלמליח והרב מימון נהרי כתבו פסק הלכה החובק לא רק את המשפט העברי לדורותיו אלא גם את הפסיקה האזרחית לדורותיה. בית הדין הרבני הגדול החליט לקבל ערעור על פסק דין של בית הדין הרבני האזורי, שלא אישר צו עיכוב יציאה נגד אזרח ארצות הברית שאינו אזרח ישראלי.
הדיון נסוב סביב שני בני זוג אמריקאים שנישאו בלייקווד שבניו ג'רזי, שם נולדו להם שלושה ילדים. לפני כשנה עזב הבעל את הבית ועבר לניו יורק. לאחרונה הגיע הבעל לביקור קצר בישראל ובעת שהותו הגישה האישה כנגדו תביעת מזונות וגירושין לבית הדין הרבני האזורי. כמו כן בקשה האישה להוציא כנגד האיש צו כעיכוב יציאה מהארץ.
בית הדין הוציא תחילה צו עיכוב יציאה כמוקבל במעמד צד אחד. בתגובה, הגישו הבעל ובא כוחו בקשה לביטול הצו בטענה כי אין בסמכות בית הדין הרבני בישראל לדון ולעכב בישראל תושב חוץ. דייני בית הדין הרבני האזורי קיבלו את הבקשה והחליטו לבטל את צו עיכוב היציאה. האישה ובא כוחה מיהרו להגיש ערעור לבית הדין הרבני הגדול, ובקשו גם עיכוב ביצוע של ביטול עיכוב היציאה.
בתחילת הדיון בבית הדין הרבני הגדול הציעו הדיינים לבעל באופן פרקטי להתגרש לאלתר ולהשאיר את יתר ענייני חלוקת הרכוש, המזונות, הסדרי הראיה וכו' להכרעת בית הדין בארצות הברית או בישראל בשלב מאוחר יותר. הבעל 'זיגזג' בהסכמתו ובסופו של דבר סירב.
