August 8, 2015 Sexual predators are more prevalent among rabbis, pastors and yogis than among Catholic priests But they are not as widely reported by the secular especially the international media



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Threats to Advocates

The small cadre of ultra-Orthodox Jews who have tried to call attention to the community’s lack of support for sexual abuse victims have often been targeted with the same forms of intimidation as the victims themselves.

Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg of Williamsburg, for example, has been shunned by communal authorities because he maintains a telephone number that features his impassioned lectures in Yiddish, Hebrew and English imploring victims to call 911 and accusing rabbis of silencing cases. He also shows up at court hearings and provides victims’ families with advice. His call-in line gets nearly 3,000 listeners a day.

In 2008, fliers were posted around Williamsburg denouncing him. One depicted a coiled snake, with Mr. Rosenberg’s face superimposed on its head. “Nuchem Snake Rosenberg: Leave Tainted One!” it said in Hebrew. The local Satmar Hasidic authorities banned him from their synagogues, and a wider group of 32 prominent ultra-Orthodox rabbis and religious judges signed an order, published in a community newspaper, formally ostracizing him.



“The public must beware, and stay away from him, and push him out of our camp, not speak to him, and even more, not to honor him or support him, and not allow him to set foot in any synagogue until he returns from his evil ways,” the order said in Hebrew.

“They had small children coming to my house and spitting on me and on my children and wife,” Rabbi Rosenberg, 61, said in an interview.

Rabbi Tzvi Gluck, 31, of Queens, the son of a prominent rabbi and an informal liaison to secular law enforcement, began helping victims after he met troubled teenagers at Our Place, a help center in Brooklyn, and realized that sexual abuse was often the root of their problems. It was when he began helping the teenagers report cases to the police that he also received threats.

In February, for example, he received a call asking him to urge an abuse victim to abandon a case. “A guy called me up and said: ‘Listen, I want you to know that people on the street are talking about what they can do to hurt you financially. And maybe speak to your children’s schools, to get your kids thrown out of school.’ ”

Rabbi Gluck said he had helped at least a dozen ultra-Orthodox abuse victims bring cases to the Brooklyn district attorney in recent years, and each time, he said, the victim came under heavy pressure to back down. In a case late last year that did not get to the police, a 30-year-old molested a 14-year-old boy in a Jewish ritual bath in Brooklyn, and a rabbi “made the boy apologize to the molester for seducing him,” he said.

“If a guy in our community gets diagnosed with cancer, the whole community will come running to help them,” he said. “But if someone comes out and says they were a victim of abuse, as a whole, the community looks at them and says, ‘Go jump in a lake.’ ”


Traces of Change

Awareness of child sexual abuse is increasing in the ultra-Orthodox community. Since 2008, hundreds of adult abuse survivors have told their stories, mostly anonymously, on blogs and radio call-in shows, and to victims’ advocates. Rabbi-vetted books like “Let’s Stay Safe,” aimed at teaching children what to do if they are inappropriately touched, are selling well.

The response by communal authorities, however, has been uneven.

In March, for example, Satmar Hasidic authorities in Williamsburg took what advocates said was an unprecedented step: They posted a Yiddish sign in synagogues warning adults and children to stay away from a community member who they said was molesting young men. But the sign did not urge victims to call the police: “With great pain we must, according to the request of the brilliant rabbis (may they live long and good lives), inform you that the young man,” who was named, “is, unfortunately, an injurious person and he is a great danger to our community.”


In Crown Heights, where the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement has its headquarters, there has been more significant change. In July 2011, a religious court declared that the traditional prohibition against mesirah did not apply in cases with evidence of abuse. “One is forbidden to remain silent in such situations,” said the ruling, signed by two of the court’s three judges.

Since then, five molesting cases have been brought from the neighborhood — “as many sexual abuse-related arrests and reports as there had been in the past 20 years,” said Eliyahu Federman, a lawyer who helps victims in Crown Heights, citing public information.

Mordechai Feinstein, 19, helped prompt the ruling by telling the Crown Heights religious court that he had been touched inappropriately at age 15 by Rabbi Moshe F. Keller, a Lubavitcher who ran a foundation for at-risk youth and whom Mr. Feinstein had considered his spiritual mentor.

Last week, Rabbi Keller was sentenced in Criminal Court to three years’ probation for endangering the welfare of a child. And Mr. Feinstein, who is no longer religious, is starting a campaign to encourage more abuse victims to come forward. He is working with two prominent civil rights attorneys, Norman Siegel and Herbert Teitelbaum, who are asking lawyers to provide free assistance to abuse victims frustrated by their dealings with prosecutors.

“The community is a garden; there are a lot of beautiful things about it,” Mr. Feinstein said. “We just have to help them weed out the garden and take out the things that don’t belong there.”



642 comments
Ultra-Orthodox Shun Their Own for Reporting Child Sexual Abuse

http://mondoweiss.net/2012/05/nyt-exposes-pattern-of-ultra-orthodox-community-covering-up-sexual-abuse-punishing-accusers

By Philip Weiss, May 10, 2012

The Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal turns out to be epochal: it is having salutary effects across society in institutions that have covered up abuse– at university athletic programs, for instance. Now the New York Times is exposing patterns of covering up sexual abuse inside the community of a quarter million ultra-Orthodox Jews in New York. This is great reporting by Sharon Otterman and Ray Rivera:

Abuse victims and their families have been expelled from religious schools and synagogues, shunned by fellow ultra-Orthodox Jews and targeted for harassment intended to destroy their businesses….

“There is no nice way of saying it,” Mrs. [Pearl] Engelman [mother of sexual abuse victim] said. “Our community protects molesters. Other than that, we are wonderful.”

Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg of Williamsburg, for example, has been shunned by communal authorities because he maintains a telephone number that features his impassioned lectures in Yiddish, Hebrew and English imploring victims to call 911 and accusing rabbis of silencing cases. He also shows up at court hearings and provides victims’ families with advice. His call-in line gets nearly 3,000 listeners a day.

In 2008, fliers were posted around Williamsburg denouncing him. One depicted a coiled snake, with Mr. Rosenberg’s face superimposed on its head. “Nuchem Snake Rosenberg: Leave Tainted One!” it said in Hebrew. The local Satmar Hasidic authorities banned him from their synagogues, and a wider group of 32 prominent ultra-Orthodox rabbis and religious judges signed an order, published in a community newspaper, formally ostracizing him. “The public must beware, and stay away from him, and push him out of our camp, not speak to him, and even more, not to honor him or support him, and not allow him to set foot in any synagogue until he returns from his evil ways,” the order said in Hebrew.

“They had small children coming to my house and spitting on me and on my children and wife,” Rabbi Rosenberg, 61, said in an interview….

“If a guy in our community gets diagnosed with cancer, the whole community will come running to help them,” [Rabbi Tzvi Gluck] said. “But if someone comes out and says they were a victim of abuse, as a whole, the community looks at them and says, ‘Go jump in a lake.’ ”
III. JEHOVAH WITNESSES

Jehovah's Witnesses hid child sex abuse cases: Australian inquiry told

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/27/us-australia-religion-sexcrimes-idUSKCN0Q10IH20150727

By Matt Siegel, July 27, 2015

The Jehovah's Witnesses Church in Australia failed to report to police more than 1,000 cases of child sexual abuse going back more than 60 years, a government investigation into abuse and its aftermath heard on Monday.

Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which was launched in 2013 amid allegations of serial child abuse inside the Catholic Church in Australia, has a broad mandate to examine religious and secular organizations.

At the opening hearing into the Jehovah's Witnesses on Monday, Angus Stewart, senior council assisting the commission, described the church as an insular sect with rules designed to stem the reporting of sexual abuse.

"Evidence will be put before the Royal Commission that of the 1,006 alleged perpetrators of child sexual abuse identified by the Jehovah’s Witness Church since 1950, not one was reported by the church to secular authorities," he said.

"This suggests that it is the practice of the Jehovah’s Witness church to retain information regarding child sexual abuse offences but not to report allegations of child sexual abuse to the police or other relevant authorities."

The U.S.-based Jehovah's Witnesses number about 8 million worldwide and are known for their foreign ministries as well as their door-to-door campaigns. There are about 68,000 members in Australia, Stewart said.

Two church members, identified as BCB and BCG, are expected to give testimony containing allegations that they were discouraged by church elders from reporting their abuse.

Stewart outlined multiple institutional failures to protect children or censure alleged abusers, including doctrine releasing church elders from their responsibility to report abuse where there was no mandatory legal obligation to do so.

Although the church expelled 401 members after internal abuse hearings, it allowed 230 of them to return to the fold. Thirty-five were welcomed back on multiple occasions.

The church also erected high barriers to its internal process, requiring that two or more witnesses be produced before proceeding to a church "judicial committee". This blocked 125 allegations from being heard, Stewart said.

The royal commission has kept Australians riveted with airings of abuse allegations and cover-ups in the highest ranks of its Orthodox Jewish and Roman Catholic communities going back decades.

They have reached even into the Vatican, where Australian Cardinal George Pell, now in charge of reforming the Vatican's economic departments, has come under scrutiny over allegations he failed to take action to protect children years ago.

Pell dismissed as "false", and "outrageous" allegations heard before the commission that he had little regard for victims.

IV. ZEN BUDDHISM AND THE SHAOLIN TEMPLE

China looks into allegations against controversial Shaolin abbot Shi Yongxin

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/1845169/china-looks-allegations-against-controversial-shaolin-abbot-shi

July 30, 2015

Authorities are conducting checks into accusations that the monk holds double identities, had sexual relations with women and was expelled from the temple decades ago.

China’s religious affairs authorities are looking into allegations about the integrity of a controversial Shaolin abbot.

The State Administration for Religious Affairs on Thursday said recent online reports about Shaolin abbot Shi Yongxin had prompted the agency to order its bureau in central Henan province, where the temple is located, to conduct checks into the matter, Xinhua reported.

The Buddhist Association of China also said on its website the matter “had affected the image and reputation of Chinese Buddhism” and that it had reported the case to the relevant authorities.

The allegations, posted online last week by a man who claimed to be a former disciple at the temple, drew much attention from China’s internet users and state media.

Under the pseudonym of “Shi Zhengyi”, the accuser alleged that Shi Yongxin had been kicked out of the Shaolin Temple in the late 1980s, held double identities, had sexual relations with several women and even fathered their children.

The accuser backed up his claims with documents that he gave to the press, including copies of papers allegedly issued by the temple dating back to the ’80s. The papers purportedly showed the temple’s decision to expel the abbot after he was caught “applying for reimbursement with fake receipts” and “having serious financial problems”.

The accuser also produced copies of documents allegedly showing that the abbot had two national identity numbers with different birthdates. The name on one of the identity papers accorded with the abbot’s birth name, and the photos on both papers’ looked highly similar.

The Shaolin Temple, which is more than 1,500 years old and is known as the birthplace of Zen Buddhism and Chinese martial arts, denied all the accusations in a statement on its website, describing them as “groundless, vicious and libellous”. It had reported the matter to police, it added.

Some thirty Shaolin disciples also issued an online statement on Thursday to defend their abbot. They claimed the accuser was an ousted Shaolin disciple who had resorted to “vicious libel” for revenge.

Shi Yongxin, who holds a Master of Business Administration degree and is often spotted using an iPhone, is no stranger to controversy.

Shi, who became the abbot of the Shaolin Temple in 1999, has frequently appeared in the Chinese press, sometimes for the wrong reasons.

The delegate to the National People’s Congress and vice-chairman of the Buddhist Association of China, has previously been accused of turning the temple into a cash cow at the expense of the integrity of religious instruction, such as renting the venue to filmmakers.

In 2006, Shi came under public scrutiny after accepting a 1 million yuan (HK$1.27 million) luxury car from the local government for his contribution to tourism.

In March this year, he and the temple came under fire again for a plan to build a US$297 million hotel complex that includes a temple, a live-in kung fu academy and a golf course in Australia.
'CEO monk' who turned the temple where kung fu was founded into a multimillion-dollar empire is accused of fathering children out of wedlock and embezzlement

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3184621/Chinese-CEO-monk-turned-temple-kung-fu-founded-commercial-empire-facing-investigation-authorities.html

By SAM TONKIN FOR MAILONLINE, August 4, 2015

Shi Yongxin, known as the 'CEO monk', is said to be under investigation

Accused of embezzlement and fathering several children out of wedlock

Abbot Shi is known for commercialising China's famed Shaolin Temple

A statement posted on the temple website dismissed the claims as 'untrue' 

Chinese authorities are investigating allegations of misbehaviour against the controversial 'CEO monk' who turned the temple where kung fu was invented into a sprawling commercial empire.

Master Shi Yongxin, who heads the famed Shaolin Temple, has been accused by a former disciple of fathering several children out of wedlock and embezzling funds.

The religious affairs bureau under the Denfeng city government says it was asked by the national body to look into the claims, which were made online, against the Chinese abbot.

'Our bureau takes this extremely seriously and will swiftly clarify ... and ensure a correct understanding of the matter,' the bureau said in a one-sentence notice on the city government website.

The notice didn't specify any of the claims, although media reports in China say the accusations include that Abbot Shi fathered children with at least two women and embezzled temple money. 

Abbot Shi could not be reached for comment and calls to the temple in Henan province south of Beijing rang unanswered.

However, a statement posted on the temple's website dismissed the claims as 'untrue rumours' fabricated by people seeking to harm Zen Buddhism

In February the globe-trotting monk announced plans for Shaolin to build a $297million complex in Australia that would include a temple, hotel, kung fu academy and a golf course.

Abbot Shi has been criticised by some for seeking to turn the temple and its famed kung fu fighting monks into a commercial enterprise, a move which helped make him China's most famous Buddhist.

The temple, built in the late fifth century, has defended aggressive commercialisation as the best way to defend its heritage and spread its Buddhist message. It is found in a forested mountainside in central Henan province and is home to warrior monks whose kung fu moves have become known the world over.


CEO monk's womanising ways brings famed Shaolin under scanner
http://www.pressreader.com/india/the-new-indian-express/20150807/282071980621173/TextView EXTRACT

August 7, 2015

The New York Times goes on to say that Yongxin has sent his embezzled money to maintain his mistresses in Australia. Two of his lovers whom he fathered children with have reportedly come clean, with one claiming that she had a sample of his semen from one of their sexual encounters.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 92

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND PEDOPHILIA
The Real Story Behind Clerical "Pedophilia"…

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/655299/posts EXTRACT

By Leon J. Podles Ph. D, Touchstone Magazine, March/April 2002



True pedophilia is rare
Philip Jenkins in his book Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis (Oxford University Press, 1996) tries to look at the problem objectively and dispassionately. According to Jenkins (who is not a Catholic), true pedophilia is extremely rare, is perhaps more common among Protestant clergy than among Catholic priests, and is even more common among married laymen. There is certainly a problem in the Catholic Church (and other churches), but it is not exactly what the media make it out to be.
First, as to the nature of clerical misbehavior: Pedophilia refers to sexual desire for pre-pubescent children. This is extremely rare, and only a handful of cases in several decades have involved priests who are true pedophiles.
Almost all the cases reported in the media as pedophilia actually involve an attraction (which a priest has acted on) to adolescent boys who are sexually mature but under the age of consent, which is 18 in civil law and 16 in canon law. This behavior is a variety of homosexuality. Homosexuals are often attracted to very young men because they combine the charm of boyishness with sexual maturity. Such sexual attraction is called ephebophilia, which the ancient Greeks cultivated to some extent but which rapidly fell out of favor as Christianity transformed classical culture.
In the 1960s and 1970s the Catholic Church followed secular psychological advice that sexual involvement with minors should be dealt with quietly and privately, that the youth involved were more likely to be hurt by a public fuss than by the sexual involvement, and that sexual interest in minors could be disciplined and cured.
This opinion changed in the mid-1980s, when many of the cases that had occurred from the mid-1960s onward came to light. In this period of about 20 years, about 150,000 men had served as Catholic priests and religious in the United States. There were about 500 reported (not all proved) cases of sexual involvement with minors, thus involving 0.3 percent of the clergy and religious, and most of the cases involved fifteen- to seventeen-year-old boys. Since not all allegations were substantiated, Jenkins says the evidence "suggests an offence rate of 0.2 percent." The archdiocese of Chicago did a survey of all its clergy files from the years 1951–1991, and found allegations against 2.6 percent of priests, allegations that may have been justified against 1.7 percent of them. Moreover, it found only one true case of pedophilia, which involved a priest and his small niece.

True pedophilia occurs most often within families; celibacy removes most Catholic priests from temptations of that sort. When it comes to pedophilia (not ephebophilia), clergy in churches that do not require celibacy have the same (if not worse) problems. The Catholic Church has been a target because it keeps good records, but the Episcopal Church has a comparable problem, and some of the worst cases have been in fundamentalist and Pentecostal churches—but these cases rarely receive public attention.


Jenkins also shows how the "pedophilia" cases in the Catholic Church (and the bungling way church authorities sometimes handled them) have been used by would-be church reformers as a tool to further their agenda: the end of clerical celibacy (and much else) in the Catholic Church.
Ultimately, the chief beneficiaries of this misinformation and the disorder in the Catholic Church are the secularizers who want to undermine the moral authority of religion in society. The Nazis also were great exposers of clerical scandals, and it was not because of the greater National Socialist purity of heart (both Philip Jenkins in his book and Victor Klemperer in I Will Bear Witness refer to this anti-clerical campaign).
Sex abuse rife in other religions, says Vatican

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/sep/28/sex-abuse-religion-vatican

By Riazat Butt, religious affairs correspondent, and Anushka Asthana

September 28, 2009



The Vatican has lashed out at criticism over its handling of its paedophilia crisis by saying the Catholic church was "busy cleaning its own house" and that the problems with clerical sex abuse in other churches were as big, if not bigger.

In a defiant and provocative statement, issued following a meeting of the UN human rights council in Geneva, the Holy See said the majority of Catholic clergy who committed such acts were not paedophiles but homosexuals attracted to sex with adolescent males.

The statement, read out by Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican's permanent observer to the UN, defended its record by claiming that "available research" showed that only 1.5%-5% of Catholic clergy were involved in child sex abuse.

He also quoted statistics from the Christian Scientist Monitor newspaper to show that most US churches being hit by child sex abuse allegations were Protestant and that sexual abuse within Jewish communities was common.

He added that sexual abuse was far more likely to be committed by family members, babysitters, friends, relatives or neighbours, and male children were quite often guilty of sexual molestation of other children.

The statement said that rather than paedophilia, it would "be more correct" to speak of ephebophilia, a homosexual attraction to adolescent males.

"Of all priests involved in the abuses, 80 to 90% belong to this sexual orientation minority which is sexually engaged with adolescent boys between the ages of 11 and 17."

The statement concluded: "As the Catholic church has been busy cleaning its own house, it would be good if other institutions and authorities, where the major part of abuses are reported, could do the same and inform the media about it."

The Holy See launched its counter–attack after an international representative of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, Keith Porteous Wood, accused it of covering up child abuse and being in breach of several articles under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Porteous Wood said the Holy See had not contradicted any of his accusations. "The many thousands of victims of abuse deserve the international community to hold the Vatican to account, something it has been unwilling to do, so far. Both states and children's organisations must unite to pressurise the Vatican to open its files, change its procedures worldwide, and report suspected abusers to civil authorities."

Representatives from other religions were dismayed by the Holy See's attempts to distance itself from controversy by pointing the finger at other faiths.

Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, head of the New York Board of Rabbis, said: "Comparative tragedy is a dangerous path on which to travel. All of us need to look within our own communities. Child abuse is sinful and shameful and we must expel them immediately from our midst."

A spokesman for the US Episcopal Church said measures for the prevention of sexual misconduct and the safeguarding of children had been in place for years.

Of all the world religions, Roman Catholicism has been hardest hit by sex abuse scandals. In the US, churches have paid more than $2bn (£1.25bn) in compensation to victims. In Ireland, reports into clerical sexual abuse have rocked both the Catholic hierarchy and the state.

The Ryan Report, published last May, revealed that beatings and humiliation by nuns and priests were common at institutions that held up to 30,000 children. A nine-year investigation found that Catholic priests and nuns for decades terrorised thousands of boys and girls, while government inspectors failed to stop the abuse.


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