At State-Run Homes, Abuse and Impunity

NYTimes

Nearly 40 years after New York emptied its scandal-ridden warehouses for the developmentally disabled, the far-flung network of small group homes that replaced them operates with scant oversight and few consequences for employees who abuse the vulnerable population.

A New York Times investigation over the past year has found widespread problems in the more than 2,000 state-run homes. In hundreds of cases reviewed by The Times, employees who sexually abused, beat or taunted residents were rarely fired, even after repeated offenses, and in many cases, were simply transferred to other group homes run by the state.

And, despite a state law requiring that incidents in which a crime may have been committed be reported to law enforcement, such referrals are rare: State records show that of some 13,000 allegations of abuse in 2009 within state-operated and licensed homes, fewer than 5 percent were referred to law enforcement. The hundreds of files examined by The Times contained shocking examples of abuse of residents with conditions like Down syndrome, autism and cerebral palsy. [...]

Phil Jacobs & Scott Rosenfelt expose sexual abuse in Baltimore

BaltimoreCityPaper

Sexual abuse within the Catholic Church has been a topic of public debate for at least a decade, but word of molestation in the Orthodox Jewish community has been slower to emerge, often because its members have had a tendency to keep such scandal under wraps. But, increasingly, publications such as New York City’s Jewish Week have begun to explore the topic, while victims have started going to the police. In the last several years, at least four books have been published on sexual molestation in the Orthodox world, and several prominent rabbis have publicly addressed the need for the community to face the problem. In Baltimore, the dubious privilege of shining a light on the subject has fallen to Jacobs.

Bush Terminal: Trouble for Abraham Fruchthandler i.e., Yeshiva Chaim Berlin

Hat tip to RaP

Real Estate

A $300 million loan on the Bush Terminal in Brooklyn, NY has been transferred to a special servicer due to monetary default, according to Fitch.

According to the documents related to the loan, it is secured by a first mortgage encumbering Bush Terminal, which is located on various blocks between 32nd and 41st Streets and 1st through 3rd Avenues in Brooklyn. The Bush Terminal Property consists of 16 multi-story office, loft and industrial buildings containing a total of 6.15 million sf of gross building area. The buildings were constructed at various times starting in 1904 on approximately 35 acres of land. The Bush Terminal Property was 85 percent occupied by tenants such as the NYC DCAS HRA (2.9% of NRSF), Virginia Dare Extract Co. Inc. (2.6%) and NYC Department of Finance (2.5%) when the loan was secured.

The borrowers are 1-10 Industry Associates LLC and 19-20 Industry City Associates, LLC, each a single-purpose, single-asset entity. The sponsors of the borrowers are Rubin Schron and Abraham Fruchthandler. At the time the loan was distributed, Rubin Schron had approximately $1.5 billion of equity in more than 40 residential, retail, commercial and healthcare assets primarily located throughout the New York metropolitan area, including over 15 million sf of industrial space.

Wall Street Journal

The Schron group is hopeful it will be able to restructure the debt and hold onto the property, according to people familiar with the property.

Mr. Schron's group, which today includes Abraham Fruchthandler, anticipated when the initial loan was made that the property could generate an annual net operating income of about $37.9 million as they released space at higher rents, according to Realpoint. Instead the property's net operating income for the six months ended in June 2010 was about $5.8 million. During that same time period, debt service was about $9.6 million, according to Realpoint.

The property's history can be traced back to the early 1900s when industrialist Irving T. Bush began building on the land his family owned. It was billed by some accounts as a city within a city with a railroad, trolleys and as many as 35,000 workers.

Mr. Schron's group is in default on the $300 million in debt, according to Realpoint, a credit-rating firm and a unit of Morningstar. The debt was reported 30 days delinquent earlier this month by the special servicer charged with managing the loan, according to Realpoint.

Foster care:Mother wants Orthodox & judge rules for non-Jewish supported by rabbi & her partner

Jewish World

A battle over two Jewish children is brewing in the Rensselaer County Department of Social Services (RCDSS), the county’s family court and pitting the Troy Orthodox and Reform Jewish communities at odds over how Jewish children should be raised.

The battle centers on a foster care case where an infant girl only a few months old and a two-year-old boy have been placed in foster care, which means providing a temporary home for children in need, with the hope is that the child will eventually return to their birth family.

The Mother’s Profile
The biological mother is said to be in her 20s, grew up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, identifies with the Orthodox Jewish community in Troy, is a known drug addict and had her children out of wedlock. While the baby boy was not born addicted to drugs, the girl was born with a chemical dependency to heroin, according to sources with knowledge of the situation.

At the urging of the Manhattan-based Agudath Israel of America (AIA) and Leible Morrison, the spiritual leader of the Beth Tephilah Orthodox congregation in Troy, the mother is requesting that her children be placed in a Jewish household and raised in an Orthodox lifestyle. AIA is a Jewish communal organization representing sectors of Chasidic Judaism. [...]

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