{"id":89064,"date":"2016-03-05T18:42:18","date_gmt":"2016-03-06T02:42:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=89064"},"modified":"2016-03-05T18:42:18","modified_gmt":"2016-03-06T02:42:18","slug":"child-abuse-allegations-plague-the-hasidic-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=89064","title":{"rendered":"CHILD ABUSE ALLEGATIONS PLAGUE THE HASIDIC COMMUNITY"},"content":{"rendered":"

Newsweek<\/a>: While there is no evidence that child abuse is any more likely to occur in ultra-Orthodox schools than in public or secular institutions, stories like Reizes\u2019s\u2014an alleged abuser sheltered and victims unwilling to talk for fear of losing the only way of life they know\u2014are common in the Hasidic school system. The many former students, advocates, sociologists, social workers and survivors interviewed by Newsweek, along with recordings, documents, public filings and personal emails that Newsweek obtained, place the blame on a confluence of factors: widespread sexual repression, a strong resistance to the secular world, and, most important, a power structure designed to keep people from speaking up about abuse.<\/p>\n

Set on a leafy stretch of Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights, Oholei Torah is one of the most important institutions in the Chabad movement\u2019s global yeshiva network and one of the largest of the dozens of Chabad schools in Brooklyn, with nearly 2,000 students at any given time. But stop any middle-school-age kid in the school\u2019s hallways, and he\u2014there are no female students\u2014will likely know nothing of world history, won\u2019t be able to do long division and will speak only rudimentary English\u2014even though he\u2019s growing up in the biggest city in the United States.<\/p>\n

Oholei Torah conducts its seven-plus daily hours of religious lessons mostly in Yiddish. According to more than a dozen former students across three decades, it provides almost no lessons in science, math, English grammar or history. (The school did not respond to queries about its curriculum.) Many of these students go home to an apartment with no television, no Internet, no newspapers and no books except religious texts. Many will not gain the basic knowledge of how to navigate the world until they are married off around age 18, like how to write a check, how to order General Tso\u2019s chicken or even what sex is. When you\u2019re a child in this environment, you don\u2019t question the fact that you can\u2019t identify your own state on a map. And when you are molested, you don\u2019t ask questions about that either.<\/p>\n

In the ultra-Orthodox world, sexuality is simultaneously denied and monitored to the point of obsession. Starting in childhood, boys and girls are separated; the opposite gender remains a mystery until it\u2019s time to marry, usually in an arranged pairing. Boys are taught to avoid looking at girls, while girls are taught that they are a source of sex and transgression, say former members of the Haredi, or ultra-Orthodox Jewish, community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Newsweek: While there is no evidence that child abuse is any more likely to occur in ultra-Orthodox schools than in public or secular institutions, stories like Reizes\u2019s\u2014an alleged abuser sheltered and victims unwilling to talk for fear of losing the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,165],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abuse","category-chabad"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=89064"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89065,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89064\/revisions\/89065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=89064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=89064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=89064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}