Battered-wife who executed husband acquitted of murder charge

Los Angeles Times

Was Barbara Sheehan a battered wife who shot her husband, a retired police sergeant, in self-defense, or was she a calculating killer determined to collect on his life insurance? After three days of deliberations, a jury Thursday chose the former.

It acquitted Sheehan of murder in a trial that was seen by some people as a referendum on battered-woman syndrome.

Steve Jobs's message for Yom Kippur

Christian Science Monitor

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

3rd indictment filed in Jerusalem pedophile case

Jerusalem Post

The Jerusalem District Attorney’s Office announced on Sunday that an indictment has been filed charging a Jerusalem man with sexually abusing minors in the capital.

Zalman Cohen was one of five men arrested in September for allegedly sexually abusing dozens of minors in Jerusalem.

The indictment, filed by attorney Shulamit Ben-Yitzhak last Wednesday, describes how Cohen and another man allegedly abused several minors in a house in the Nahlaot neighborhood of Jerusalem in 2009 and 2010.

Manny's Book Store:The complex fear of temptations of the Chareidi world

Haaretz

Nevertheless, it could be that what rankles the zealots above all is the too-modern atmosphere that reigns in the store. Or Hachaim Center may not be the first shop to bring to Jerusalem the Haredi-but-glamorous store design that is more commonly found in the ultra-Orthodox Borough Park section of Brooklyn. But for whatever reason, it - like the Zisalik ice cream shop and the nearby Greentec computer store - has become a target for the holy wars of the zealots.

One of the latter explained to Haaretz: "The problem is that they are offering not only a purchase, but a 'shopping experience.' This is alien to Mea She'arim, where there have always been only small, humble shops."[....]

Hareidim capture molester in mikveh & hand him to police

Jerusalem Post

An indictment was filed on Sunday in the Tel Aviv District Court, charging a Bnei Brak resident with sodomy and indecent assault against three boys aged under 16. [...]

According to that request, the defendant was arrested after a member of staff at the mikva noticed he had come to the mikva just before one of the minors. The witness informed a volunteer in a local Haredi organization, who held the defendant at the mikva until the police arrived.

Nachlaot pedophile ring - parents' overinvolvement unwittingly interfered with legal case

Haaretz

The story of the pedophile network in Nahlaot exploded in August, with the arrest of four suspects. One of them had already been arrested several months earlier and subsequently released. S., who was arrested two weeks ago, was the fifth suspect, and the parents hoped that this was the start of a solution to the major crisis they had experienced. But this month, attorney Shlomit Ben-Yitzhak, of the Jerusalem District Prosecutors' Office, submitted indictments in the affair, and the parents discovered that their hopes had been dashed: Indictments were submitted only against two of those involved - B. and P. And although the indictments describe sodomy, indecent assaults and rape, they refer to only five children. Even the most skeptical of those involved in the investigation and in the welfare agencies admit that that number is only a small percentage of the attacks. The police themselves have interrogated over 40 children.[...]

Someone close to the investigation claims that the reason for the huge gap between the parents' stories and the harsh testimony on the one hand, and the legal outcome on the other, is the activity of the parents themselves. The parents, he says, unwittingly interfered with the investigation process. The conversations and "investigations" that they conducted with their own children undermined the reliability of the stories the children then told the juvenile investigators. There are parents who even showed their children pictures of the suspects so the children could identify them, an activity that invalidated their testimony. For their part, the parents stress the fact that they have cooperated with the authorities from the beginning. Many of them are ultra-Orthodox, but as opposed to the usual stereotype of this religious community, they did not hide anything, described what their children had told them without mincing words, and encouraged their children to talk. Only afterward, they say, did they discover that the problem was not a lack of cooperation, but on the contrary - their great desire to eliminate the problem.

Novominsker Rebbe:Most difficult thing in abuse cases is how to address these crimes publicly while preserving kedusha in homes

In the current edition of Mishpacha (Sept 26, 2011 page 17) is a noteworthy exchange between Mrs. Bella Tzibushkin and Rabbi Aryeh Ginzberg regarding an article he had published in a previous edition  bemoaning the negative impact the knowledge of scandals had on the kedusha of the home. 

Mrs Tzibushkin writes a very cogent  letter strongly criticizing Rav Ginzberg for being more concerned for covering up scandals than dealing with them for blaming the messenger rather than dealing with the message. He replies that she had missed his point. He replies among other things:

When scandals lo aleinu do strike, they are addressed. The Novominsker Rebbe shlita told me that when the terribly painful abuse claims arose, the most difficult thing that the Moetzes Gedolei Torah had to deal with was how to address these horrific crimes in public and yet preserve the kedushah in our homes and in our lives. As difficult as that was, the claim that Mrs. Tsibushkin makes - that the scandals are ignored - is just not in line with the facts on the ground.

Given what we know about the history of the gedolim dealing with abuse - this simply boggles the mind.

For example 2009 in an editorial in the Yated (reprinted in my book on abuse) Rabbi Pinchus Lipshutz acknowledged the ignorance of the gedolim about how to deal with abuse cases and that they were typically ignored in the past:

Let us be clear: For too long, we weren’t tuned in to these innocent victims’ stories and their pain. For too long, we weren’t sufficiently aware that this problem existed and thus were able to ignore the quiet pleas, the sad eyes, the pained lives, and the personalities withdrawn. We didn’t recognize the warning signs and thus largely ignored the phenomenon. Equally clear, this inattention was not a function of some high level conspiracy to harm people or cover up for criminals or abet nefarious activities. It was simply a function of a lack of education about a complex and highly sophisticated problem. It was a result of our leadership simply being unaware of the depths that such sordid people could sink to, and the extreme skill perpetrators exhibit in covering their tracks. And yes, it was undeniably a gezera, which, as so often is the case, claims innocent holy souls - bikroyvai Ekodeish.

I am all too aware that it is fashionable in certain circles to blame this all on our rabbinic leadership. These people have yet to explain why our rabbanim, who devote their lives to serving people, would want to hurt anyone. The days when being a rav or rosh yeshiva meant strictly poskening shailos or teaching Torah are long gone. Rabbanim routinely spend an overwhelming portion of their time dealing with every type of personal problem imaginable. I don’t have to elaborate on this now, but suffice it to say that it defies logic to accuse our most choshuve leaders, who exhibit much mesiras nefesh, of coldhearted indifference. As I said, the problem was a lack of understanding.