by Susan Rosenbluth,
Editor, Jewish Voice and Opinion

November 2008

Orthodox-Jewish New York Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who recently announced the formation of a taskforce dealing with rabbinic sex abuse of minors, particularly in the hareidi community, has a major decision to make: Should he ask two recognized, high-profile Orthodox-Jewish experts who have been vocal activists working for years on behalf of child victims of sex abuse to join his taskforce; or should he allow a more than 20-year-old feud, which may have been caused by the same forces he is now endeavoring to uncover and expose, keep those experts at arms length.

Mr. Hikind, a Democrat who represents the heavily hareidi communities of Flatbush and Borough Park, has the opportunity to bring sociologist Dr. Amy Neustein, who has spent the last 20 years conveying the problem of child sex-abuse to public attention (despite the determination of many public figures in the Orthodox-Jewish community simply to deny that it exists at all), and her frequent co-author, Michael Lesher, an attorney who has been representing victims of some of the most notorious sex-abuse cases in the Orthodox community, onto the taskforce.

They have asked to serve without remuneration. The question is: will Mr. Hikind take advantage of their offer, or will old grudges still prevail, even though Dr. Neustein, last month, just before Yom Kippur, publicly asked for the assemblyman’s forgiveness for any past grievances he still bears against her.

Dr. Neustein, a member of the Fort Lee Orthodox community, has devoted her professional training to exposing the maltreatment accorded to many mothers who lose custody of their children as a result of reporting sex-abuse allegations against the children’s fathers. Three years ago, she and Mr. Lesher co-authored From Madness to Mutiny: Why Mothers Are Running from the Family Courts—and What Can Be Done about It, which was published by University Press of New England.

For her efforts, Dr. Neustein, the editor of the soon-to-be published Tempest in the Temple: Jewish Communities and Child Sex Scandals, has received a humanitarian award from Mothers against Sexual Abuse and a special Lifetime Achievement Award at the Battered Mothers Custody Conference in 2006.

A member of the editorial board of the Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, she is frequently asked to speak on the subject by publications, organizations, and television programs.

Like Dr. Neustein, Mr. Lesher, a member of the Passaic Orthodox community, seems uniquely qualified to serve on the taskforce. As an attorney, he has represented, pro bono, many individuals in the Orthodox community, who now, as adults, say they suffered sexual abuse while they were children.

He currently represents alleged victims of Avrohom Mondrowitz, a case that had been forgotten by almost everyone, except Dr. Neustein and the victims, until Mr. Lesher, through dint of more than ten years of steady advocacy, helped push the issue forward.

In the early 1980s, Mr. Mondrowitz, who posed as a rabbinic psychologist-counselor, may, according to police, have molested as many as hundreds of young boys in the Brooklyn-Orthodox community. In 1985, he was indicted on five counts of sodomy and six counts of sexual abuse, but he fled to Israel, where he has been living ever since.

While there were some efforts to have him extradited, Israeli law did not make it easy. The Israeli judiciary identified rape by a man against a girl or woman as an extraditable charge, but it did not recognize molestation of boys. When the law was amended, the authorities in Brooklyn claimed it was not retroactive.

Mr. Lesher and Dr. Neustein charged the Brooklyn judiciary hierarchy, specifically Kings County District Attorney Charles Hynes, with being unwilling to ruffle the feathers of their borough’s powerful Orthodox leaders who were not interested in opening the Pandora’s box that Mr. Mondrowitz’s extradition back to Brooklyn might prompt.

In the fall of 2007, largely through Mr. Lesher’s efforts, Mr. Mondrowitz was arrested in Jerusalem and is now, finally, awaiting extradition and trial in Brooklyn for serial acts of severe child sexual abuse.

Other clients of Mr. Lesher have charged abuse at the hands of other respected religious leaders and teachers, including Yehuda Kolko of Yeshiva Torah Temimah in Flatbush. In 2006 and 2007, he was charged with several counts of child abuse. The testimony of some of Mr. Lesher’s clients was crucial in this case.

When the case finally went to court last April, prosecutors allegedly convinced the families of the victims not to take further action after a plea bargain was negotiated. Eventually, Mr. Kolko pleaded guilty only to child endangerment and received no jail time.

"The two of us have developed exceptional credibility among the victims in our communities, many of whom are still very reluctant to trust anyone—let along members of the religious community that once shunned or ignored them. Many of the victims we know are unlikely to come forward to politicians unless they know these politicians are working with us. Yet their participation in a cause like yours is crucial," Dr. Neustein and Mr. Lesher wrote to Mr. Hikind in a letter asking to be considered for his taskforce.

Thus far, however, Mr. Hikind has not responded.

Dr. Neustein fears that he still harbors a grudge against her based on actions she took as part of a campaign to win back her own child from whom she was separated by the Brooklyn Family Court in 1986. The daughter of an Orthodox Brooklyn rabbi, Dr. Neustein knows first-hand the risks of trying, in the Orthodox community, to support a child who claims to have been sexually abused.

In 1986, Brooklyn Family Court Judge Leon Deutsch removed Dr. Neustein’s daughter, Sherry Orbach, from her home and custody after the child and her grandmother (Dr. Neustein’s late mother, Shirley) accused the child’s father, Dr. Ozzie Orbach, of sexually abusing his daughter. Dr. Neustein and Dr. Orbach had been divorced three years earlier.

Two years later, Judge Deutsch dismissed all expert reports indicating that the child had indeed been abused, and, despite the evidence and the child’s testimony, decided that Dr. Neustein had "brainwashed" her daughter. Even though no one had ever accused Dr. Neustein of child abuse, the judge granted Dr. Orbach full custody and allowed Dr. Neustein only limited supervised visitation with her daughter.

Court records show that numerous people with access to Sherry testified about the then-eight year old’s provocative behavior, which can indicate abuse, and, equally important, her dramatic weight loss, another sign. Photographs show that, in two years, she went from being a chubby, cheerful six year old to an emaciated, heavily made-up dour child who, according to the visitation supervisor, "looked like a concentration camp survivor."

Despite Dr. Neustein’s pleas, the father, a medical doctor, did nothing about his daughter’s progressive weight loss and accused his former wife of "over-reacting."

In 1989, Judge Deutsch ended all of Dr. Neustein’s visitation rights. He had ordered the mother not to seek medical attention for the child without the father’s permission, but on one occasion, the mother and the woman who was supervising her visitation, saw that Sherry’s anorexia was out of control. They took her to the King’s County Hospital Emergency Room, where the pediatrician on call that evening, Dr. Jeffrey Birnbaum, diagnosed the child as "by far the worst case of emaciation I have ever seen."

He told Dr. Neustein that if the child had not been hospitalized, she could have died. In court, he testified that "the child was emaciated with very bizarre behavior consistent with anorexia nervosa which is very abnormal is an eight-year-old child."

Dr. Birnbaum was also struck by Sherry’s sexualized behavior, which many experts say can be associated with abuse. "I remember that Sherry, during her admission to the hospital, used language, some of it of a sexual nature, that seemed grossly inappropriate for a girl of her age," Dr. Birnbaum told the court.

Unimpressed, Judge Deutsch ruled that because Dr. Neustein had taken the child for medical attention without the father’s permission, she would forfeit all further visitation.

Dr. Neustein has not seen her child since, but that is not because she stopped trying. Over the years, while Sherry was still a minor, Dr. Neustein engaged every public official who would listen, asking for help. Her efforts intensified in 1991 when she received word that her daughter might already have died from her anorexia, as her daughter’s case had just been placed before the New York City Child Welfare Administration’s Child Fatality Review Panel.

In her fear and panic, she now says, she "committed an act" that brought her into direct conflict with Mr. Hikind, and seems to lie at the root of her current difficulties in gaining admission to his taskforce, despite her credentials.

According to Dr. Neustein, in 1991, more than two years after she had last seen her daughter, aides of Mayor David Dinkins suggested to her that if she agreed to speak out publicly against the Jewish community in the wake of the then-recent Crown Heights riots, the mayor’s staff would arrange for the New York City Child Welfare Administration to intervene to protect her daughter.

Buoyed by the possibility of reconnecting with her child, Dr. Neustein did as they asked. She went on several radio programs, railing against the Orthodox leaders and community that she felt had betrayed her and supported her ex-husband, even though he had been accused of child abuse.

In fact, many officials in the secular community agreed with her. They told Mr. Lesher, who began writing about the case in 1996 for The Village Voice and the New York Jewish Week, that the way her case had been handled caused them to believe it may have been linked to powerful players within Brooklyn’s Orthodox-Jewish community, most of whom were still insisting that child abuse did not occur among Orthodox Jews.

One of those secular leaders was Gov David Paterson, then a New York State Senator. As early as 1989, Mr. Paterson, who, at Dr. Neustein’s urging, had held four senate hearings on child abuse cases, expressed his concern that Dr. Neustein had been the victim of a powerful cabal made up of court officials and leaders of the Orthodox-Jewish community.

He called her case "an intensely ferocious effort made by judges, social service and law guardian agencies, rabbis and elected officials to protect the father from an investigation…[so that] a heinous crime has been committed and is being covered up."

In 1996, Mr. Lesher wrote an op-ed in the Jewish Week about Dr. Neustein’s case, citing Thaddeus Owens, Jr, an activist who had gained fame by attempting to reconcile the African-American and Jewish communities after the Crown Heights riots. At one of Mr. Paterson’s hearings, Mr. Owens testified that rabbis with whom he had spoken about Dr. Neustein told him her tirades against the Orthodox community had exposed her as "a self-hating Jew."

According to Mr. Owens, those rabbis also told him that because she had publicly accused an Orthodox Jew (her ex-husband) of child abuse, her daughter’s death, presumably from anorexia, "would only be justice."

In the end, Mr. Dinkins’ staff did nothing to help Dr. Neustein. All that was left, she said, was the animosity of leaders such as Mr. Hikind who bitterly resented her radio interviews and still saw her as "a self-hating Jew" rather than as a desperate mother.

In an attempt to rectify the situation, last month, Dr. Neustein wrote a public letter of teshuva to Mr. Hikind, explaining what happened and asking him for forgiveness and the opportunity to make amends and a new start by serving on his taskforce.

Asked about the letter, Mr. Hikind said he not only accepted her apology, but also gave her "tremendous credit for doing this publicly."

"Sometimes, it’s important for people to admit they, like all of us, made a mistake. Now, we can move on as if all that never happened," he said.

While he said Dr. Neustein and Mr. Lesher could write asking to be on his taskforce, he gave them no guarantees. The taskforce, he said, would consist of about 25 people all of whom would be deeply involved in the hareidi community. He said he expects to include "experts, therapists, and even some victims."

"Whether or not Dr. Neustein and Mr. Lesher serve on the taskforce itself, I hope they will be available to advise me and help us make a difference," he said.

One of Mr. Hikind’s problems is that finding superbly trained, experienced people such as Dr. Neustein and Mr. Lesher to serve on the taskforce may be difficult. In September, Rabbi Dr. Benzion Twerski, a prominent psychologist in the Brooklyn-Orthodox community, quit the taskforce, claiming that he had been "prosecuted in the street for daring to join such a venture."

He said that despite his "extreme respect" for Mr. Hikind and his desire to "share in his mission to make a difference in this painful and destructive issue," he had decided to withdraw from Mr. Hikind’s project "to protect myself, my family, and my reputation."

For many years, Dr. Twerski has been recognized for his efforts to help troubled youngsters in the hareidi community. He said he saw his participation in Mr. Hikind’s taskforce as simply a continuation of those efforts.

"My expectations were that the mission I was entering would be understood as something that will be done properly and sensitively," he said.

He was wrong. In a written statement after he announced he would be leaving the taskforce, he explained his decision by describing his treatment at the hands of some members of his community once they discovered he would be working with Mr. Hikind on this issue.

"For several days, I was approached by individuals, some stating that they would cross the street if they were to meet me while walking with their children. Others told me that they would not accept my child into their class if assigned. Others used euphemisms that I refuse to repeat. Family members were likewise confronted by all sorts of comments and phone calls. My married children had been told to fear ever getting shidduchim for their children. Basically, I was left to choose between abandoning my family for this mission, or to take the painful step that I did," he said.

Dr. Neustein and Mr. Lesher said they were saddened by Dr. Twerski’s experience but not surprised. An entire section of Tempest in the Temple is devoted to dynamics in the Orthodox community surrounding the issue of abuse.

In the section entitled "Sacrificing Victims," some of the 15 practicing rabbis, educators, pastoral counselors, sociologists, mental health professionals, and legal advocates for abuse victims who contributed to the book discuss why victims of abuse are all too often ignored or cast off by the Orthodox-Jewish community and the mechanisms by which powerful religious institutions protect their own.

"Sexual child abuse is one of the most deeply rooted fears in the Jewish community. My book is the first to bring sex scandals in synagogues to light. Its purpose is not to blame or shame Jews, but, rather, to examine this horrific problem with as much clarity and precision as possible so that the best remedies can be offered to the community as a whole," said Dr. Neustein.

While Mr. Hikind now says he believes the problem is approaching "epidemic" proportions in the Orthodox community, Dr. Twerski is more cautious. While he is certain that "molestation is underestimated in our community," he never called it "an epidemic."

"I have not found any reliable statistics, but each victim is a precious neshoma, an olam malei that is totally destroyed," he said, using the Hebrew words for "soul" and "entire world."

He pointed out that some of the victims simply give up on religion, while others struggle for years with post traumatic stress disorder.

"Some have major hurdles in establishing their own married lives, and still others become molesters themselves," he said.

The attitude which holds that "it doesn’t happen in my yeshiva" is nothing more than denial, he said.

"Perhaps there are no incidents, but one never knows. We’re talking about things that occur in secrecy. I never looked at this problem as one of quantity," he said.

He maintained that even if there is substantially less abuse in Orthodox settings than elsewhere, "to combat the problem, we need to start somewhere."

Mr. Hikind, however, said he has already amassed a dossier with the names of "hundreds" of individuals who allege that, as children, they were sexually molested by rabbis, teachers, and other members of the Orthodox community. He said that unless he receives the cooperation of community leaders, he is prepared to "name names."

"If you’re a child molester, the best community to come to is Borough Park, Flatbush, Lakewood, or Monroe. Your chances of being arrested are much smaller because the people don’t press charges," he said, referring to communities with large hareidi populations.

The biggest problem, he said, is that once community leaders are alerted to the accusation of child abuse in the community, they usually refuse either to go to the police themselves or to give permission (a heter) to the victim or family to do so.

The halachic imperative against "mesirah," reporting a fellow Jew to the secular authorities, is still a cultural norm in the Orthodox community, despite the fact that many Orthodox rabbinic authorities, including the Rabbinical Board of Torah Umesorah, the National Society of Hebrew Day Schools, now argues that going to the police in the US in cases of child abuse does not constitute mesirah and should be encouraged.

Mr. Hikind agreed. "I have been learning that a lot of people out there know who the bad guys are. How come no one talked to me, how come no one came to me?" he said, declaring his intention now to make public the names of those he believes are guilty. "I am prepared to be sued by those pedophiles. If they’re innocent, let them sue me."

Although he did not mention Dr. Neustein or her case, the record shows that she did reach out to him when her daughter made the accusations against Dr. Orbach.

Mr. Hikind said he became aware of the scope of the problem last summer when "an avalanche" of individuals, some of them empowered by their association with Dr. Neustein and Mr. Lesher, began coming forward with their histories of abuse, some of them recent, others decades old. Mr. Hikind said their stories have made him "absolutely sick, to have to listen to this, to be so shocked, to see so much pain, so much suffering."

"I actually feel this may be the most important thing I’ve done in 26 years of public service, because you’re talking about saving lives," he said.

Although Mr. Hikind hopes the taskforce will help formulate plans on how to proceed, he does have a few ideas. He said the findings amassed by the panel will be presented to "leading rabbis" in various Orthodox communities, who, he predicted, "will be absolutely flabbergasted" by the report.

Recognizing that any protocol on how to proceed must balance protection to the alleged victims with fairness to those who have been charged but are innocent, he said his goal is to develop a list of people who have been credibly accused.

"Before any other yeshiva hires a person, you need to be able to go to a roster and see if that rebbe was teaching somewhere else and got thrown out," he said.

This is an issue of great concern to columnist Marvin Schick, who, as president of four Orthodox Jewish day schools, one of which is hareidi, cautioned against over-zealous reaction. The danger, he said, is that false accusations could ruin the lives of those unjustly charged and punished.

Most experts agree that, with the cooperation of the community, only the secular authorities have the necessary expertise and personnel to conduct competent investigations leading to punishment for the guilty and exoneration for the falsely accused.

Dr. Neustein and Mr. Lesher point out that, all too often, unless the secular authorities are brought in, many yeshivas are reluctant to dismiss such teachers in the first place.

Mr. Hikind admitted that self-regulation is hard to impose. "There’s got to be a system in which trusted people, respected leaders, who are not directly part of the organization under investigation, are called on to conduct an examination. Look, I wasn’t there when these boys, who are now making accusations, were abused, nor was anyone else. So we have to make judgments. We do that all the time," he said.

Although he said he has called on members of the Orthodox community to use the police in cases of sex-abuse crimes, he recognized that probably will not happen.

"People in our community don’t want to go to public. They want to keep it quiet, which is terrible, it is sinful. For someone not to come forward when their own child has been abused makes them guilty not only of not pressing for justice for their own family, but for every other child who will be abused by that abuser in the future. And they will have to live with that," he said.

The panel that he envisions his taskforce will empower may become a suitable alternative for the Orthodox community to turn to instead of the secular authorities, he said. "At least let’s get these people off the street," he said.

Dr. Neustein and Mr. Lesher have other ideas for Mr. Hikind and his taskforce to consider. The entire third section of Tempest in the Temple, entitled "Let Me Know the Way," addresses ways for Jewish communities to overcome "the ignorance, bias, and corruption" associated with clergy sexual abuse, especially of children. Included are solutions that have been successfully tried as well as some new ideas.

In the state Assembly, Mr. Hikind said he is supporting legislative reforms that will make it easier to convict pedophiles. He is backing an extension of the statute of limitations for prosecuting child sexual molesters and for the alleged victims of such abuse to file civil suits.

Dr. Neustein and Mr. Lesher said if they are accepted onto the taskforce panel, they would like to start by preparing a scholarly legal memorandum that Mr. Hikind could then take to Governor Paterson.

Dr. Neustein is certain that Mr. Paterson, whom she described as "my source of strength during my darkest times," will be "exhilarated" to see Dr. Neustein and Mr. Hikind working together "on this noble cause."

"This is something David has wanted and prayed for, for such a long time. So many times he asked me, ‘Why can’t you and Dov get together and work side by side?’" she said.

She noted that, in 1988, she brought Wendy Hoffman, the first survivor of incest willing to testify publicly about her case, to Mr. Paterson’s office. At that meeting, Ms. Hoffman told the then-State Senator, "You and Amy have restored my mental health because you believe in me."

According to Dr. Neustein, that is "typical of the kind of confidence Michael’s and my work has inspired."

"Between us, Michael Lesher and I have heard the agonizing stories of countless abuse survivors and of parents of abused children who, for breaking the taboo of silence, have lost children through the actions of family courts, child welfare agencies, and even Jewish organizations such as Ohel Children’s Home. Everyone connected with this issue knows that we have been faithful to the promises we have made to help these people," she said.

She said Mr. Hikind’s reputation as a legislator committed to their issue is the chief reason she and Mr. Lesher are so eager to be appointed to his taskforce.

They have worked with many government officials before, but, too often, have received little more than praise and encouragement. They believe that with Mr. Hikind’s commitment, his taskforce may have the power to affect change.

"We want to join hands with him in our mutual cause to protect the children of our community from defilement and to protect mothers, like myself, from being raked over the coals for trying to save their children’s lives," said Dr. Neustein.

There is no question that, with Mr. Hikind’s new-found interest, the issue of child sex abuse in the Orthodox community will receive a great deal more attention.

David Zwiebel, general counsel of Agudath Israel of America, admitted that, until recently, the issue "was very much in the shadows" and that the religious community was aware only of "isolated incidents" in yeshivas.

"Sometimes they were dealt with correctly and sometimes incorrectly," Mr. Zwiebel said, "but the severity of the problem and the possible magnitude were really things that most people, including myself, just didn’t understand."

He attributed the renewed interest to the attention paid to the sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church.

Articles in the press, plus the work of activists such as Dr. Neustein and Mr. Lesher, seem to have empowered members of the Orthodox community to come forward with their own stories.

"The groundswell of activism and discontent with the reaction of the Orthodox communities has finally reached critical mass," said Dr. Neustein.

Having worked so hard for so long, Dr. Neustein and Mr. Lesher hope that as members of Mr. Hikind’s taskforce, they would have the chance to see some of their ideas come to fruition.

Those in the community who would like to advocate on behalf of Dr. Neustein’s and Mr. Lesher’s placement on the new taskforce can reach Mr. Hikind’s office at 718-853-9616. His email address is hikindd@assembly.state.ny.us.

Mr. Lesher emphasized that neither he nor Dr. Neustein sought a role on the taskforce for personal gain. Neither of them has profited financially from the years of effort they have ploughed into this issue.

"Simply put, our reason for wanting to be involved on Hikind’s taskforce is that, with our long history of accomplishments and established public credentials in political and popular circles as well as scholarly ones, we bring unique qualifications and resources to this noble effort," said Mr. Lesher.

Dr. Neustein agreed, noting that, over the years, she and Mr. Lesher have proposed legislative and administrative reforms that, if they had reached the proper ears, "could have helped untold numbers of victims and protected children from abuse in the future."

"But we are not legislators as is Dov Hikind. He has the power to introduce needed legislation and to get it passed. So, given his commitment to the issue, we need his abilities as a legislator as much as his taskforce needs the expertise and credibility we bring to the job. We welcome and applaud his determination to see it done. This has been our cause for many years; now it belongs to all us of," she said.

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