Texas Athletic Ass. forced to accomodate Shabbos observant players

NYTimes

A Texas high school athletics association said Thursday that, under legal pressure, it would change the time of a boys basketball state semifinal game Friday to accommodate an Orthodox Jewish day school in Houston whose players observe the Sabbath. 

The school, the Robert M. Beren Academy, was expected to forfeit its game against the Covenant School of Dallas, scheduled for 9 p.m. Friday. It appealed to the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools, the group that organizes the event, but the association said it was unwilling to change the time of the game, citing its bylaws. 

But on Thursday, the association, known as Tapps, said on its Web site that it had “been served a temporary restraining order which requires the Beran Academy be allowed to participate

Teacher Sex Abuse: Why Repeat Offenders Are So Common

Time Magazine

Parents don’t want to further traumatize young victims, but handling things "discreetly" merely displaces the problem to another school or community

 

When Bud Spillane was a school superintendent in New Rochelle, N.Y., he had to deal with removing an elementary school teacher suspected of sex abuse. “It was pretty evident he had done something,” Spillane recalls. The biggest obstacle to removing him from the classroom? “Parents came out of the woodwork…against me,” he says. They loved the teacher, the afterschool time he put in, and the weekend trips he liked to take students on, so they fought to keep him in school. Later in Spillane’s career, while he was leading the Fairfax County Public Schools outside of Washington, he had a teacher’s attorney demand a public hearing in a dismissal action involving multiple instances of alleged sexual misconduct with students. It was a shrewd move; instead of letting the school board handle the action in a private executive session, the lawyer wanted to force children to testify in court. Several parents understandably refused to put their kids through that spectacle. Welcome to the complicated and ugly world of sexual abuse in schools.

The unraveling of Deborah Feldman's fable "Unorthodox"

NY Daily News

The problem is that much of her memoir may not be true, according to ardent critics. These include family members, neighbors and even New York State authorities.


In the book, Feldman charges her mother – who was apparently burdened by the pressures of Satmar life – with a “mysterious disappearance” when Feldman was a toddler.

In fact, it takes about 30 seconds to find Shoshana Berkovic on both Twitter and Facebook. She is a science teacher at New Utrecht High School and does not appear to have ever left Brooklyn. She did divorce her husband, as court records indicate. But that was in 2010, more than a decade after Feldman accuses her mother with leaving her behind. (Shoshana Berkovic / Facebook)

Rav Yaakov Emden: Sexual Relations - Siddur

Rav Yaakov Emden

Yeshiva student pleads guilty to molesting 2 fourth-graders

 New York Post

Hillel Selznick, 25 of Flushing, admitted to Queens Supreme Court Justice Richard Buchter that he inappropriately touched a set of eight-year-old girls -- over a year-long period -- during private tutoring lessons inside the victim's homes.

Selznick, who was a student at Rabbinical Seminary of America, pleaded to two counts of course sexual misconduct against a child and will be sentenced on April 17 to six months in jail, 10 years probation, complete a sex offender program and register as sex offender.

Pedophile Rabbi David Kaye trapped by Dateline TV

Washington Jewish Week  Conservative Rabbi

Live Journal he received 6.5 years in federal prison

Rav Dovid Grossman discusses kiruv with Yair Lapid