Bleach Attack on Advocate for Jewish Victims of Sexual Abuse, Common Forms of Misinformation and Tactics of Disinformation about Psychotherapy for Trauma Originating in Ritual Abuse and Mind Control

Bleach Attack on Advocate for Jewish Victims of Sexual Abuse
A fishmonger hurled bleach at an advocate for victims of sexual abuse. Both are members of Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community. By Chana Ya’ar 12/14/2012

A Williamsburg fishmonger hurled a cup of bleach Tuesday at a rabbi who advocates for victims of sexual abuse. Both are members of Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community.

Police have charged 36-year-old Williamsburg resident Meilech Schnitzler, for allegedly throwing the chemical at Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg as he walked near Schnitzler’s fish store on Tuesday. For years, Rosenberg has been blogging about sexual abuse in the hareidi-religious Jewish community.

The rabbi’s face and eyes were burned by the bleach, and his clothes were ruined as well, according to a police report….

Rosenberg, 62, has told media that in the past, efforts to intimidate him have not been taken seriously by the office of Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes. He also accused Hynes of turning a blind eye to crime in the Brooklyn hareidi-religious community for financial and political gain. The position of district attorney in New York is an elective office.

Tensions are high this week, due to the conviction on Monday of Rabbi Nehemia Weberman, a prominent self-styled “counselor” in New York’s hareidi-religious Jewish community. Weberman was convicted on 59 counts of sexual abuse.

However, police said there appeared to be no connection between the attack on Rosenberg and the conviction of Weberman, who had the backing of the community’s rabbinical leaders as well as much of the Jewish community both in the United States and abroad.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/163119#.UNFBMax1tPg

Common Forms of Misinformation and Tactics of Disinformation about Psychotherapy for Trauma Originating in Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
By Ellen Lacter, Ph.D., December 18, 2012.

This page on my website seeks to expose a number of common forms of misinformation and tactics of disinformation about psychotherapy for trauma originating in ritual abuse and mind control. Disinformation is distinguished from misinformation in that it is intentionally fraudulent.

Misinformation and disinformation about ritual abuse and mind control trauma and psychotherapy to treat such trauma appear in both paper and electronic media, but are particularly abundant on the Internet on websites of individuals and organizations, bookseller reviews, blogs, newsletters, online encyclopedias, social networking sites, and e-group listservs….

Therefore, the Internet serves as something of an unregulated court of public opinion, where, to a large degree, allegedly falsely accused perpetrators of child abuse and their advocates and alleged victims of child abuse and their therapists and advocates, argue about:

(a) whether child abuse is in itself traumatic
(b) the existence of ritual abuse and mind control
(c) the validity of recovered memories of abuse
(d) the validity of dissociative disorders, especially DID
(e) the practice of psychotherapy in relation to all of the above

All of this occurs with no rules of order, no penalties for perjury, and an uneven playing field that causes psychotherapists and psychology researchers to have to pull their punches.

I believe that this fight is being waged, in great part, to prevent child abuse survivors, especially survivors of ritual abuse and mind control, from receiving the help and support that they need to heal from their abuse, from receiving any sense of validation about their abuse, from recalling any dissociated parts of their abuse, from reporting their abusers to the authorities, from suing their abusers, from activism against child abuse, ritual abuse, and mind control, and in some cases, from even breaking away from their abusers.
http://endritualabuse.org/activism/common-forms-of-misinformation-and-tactics-of-disinformation-about-psychotherapy-for-trauma-originating-in-ritual-abuse-and-mind-control/

Report of ’80s Sexual Abuse Rattles Yeshiva Campus

Report of ’80s Sexual Abuse Rattles Yeshiva Campus

By VIVIAN YEE
December 13, 2012

A tall, imposing rabbi with a black goatee who served as assistant principal and principal during his 27 years at Yeshiva University High School for Boys, George B. Finkelstein was the face of authority to Mordechai Twersky, who graduated in 1981.

So when Rabbi Finkelstein asked Mr. Twersky to “hit him hard” during a meeting in his office in 1980, Mr. Twersky said in an interview on Thursday, he was mortified. When Mr. Twersky refused, the rabbi knocked him to the ground and sat on him, goading him to wrestle. He could feel the rabbi’s erection, Mr. Twersky, now 48, said.

Mr. Twersky’s account was published Thursday on the Web site of The Jewish Daily Forward, which also reported that another former student said that in the same year, when he was 16, the Talmud teacher, Rabbi Macy Gordon, visited him in his dormitory room. Rabbi Gordon inspected his genitalia, the student told The Forward. Then he sodomized him with a toothbrush.

Both rabbis have denied engaging in any inappropriate sexual behavior.

Rabbi Gordon’s accuser said his parents had complained to administrators, who promised action but did nothing. Several years later, Mr. Twersky, who said he wrestled with Rabbi Finkelstein twice more, also raised concerns with administrators, and several other students also complained about the rabbi’s wrestling. Yet administrators of Yeshiva University, the prestigious Modern Orthodox institution in Washington Heights that runs the high school, allowed each man to simply leave.

The university president from 1976 to 2003, Norman Lamm, who is now its chancellor, told The Forward that he never notified the police….

On Thursday, as the news spread across the campus shared by the university and the high school, Rabbi Hershel Schachter, 71, said he knew of another staff member who was dismissed for inappropriate behavior with students around the same time. He also said he once knew a university student who said Rabbi Finkelstein had touched him inappropriately, but was afraid to speak out.

Mr. Twersky, now a journalist in Jerusalem, says he threatened to sue in 2000 unless Dr. Lamm publicly apologized or offered compensation, but was rebuffed. A Yeshiva official had said Rabbi Finkelstein’s “condition” would be treated, but nobody at Yeshiva reached out to victims, Mr. Twersky said.

“It dawned upon me that I had not merely been wrestled with and violated, but knowingly abandoned by the high school leadership,” he said Thursday.

That approach was not unusual for the time; an article in The New York Times Magazine in June described how teachers of the prestigious Horace Mann School in the Riverdale section of the Bronx had behaved inappropriately with students around the same era. By the late 1980s, several high-profile cases involving schools and youth organizations had begun to raise awareness of sexual abuse, said David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire….

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/14/nyregion/report-of-sexual-abuse-rattles-manhattan-yeshiva-campus.html

Rabbi’s sentence angers victims

Rabbi’s sentence angers victims
August 03, 2012 By Wesley Lowery, Globe Correspondent

Despite tearful pleas from victims, a judge sentenced a one-time religious instructor for a prominent Brookline school to 10 years probation Thursday for sexually abusing three of his students in Boston during the 1975-1976 school year.

The sentence for Rabbi Stanley Z. Levitt, who pleaded guilty Wednesday to four counts of ­indecent assault and battery on a child, stunned and angered the victims, who gathered in the ­Suffolk Superior courtroom to face their abuser and witness the sentencing. Levitt was also ordered to stay away from children, register as a sex offender, and wear a GPS monitor….

“He should have served jail time,” said Michael Brecher, who along with the two other former students at the Maimonides School, an Orthodox Jewish school, said that Levitt touched him sexually when he was a sixth-grader.

Delivering a victim-impact statement before the sentencing, Brecher said Levitt groped him while Brecher was recovering at Boston Children’s Hospital after part of his finger was sliced off in a classroom door….

The Globe has reported that after leaving Massachusetts in 1980, Levitt was charged with molesting three boys in Philadelphia. In the first of those cases, Levitt was found not guilty. In the second case, he pleaded no contest to accusations that he had showered with a young boy and received five years’ probation. The third allegation was withdrawn.
http://bostonglobe.com/metro/2012/08/02/rabbi-stanley-levitt-gets-years-probation-for-abusing-three-boys/5iygfQPcpYpvPcJ8SPI0cK/story.html

Survivorship May 2012 conference is almost here, For Ultra-Orthodox in Abuse Cases, Prosecutor Has Different Rules

fwd with permission

The Survivorship 2012 conference is almost here. This is going to be a wonderful opportunity for everyone to network with each other, share stories, give each other hope, and learn some new ways of working with our histories. Please note that the conference prices are going up in a week, so now would be a great time to get your application and then sign up for the conference.

A reminder to the professionals, that all the workshops for professionals are available for CEU credits.

Here is the link so you can look over all the information yourself: http://www.survivorship.org/2012conference.html

After May 10th the conference rates will go up by $5 p/d and at the conference anyone who has not preregistered will be charged an extra $10 p/d. Also after May 14th there will be no lunch included, but the rates will be the same.

Also, the concert Saturday night called “An Evening of Healing” is really going to be a spectacular event. Advance tickets are only $20 and the tickets at the door are $25.

For Ultra-Orthodox in Abuse Cases, Prosecutor Has Different Rules
By RAY RIVERA and SHARON OTTERMAN
Published: May 10, 2012

An influential rabbi came last summer to the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, with a message: his ultra-Orthodox advocacy group was instructing adherent Jews that they could report allegations of child sexual abuse to district attorneys or the police only if a rabbi first determined that the suspicions were credible.

The pronouncement was a blunt challenge to Mr. Hynes’s authority. But the district attorney “expressed no opposition or objection,” the rabbi, Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, recalled.

In fact, when Mr. Hynes held a Hanukkah party at his office in December, he invited many ultra-Orthodox rabbis affiliated with the advocacy group, Agudath Israel of America. He even chose Rabbi Zwiebel, the group’s executive vice president, as keynote speaker at the party.

Mr. Hynes has won election six times as district attorney thanks in part to support from ultra-Orthodox rabbis, who lead growing communities in neighborhoods like Borough Park and Crown Heights. But in recent years, as allegations of child sexual abuse have shaken the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn, victims’ rights groups have expressed concern that he is not vigorously pursuing these cases because of his deep ties to the rabbis.

Many of the rabbis consider sexual abuse accusations to be community matters best handled by rabbinical authorities, who often do not report their conclusions to the police.

In 2009, as criticism of his record mounted, Mr. Hynes set up a program to reach out to ultra-Orthodox victims of child sexual abuse. Called Kol Tzedek (Voice of Justice in Hebrew), the program is intended to “ensure safety in the community and to fully support those affected by abuse,” his office said.

In recent months, Mr. Hynes and his aides have said the program has contributed to an effective crackdown on child sexual abuse among ultra-Orthodox Jews, saying it had led to 95 arrests involving more than 120 victims.

But Mr. Hynes has taken the highly unusual step of declining to publicize the names of defendants prosecuted under the program — even those convicted. At the same time, he continues to publicize allegations of child sexual abuse against defendants who are not ultra-Orthodox Jews….

Through an extensive search of court and other public records, The Times determined the names of suspects and other details in 47 of the 95 cases attributed to the Kol Tzedek program. More than half of the 47 seemed to have little to do with the program, according to the court records and interviews.  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/11/nyregion/for-ultra-orthodox-in-child-sex-abuse-cases-prosecutor-has-different-rules.html

300 abuse cases one defrocking, German bishop ‘who beat orphans’ resigns

Victims want ‘abuse’ priests defrocked April 22, 2010 AAP
A church-related victims’ group is calling on the Vatican to defrock about 100 Melbourne priests implicated in sexual abuse claims which have been substantiated by church investigations.

The Melbourne Victims’ Collective, a group of 27 primary and secondary alleged sex abuse victims, wants the priests stripped of their titles and privileges.
A Fairfax newspaper (The Age) reported on Thursday that almost 300 sexual abuse allegations had been substantiated in Melbourne by the Catholic church since 1996 but only one priest had been defrocked.
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/victims-want-abuse-priests-defrocked-20100422-tfhk.html

300 abuse cases, one defrocking NICK MCKENZIE AND RAFAEL EPSTEIN April 22, 2010 VICTORIA Police has called for sweeping changes to the way Melbourne’s Catholic Church deals with sex crime allegations, as The Age reveals that only one priest has been defrocked for abuse in the past 14 years.

Nearly 300 allegations of sexual abuse have been substantiated by church investigations since 1996, when the ”Melbourne Response” was set up to deal with complaints. It is believed the abuses were perpetrated by approximately 100 priests, a figure the church will not confirm. Just one priest has been defrocked as a result. Some other priests lost their role serving a parish full-time.
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/300-abuse-cases-one-defrocking-20100421-szz6.html

Suit: Vatican No. 2 Got Letter From Abuse Victim – Lawsuit claims Vatican official got letter from victim on Wis. abuse earlier than known before By DINESH RAMDE and ERIC GORSKI MILWAUKEE April 22, 2010 (AP) A neatly typed letter dated March 5, 1995, is addressed to the No. 2 man at the Vatican and recounts the story of a priest who preyed on deaf boys trapped in dormitories with no chance of escape. The letter to Cardinal Angelo Sodano from one of the Rev. Lawrence Murphy’s alleged victims is more evidence for those trying to learn what Vatican officials knew about abuse claims at St. John’s School for the Deaf outside Milwaukee and when. The document was revealed Thursday in yet another lawsuit aimed at the highest reaches of the Roman Catholic Church. It’s also significant because it involves Sodano, a strong defender of Pope Benedict XVI’s handling of the global clergy sexual abuse crisis and a man whose own record on a separate high-profile case has come under scrutiny. The Vatican’s U.S.-based attorney, Jeffrey Lena, said in a statement Thursday that the lawsuit was a publicity stunt with no merit and it rehashes theories already rejected by U.S. courts.

Murphy, who died in 1998, is accused of sexually abusing some 200 boys at the deaf school from 1950 to 1974. He was put on a leave of absence when the allegations were revealed in the early 1970s. The lawsuit claims Murphy was still allowed to serve in ministry and work with children in another Wisconsin diocese into the early 1990s….Sodano has long been accused in news reports in U.S. Catholic publications and other outlets of stalling a Vatican probe of the Rev. Marcial Maciel, the discredited founder of the Legionaries of Christ. The order has admitted that the late Maciel fathered at least one child and molested young seminarians.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=10445461

Civil suit filed against former Hawaii priest for sex assault of teen 4/21/10 A former Roman Catholic priest who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2000 for sexually abusing a 13-year-old O’ahu boy is at the center of a civil lawsuit filed yesterday in Denver, Colo. The lawsuit alleges Mark Matson repeatedly assaulted a 15-year old boy while the teen was attending St. Andrews Seminary in Denver in 1976.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the former student, identified only as “John Doe,” who is now 49 years old and a resident of the Denver area. The complaint contends that when the student confronted Matson about a series of sexual assaults, the priest claimed to have found marijuana in the boy’s belongings and had him expelled from the Denver seminary.
http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/201004211622/BREAKING01/100421055

German bishop ‘who beat orphans’ resigns From Times Online April 22, 2010 Roger Boyes, Berlin
The resignation of the conservative Bishop of Augsburg – accused of thrashing orphans with a carpet beater – has given a powerful boost to reformers in the German Catholic Church who are trying to stop the mass desertion of believers. It took almost three weeks to persuade the controversial bishop, Walter Mixa, 68, to step down and restore the credibility of the Church as it attempts to tackle and contain the growing scandal of physical and sexual abuse of children in its care.
The bishop is a close ally of Pope Benedict XVI and he had evidently counted on papal support as he stood firm against claims from at least six former pupils at a Catholic-run orphanage in Bavaria.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7104574.ece

Irish Bishop Resigns Over Abuse Scandal By AP / NICOLE WINFIELD and MELISSA EDDY Apr. 22, 2010
(VATICAN CITY) — Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation Thursday of an Irish bishop who admitted he didn’t challenge the Dublin church’s policy of covering up the sexual abuse of children by priests.  Bishop James Moriarty of Kildare is the third Irish bishop to resign in the past four months as a result of the Irish abuse scandal, and two more have offered to go. He said he was stepping down because he realized that “renewal must begin with accepting responsibility for the past.” Moriarty, 73, offered to resign in December after admitting he didn’t challenge the Dublin Archdiocese’s past practice of concealing child-abuse complaints from police.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1983755,00.html

Rabbi Sentenced 32 Years For Sexually Abusing Teen (WPIX)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvyB5ZzntAQ

joel engleman, Rabbi Baruch Lebovits (WPIX)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQ3x98Zp7h8&NR=1