Italy court overturns paedophile conviction because 11-year-old girl 'in love'

ndtv     Italy's highest court has overturned the conviction of a 60-year-old man for having sex with an 11-year-old girl, because the verdict failed to take into account their "amorous relationship".

Pietro Lamberti, a social services worker in Catanzaro in southern Italy, was convicted in February 2011 and sentenced to five years in prison for sexual acts with a minor. The verdict was later upheld by an appeals court. But Italy's supreme court ruled that the verdict did not sufficiently consider "the 'consensus', the existence of an amorous relationship, the absence of physical force, the girl's feelings of love". [...]

Lying for Shalom – the Sake of Peace by Rabbi Yair Hoffman

5 Towns Jewish Times     “Of course, I did my homework, Mom..”

“No, honey, that donut wrapper belonged to a co-worker to whom I gave a ride.”

“Yes, I will go on the treadmill this afternoon as soon as I come home while you are shopping.”

“No dear, that dress does not make you look fat.”

We have all heard the expression before – mutar leshanos mipnei HaShalom – one is permitted to, well, “change” or obscure the truth in order to maintain the peace.  And lately, it seems that we hear it more and more.

A number of questions arise about this concept.  Is it still something that we should avoid doing – or is it possibly a Mitzvah?  Is it an across the board heter?  Do people have complete carte blanche in these areas?  Or are there, perhaps, some caveats?

Firstly, let’s look at the source.  The Talmud (Yevamos 65b) cites Rabbi Eelaah in the name of Rabbi Elazar the son of Rabbi Shimon.  Rabbi Elazar derives this principle – that one may “change” to maintain the peace from the fact that the brothers told Yoseph that Yaakov their father had instructed them to tell Yoseph to forgive their sin against him.  In fact, Yaakov did not leave any such instruction.  Rav Nosson even goes further – it is not just that permission is granted – it is even a Mitzvah!  How do we know this?  Because Hashem instructed Shmuel the prophet to lie to Shaul the king by telling him that he was bringing something to slaughter to Hashem.  In fact, Shmuel was going to anoint Dovid as king in his stead. [...]

Perhaps the real reason why the Poskim who rule like Rabbi Nosson and yet do not use the language of “Mitzvah” is so that one not get accustomed to lying as a way of life.  Let’s not forget as well that in the first three illustrations above, the lying is, in fact, very counterproductive.  In illustration number one the mother wants the son to do well in school.  In illustrations two and three the wife is concerned for her hsuband’s well-being.  It seems pretty clear that the permission to “change”was never granted to lead a decadent lifestyle.  When it says that one can change to maintain peace it never meant just to avoid arguments when the other person is, in fact, correct.  Such uses of this Gemorah undermine the true meaning of Torah and are an abuse and mischaracterization of the very ideals espoused in this ruling of halacha.  The conclusion is that the only recommended use of the leniency is for illustration number four.  And yes, there is no doubt that this is a Mitzvah.

Should the wife be sacrificed for the marriage or the marriage sacrificed for the wife's happiness?- there is a third way!

Guest post Ploni  December 27, 2013 at 7:13 PM 
update December 30, 2013 - Ploni added important clarifications that I put in the comments section

Michelob says:

" If a woman says she's done, very rarely will you be able to hold a gun to her head and live happily ever after. ... If she is not into it, and is dragged to the therapist kicking and screaming, you are both wasting your time and energy.

Michelob; Your words are very rational, BUT ONLY TO A CERTAIN POINT.

The fellow here does indeed seem to be faced with two very unpalatable choices:

A. Be over and done with it.

B. Fight for fairness, family integrity, reputation, the fact that someone so close to him is waging a smear campaign & using tools that clearly include some extremely serious Halachic & Hashkafic transgressions.

But in actuality, I think that there's actually a THIRD option, too:

To understand the third option, we need to "back up" a bit, and we need to ponder:

What's REALLY behind the current epidemic of broken homes. We read comment after comment of hair-raising מעשה רשעות. How can it be?

Men & women that have lived & built lives together for decades, been through so many joys and sorrows... to have everything disintegrate before their very eyes.... the men here grapple to understand the sudden change -  in reality & feel understandable wrath & frustration...

These women [usually] weren't evil when these men married them. What did someone surreptitiously put into their woman's drinks? What changed these women into veritable WITCHES? The man knows that he WASN'T abusive, and if he was, nobody's interested in telling him where he went wrong, and how he should fix it...

I posit that behind this phenomena there is usually ONE simple motivator:

THE WOMAN IS SEARCHING FOR HAPPINESS, OR AT LEAST SEARCHING TO ESCAPE HER OWN EMOTIONAL TURMOIL, whether depression, anxiety, etc, etc.

She cried out & expressed her pain to others; perhaps relatives, perhaps strangers ... and those "helpers" connected her with "professionals", and those "professionals" based on their own inflated egos, personal vendettas, political agendas, etc. KNEW the source of the woman's pain.

The "professional" instinctively knew whom to blame:

THEY BLAMED THE WOMAN'S PAIN SQUARELY ... ON THE HUSBAND.

These "professionals", trained in the art of influencing others, succeeded in changing the woman's world-view. The woman's friends, influenced by popular writings, easily concurred... empathized with her... offered her "resources" in her "plight"....

But they forget to hear the husband's side of the story..... So self assured were they in their world-view, that it wasn't necessary to hear his side.

But everything I've written thus far isn't really my main point, because even if they HAD attempted to mediate between the two... even if the woman HAD gone to therapy ... chances are that it would be too late - as the damage had already been done.

And this leads me to what I believe is the REAL solution....

Please read on...

Concerning men & women that have lived & built lives together for decades, been through so many joys and sorrows … & the woman was convinced that it’s time to go…. I posited that …

THE WOMAN IS SEARCHING FOR HAPPINESS, OR AT LEAST SEARCHING TO ESCAPE HER OWN EMOTIONAL TURMOIL, whether depression, anxiety, etc, etc. … and that her pain is being blamed on HER HUSBAND.

The woman’s mindset seems to be that “happiness” is something she needs to receive from the outside - her husband, or “someone” needs to “give” it to her, and that she “deserves” to receive it… Once the marriage is irrevocably broken, perhaps she feels that her husband CAN’T and / or surely doesn’t want to give it…..

Might she be mistaken?

Could it perhaps be that…?

… The only AUTHENTIC happiness she’ll ever have is the type she’ll find INSIDE HERSELF. Perhaps someone can convince her to stop looking OUTSIDE for something missing INSIDE?

Perhaps she’s looking for the wrong KIND of happiness… and the RIGHT kind is actually free for the taking?

Here are the 5 types of happiness, according to Martin Seligman (I’m cheating a bit, because he talks about well-being, while I’m calling them happiness).

Perhaps she should stop looking for types 1 & 3, and start looking for types 2, 4 & 5?

In fact, maybe they can still … look…. Together?!

1- Positive emotion: pleasure, rapture, ecstasy, warmth, comfort, and the like. A life lived with these aims; he calls the “pleasant life.”

2- Engagement: is about flow - being one with the music, time stopping, and the loss of self-consciousness during an absorbing activity. Engagement is different, even opposite, from positive emotion; for if you ask people who are in flow what they are thinking and feeling, they usually say, “nothing.” A life lived with these aims; he calls the “engaged life.”

3- Relationships: He doesn’t explain it here, but I think it seems self-explanatory.

4- Meaning and purpose: belonging to and serving something that you believe is bigger than the self. Humanity creates all the positive institutions to allow this: religion, political party, being Green, the Boy Scouts, or the family. A life lived with these aims; he calls the “meaningful life.”

5- Accomplishment: success and mastery. People try to achieve just for winning’s own sake 

===============

DT. An example a couple came to me seriously considering divorce. The husband though a brilliant and successful talmid chachom and businessman was very focused on the lack of respect he got from his wife and children. He had become very controlling - insisting for example that the whole family sit attentively for a half an hour drasha every Friday night. His wife took the children's side when they got bored in the middle and left the table. The wife objected to the control he insisted over every aspect of her life and that of the children. At the same time he had become very hurt by her criticism and claims that he was unreasonable and out of touch with normal human feelings. In short the husband and wife blamed each other for their unhappiness and that of the children. The obvious solution was they should get divorced after 20 years of marriage. But they couldn't do that because several of the children were either looking for a shidduch or would soon start. 

Solution. I suggested that the husband was too focused on getting respectful for his genuine spirituality from his family in a manner which was inappropriate. I suggested he spend more time with genuinely spiritual people that would appreciate his insights and analysis. That he did and his need to control and demand respect eased up. At the same time he became more sensitive to his family and realized that he was not presenting appropriate material and issues for them to be able to appreciate. This backing off actually produced the respect he had been craving all along.

At the same time both the husband and wife felt that the other would let lose an emotional attack at inappropriate moments - such as at the Shabbos table or at a time when they didn't feel up to defending themselves. The normal response was to yell back which only escalated the conflict. I suggest a simple technique. No matter how strong their upset - they could not lecture their spouse if the spouse raised up an index finger to signal now was not the time - but later. Surprisingly that was really all that they needed to create a sense of control and respect and the yelling and screaming disappeared.

In sum, this family of genuinely loving and generous people  - who were imbued with deep spiritual feelings - was self-destructing because their spiritual and psychological needs were not being fulfilled through each other. A rather minor adjustment from 2 sessions created the proper conditions for mutual growth and appreciation. It didn't solve everything - but it did enable them to get nachas from each other and for the children to regain respect for their parents.

A.D.H.D. Experts Re-evaluate Study’s Zeal for Drugs

NY Times    Twenty years ago, more than a dozen leaders in child psychiatry received $11 million from the National Institute of Mental Health to study an important question facing families with children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: Is the best long-term treatment medication, behavioral therapy or both? 

The widely publicized result was not only that medication like Ritalin or Adderall trounced behavioral therapy, but also that combining the two did little beyond what medication could do alone. The finding has become a pillar of pharmaceutical companies’ campaigns to market A.D.H.D. drugs, and is used by insurance companies and school systems to argue against therapies that are usually more expensive than pills. 

But in retrospect, even some authors of the study — widely considered the most influential study ever on A.D.H.D. — worry that the results oversold the benefits of drugs, discouraging important home- and school-focused therapy and ultimately distorting the debate over the most effective (and cost-effective) treatments. 

The study was structured to emphasize the reduction of impulsivity and inattention symptoms, for which medication is designed to deliver quick results, several of the researchers said in recent interviews. Less emphasis was placed on improving children’s longer-term academic and social skills, which behavioral therapy addresses by teaching children, parents and teachers to create less distracting and more organized learning environments. 

Recent papers have also cast doubt on whether medication’s benefits last as long as those from therapy.  [...]

Medication helps a person be receptive to learning new skills and behaviors,” said Ruth Hughes, a psychologist and the chief executive of the advocacy group Children and Adults With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. “But those skills and behaviors don’t magically appear. They have to be taught.”[...]

A subsequent paper by one of those, Keith Conners, a psychologist and professor emeritus at Duke University, showed that using only one all-inclusive measurement — “treating the child as a whole,” he said — revealed that combination therapy was significantly better than medication alone. Behavioral therapy emerged as a viable alternative to medication as well. But his paper has received little attention. [...]

Most recently, a paper from the study said flatly that using any treatment “does not predict functioning six to eight years later,” leaving the study’s original question — which treatment does the most good long-term? — largely unanswered. 

“My belief based on the science is that symptom reduction is a good thing, but adding skill-building is a better thing,” said Stephen Hinshaw, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of the study researchers. “If you don’t provide skills-based training, you’re doing the kid a disservice. I wish we had had a fairer test.”

Withholding A Get: Between Leverage And Extortion

Jewish Week    All too commonly, we read about a man who refuses to grant his wife a Jewish writ of divorce (a “get”). We are told her story, culminating in her demand for a get and a plea to help pressure the recalcitrant husband to grant it. As for the man’s version of events – they do not matter; according to the approach promoted by the Organization for the Resolution of Agunot (“agunah” refers to a woman chained to a failed marriage by a husband unable or unwilling to grant her a get) and numerous others, it is never justified for a man to withhold a get as leverage during the divorce settlement.

The zero-tolerance attitude toward get-withholding is an adaptation of Jewish law to a relatively new social reality. This in itself does not make it wrong; on the contrary, new circumstances demand that the application of halachic norms be reconsidered. Yet this attitude implicitly adopts certain core attitudes toward marriage and divorce that are largely alien to Jewish tradition. It behooves us to consider whether it is possible to retain the traditional system but tweaking it to prevent abuse, instead of adopting the regnant divorce paradigms relegating the get to a mere religious technicality. [...]

Mutual consent implies, by definition, the ability to withhold consent, which is inherently a form of leverage within divorce negotiation. This sort of leverage is present in many negotiations and works against the party most eager to reach an agreement; a thirsty man is willing to pay a higher price for a bottle of Coca Cola. Of course, there is a point at which leverage becomes extortion, and that point must be defined, but we must take care not to treat leverage as though it is extortion.

The mutual-consent paradigm seems reasonable in principle, but in practice the traditional system of Jewish divorce has become unacceptable. Despite the best efforts of the medieval rabbis, the playing field is not really level. The deck is stacked against women in several ways. This imbalance has become a central issue as awareness of it has grown and demands for an equality in divorce have become almost universal.

Another reason for the turn against traditional norms of Jewish divorce is the adoption of a unilateral divorce paradigm. This has shifted perceptions about the nature of marriage and the process of its dissolution. The marriage is deemed over once one spouse deems the differences between the spouses unbridgeable. Under this paradigm, withholding a divorce is perceived as a denial of one’s basic rights and freedoms, and if the purpose is withholding is to negotiate a more favorable division of the marital pie, it becomes extortion. The same act that is a legitimate tool of negotiation under the mutual-consent paradigm is a weapon under the unilateral paradigm. [...]

Schlesinger Twins: Debate in House of Commons?

Jewish Telegraph   Graham Stringer MP is to ask Foreign Office minister David Liddington to make representations to Austria about the case of Manchester tug-of-love mother Beth Alexander.

He will also seek a debate in parliament when the Commons returns in January. Mother of four-year-old twins, Beth, who is estranged from her Viennese husband, has access to the children for only six hours a week and on alternate Sundays.

Now, a leading Australian educationist has joined in the calls to right the injustice many feel she has suffered at the hands of the Austrian courts. Rabbi James Kennard, who was head of Manchester's King David High School Yavneh, has hit out at Vienna Chabad which forbids Beth to see her children at their kindergarten, or even to be kept abreast of their progress - or lack of it, as she insists.[...]

Why secular Israeli's don't care about Chareidi poverty

NY Times   In mid-December, a report by the National Insurance Institute and the Central Bureau of Statistics reported that Israel’s poverty rate was shamefully high: 23.5 percent. It found that one-fifth of families — and one-fifth of retirees — in Israel are officially poor, as well as one-third of children.

Israel’s income gap is one of the highest in the world (following Chile, Mexico, Turkey and the United States). Israel, as O.E.C.D. reports have already indicated more than once, somehow manages to be a “start-up nation,” with high economic growth; yet, at the same time, it remains a backward nation with many extremely poor families. [...]

Israelis already know the numbers, and most have already formed opinions on this topic. Many middle-class Israelis are convinced that the poor themselves are at fault — and unless they do something about it, there’s not much that the state can do for them. 

Two segments of Israel’s population stand out as the poorest of the poor: “ultra-Orthodox Jews” and “Muslim-Arabs.” Unemployment rates for ultra-Orthodox Jews (mostly ultra-Orthodox men) and Arabs (mostly Arab women) are very high. So are birth rates. The result: 59 percent of the ultra-Orthodox (also known as Haredim) are poor. Similarly, 58 percent of Arab Israelis are poor. Other groups with notably high rates of poverty are the elderly and new immigrants — but the numbers for these two groups are much lower, 23 percent and 17 percent, respectively.[...]

For middle-class Israelis to care, the message from the state should be quite different — one that could be called compassionate cruelty. The state should be telling its citizens: We don’t much care if the poor-by-choice get even poorer and get even less from the state. We don’t much care about poverty rates that take everybody into account without much consideration of personal and communal decisions and their consequences. But we will ensure that those willing to work and pay their dues are properly assisted, and the government will make sure that they are the only ones to be raised above poverty level on the government’s dime

הח"כ החרדי שגרם ליהודי אנגליה להזיל דמעה

Maariv

חבר הכנסת הדהים השבוע את יהודי הממלכה כשעמד בלבוש חרדי על בימת כנס 'לימוד' ונשא דברים בעד ברית הזוגיות, אוטובוסים בשבת ולימודי ליבה. "סוף-סוף מישהו שבא לאחד", הגיבו בקהל, "זו ישראל שכולנו רוצים להאמין בה

כשמאות מיהודי בריטניה נכנסו לאולם ההרצאות באוניברסיטת ווריק שבעיר קובנטרי הם היו פסימיים. הם באו לשמוע הרצאה של "חבר הכנסת החרדי ממפלגת יש עתיד", הרב דב ליפמן, וכבר הכינו את השאלות הנוקבות על נושאי דת ומדינה, גיור, 'נשות הכותל', ברית הזוגיות ועוד. אך שום דבר לא הכין אותם לכך שליפמן יסכים איתם בכל אחד מהנושאים, ויותר מכך - יגרום להם להתרגש ואפילו להזיל דמעה כשדיבר על נושאי דת ומדינה אקטואליים ברוח שהייתה שונה מאוד ממה שהמאזינים ציפו לו.  

ליפמן דיבר על כל הנושאים הבוערים בישראל, והציג עמדה מורכבת ומתקדמת בענייני דת ומדינה ובנושאים שבין דתיים לחילונים. כשדיבר על ברית הזוגיות השיב להומוסקסואל שישב בקהל ש"התורה מתייחסת למעשה בחומרה, אך היא אינה אומרת שצריך להתנהג לאנשים כאלה בצורה לא נאותה"; כשתמך בהפעלת תחבורה ציבורית בשבת אמר ח"כ ליפמן שהוא רגיל לכך שיש תחבורת ציבורית בשבת, ו"זה לא מפריע לי ברמה האישית"; על לימודי הליבה הוא אמר ש"אם בארה"ב גדולי הרבנים החרדים מעודדים לימודים של מתמטיקה ואנגלית - למה לא בישראל?"

במהלך הנאום הצדיק ליפמן את זכותן של נשים להתפלל בכותל, הסביר את הבעיה הגדולה של השתלטות החרדים על שכונות עירו, בית-שמש, וסיפר על חוויית העלייה המרגשת שלו. "אני אמנם אופטימי מאוד, אבל לא נאיבי", אמר ליפמן כשנשאל אם טרם למד את חוקי המשחק בכנסת ישראל. עם תום נאומו עמדו הנוכחים בקהל על רגליהם ומחאו כפיים במשך דקות ארוכות.  

BOO-AH ! Letting go of a dead marriage

A response to a commenter on MH's post about divorce-impasse by Faithful

I would like to relate to a commenter named "M", who wrote, on December 26, on MH's post:

The bottom line here is that we must fight DIVORCE itself. We must stop the divorce racket. We must stop divorce-on-demand. We must encourage and push and even pressure couples to remain married and not divorce.

Many many many Gedolim and even sociologists have said divorce is far far too easy and far far too frequent. Rav Avigdor Miller zt"l said many times that 99% of divorces in the Orthodox community were avoidable and should not have happened.

My perspective is very fresh and very real, having been dragged into the Israeli state divorce courts, kicking and screaming, over the last three years, with the claim that I can't grant my wife of over 25 years a unilateral divorce if she refuses to first go to counseling with me about it. Now, for the first time, just this week, my wife has agreed to consider the counseling. 

The surrealism of how "the system" was intent on ramming a divorce down my throat reached its zenith about a month ago, when I went to visit the great, virtually mythic sage of Bnei Brak – HaRav Chaiim Kanievsky. I'm not in the camp of those who revere his every word and gesture, but I have a neighbor who is, in a quite sober way, and offered to take me to him for a quick question and answer on my tortured topic. He offered to write it up for me in Hebrew and to present to him as a brief note, in order to respect the Rav's proverbial penchant for curt.

So we did. His note basically said: "this avreich has had a long and blessed marriage, with successful chareidi kids, bli ayin ha'ra, but now his wife suddenly wants out. She even turned to a notorious modern orthodox feminist organization to help her heap wild claims against him in the state rabbinical court. He wants advice."

We get to his apartment on motzei Shabbos and are amazed to easily walk in to see him. He's hunched over his shtender, of course, learning. Note is presented, he asks a tiny clarification: Am I a Cohen? I say no. Not whatsoever. He frowns and makes a wave of dismissal. "So what do you need this for? Let her go."

I'm taken aback. I respond under my breath, and my neighbor will repeat it loud enough so he can hear it, that I'm worried about the integrity of my family, about my reputation, about the fact that someone so close to me is waging a smear campaign against me in court, with the help of some quasi-religious ideologues. And last but not least – I still feel love for her.

He frowns some more and tells me to daven. Then says the clincher: "BOO-AH"! 

Whoa. It felt like a bad joke, with a razor blade. My neighbor urges us to leave, and while on the way out explains: Its short for "Bracha v'Hatzlocho!" 

B-oo-ah.

Ok. Gottit. But it really didn't feel ok. So I let it sink in, eventually realizing how symbolic it was. It's actually riveting in its clarity. The message: "I couldn't give a damn! You shouldn't either."

Truly mind-boggling to get such a message from a "Gadol". But there it was. "Why hold on to a woman who doesn't want you? Why not just let her go already. Boo-ah!"

To be sure, many far from Gadolim say it too. I heard divorce court judge say: "it doesn't matter if she's right, and it doesn't matter if you feel your life and that of the children will be seriously diminished if the marriage is dismantled the way she wants. If she wants out, you’re ABUSING HER to stand in her way!!"

Now let's get this clear. I'm not trying to knock Gadolim, chv"sh, and I certainly am not trying to belittle the idea that there are times to move on past a dying marriage. But I am devastated to realize that men within our holiest communities are being warned, on one extreme, that if their wife might feel that she is fed up with him – run after her and say: "here dear, please take this Get, with my blessing." 

On the other extreme –"Booh-ah". Spit on the marriage, and move on. 

Now, my friends – this is the rub. While I agree with the claim that women have the right to end an unhappy marriage, and men certainly have the right to sneer back, that's only if that's ALL she's seeking. Unfortunately, many women are claiming much more. They are using hyper sensitivities over how halacha makes them unfairly vulnerable, in order to demonize their man. For women with deep wounds in relation to the men of their childhood – that feels reeeel good. The Kabbalists call it klippa. 

Klippa, literally peel, is an energy which obstructs our capacity to deal with the "fruit" of a spiritual challenge. In our case, this klippa of divorce-on-demand mania deflects genuine problem solving intentions into dog-eat-dog legalities. Like when your formally very good friends and rabbonim, who once fully supported your pursuit of Sholom Bayis, start whispering: "why do you need this hassle?" 

My response, over and over again, is: "Because it's a MITZVAH. Sholom Bayis is in fact a MAJOR Mitzvah. Then there's the possibility, like in our case, that a marriage b'kedusha has an established positive track record which screams against the ethic that when the going gets rough – escape! How about the profound ingratitude to our Creator it is to chuck out such a blessing like a marriage without serious examination of the issues that led to its breakdown? Last but not least - I believe that divorcing with all the slander and demonization that my wife wants would cause irreparable damage to the kids and quite possibly our future generations."

They all hear. But eventually they sigh and say: "But is it really worth the hassle?"

And I know, deep inside, in their religious conscience, that they agree with my position. Some even admire it. It's just that in their outer, more "realistic" side, they can't resist the klippa of saying…                     BOO-AH.

My Experience with the Doubtful Mamzer by Rav Dovid Eidensohn

   Doubtful Mamzer 

Pa. court reverses church official's landmark conviction for sexual abuse

USA Today     A Roman Catholic church official who has been jailed for more than a year for his handling of priest sex-abuse complaints had his conviction reversed and was ordered released Thursday.

In dismissing the landmark criminal case, a three-judge Superior Court panel unanimously rejected prosecutors' arguments that Monsignor William Lynn, the first U.S. church official ever charged or convicted for the handling of clergy-abuse complaints, supervised the welfare of any particular child.

Lynn, 62, is serving a three- to six-year prison sentence after his child-endangerment conviction last year. His lawyers will try to get him released as early as Thursday from the state prison in Waymart.

Prosecutors had argued at trial that Lynn reassigned predators to new parishes in Philadelphia while he was the archdiocese's secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004. [...]