{"id":54845,"date":"2014-05-15T11:00:45","date_gmt":"2014-05-15T19:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=54845"},"modified":"2014-05-15T14:57:50","modified_gmt":"2014-05-15T22:57:50","slug":"accused-child-molester-runs-torah-academy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=54845","title":{"rendered":"Accused Child Molester Runs Torah Academy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Circa 2005, I found this Rabbi Eliezer Eisgrau story<\/a> so difficult to unravel, it ended my focus on reporting molestation stories. I needed to take a break. <\/p>\n

Then as now, I don’t take any side in this story, except to say that I found the allegations troubling enough (and Genendy Eisgrau<\/a> credible enough) to report them. <\/p>\n

I have no doubt, by contrast, that Baltimore’s Rabbi Yaakov Menken<\/a> is a sexual predator (though not towards children and he has never been arrested). <\/p>\n

Phil Jacobs writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Genendy is motivated to revisit and expand upon her story now, both here and in a 2013 story in the Jerusalem Post, because, three years after the release of Standing Silent, Rabbi Eisgrau is still the principal of Torah Institute, where he oversees the education of 650 students. She wants her father to be seen by professionals who are trained to evaluate sexual offenders. She wants her father to be deemed safe to continue his position working with young children.<\/p>\n

And Genendy Eisgrau remains painfully estranged from her family and the tight-knit Baltimore Orthodox community she grew up in.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy father did speak to me a couple of years ago on erev Yom Kippur,\u201d Genendy said this month. \u201cHe would love to have a relationship with me if I would start from now and pretend nothing happened. I can\u2019t do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

She is also not alone. There was at least one other complaint that was filed by the parents of a Torah Institute family through the City State\u2019s Attorney\u2019s Office back in 1999. But the investigation was dropped.<\/p>\n

THE JERUSALEM REPORT FEB. 20, 2013<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The last time Nanette Eisgrau spoke to her father was in 1994. She was 19 years old, and her father \u2013 Rabbi Eliezer Eisgrau, the principal of the Torah Institute of Baltimore \u2013 had found out she had been seeing a secular-trained (but Orthodox) therapist to deal with the emotional fallout from the sexual abuse, she says she endured as a child, inflicted by her father and maternal grandfather.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy father forced me to perform oral and anal sex repeatedly between the ages of three and seven,\u201d Eisgrau recounts to The Jerusalem Report during a conversation at her home in a Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) community in Israel. \u201cMy grandfather also exposed himself to me, and touched me in my private areas.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut when I confronted my father about it, he threatened to sue the therapist I had been seeing. He said she had convinced me of things that never happened. There was no fatherly attempt to hear my pain or to try to work through the issue together, just total denial; and he blamed me for trying to ruin his life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following the confrontation with her father, her siblings demanded that she stop \u201ctelling stories\u201d in public; and when she refused, the family sought the advice of Rabbi Yakov Hopfer, a respected authority in Baltimore\u2019s Orthodox community, but with no secular training as a psychologist or family counselor.<\/p>\n

After brief conversations with Nanette Eisgrau and a psychiatrist who treated her for crisis management following a suicide attempt several years later, Hopfer determined that her accusations were baseless. He advised the family to cut off all contact with her, saying they had to choose between their father and sister \u2013 and he advised the community to do the same.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and dissociative identity disorder, but it was such a shanda [shame] for them, they just couldn\u2019t deal with it,\u201d she says now. \u201cMy mother continued to talk to me for a while after I was cut out \u2013 we even tried joint therapy together for a while after I tried to kill myself, but she denied that I had any baggage or any reason to be in treatment.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat they have done to me since is a lot worse than even the original abuse. They cut me off in the most complete way I can imagine.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s even worse, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s only about me. They\u2019ve made an example of me for the rest of the community to make sure that nobody else speaks out about abuse.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Circa 2005, I found this Rabbi Eliezer Eisgrau story so difficult to unravel, it ended my focus on reporting molestation stories. I needed to take a break. Then as now, I don’t take any side in this story, except to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abuse"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t