I don’t know if you’ve been following this multi-piece story in the NY Times about the appalling behavior of some ultra Orthodox Jews, but it is just disgusting:
The first shock came when Mordechai Jungreis learned that his mentally disabled teenage son was being molested in a Jewish ritual bathhouse in Brooklyn. The second came after Mr. Jungreis complained, and the man accused of the abuse was arrested.
Old friends started walking stonily past him and his family on the streets of Williamsburg. Their landlord kicked them out of their apartment. Anonymous messages filled their answering machine, cursing Mr. Jungreis for turning in a fellow Jew. And, he said, the mother of a child in a wheelchair confronted Mr. Jungreis’s mother-in-law, saying the same man had molested her son, and she “did not report this crime, so why did your son-in-law have to?”
***A few blocks away, Pearl Engelman, a 64-year-old great-grandmother, said her community had failed her too. In 2008, her son, Joel, told rabbinical authorities that he had been repeatedly groped as a child by a school official at the United Talmudical Academy in Williamsburg. The school briefly removed the official but denied the accusation. And when Joel turned 23, too old to file charges under the state’s statute of limitations, they returned the man to teaching.
“There is no nice way of saying it,” Mrs. Engelman said. “Our community protects molesters. Other than that, we are wonderful.”
There’s another piece today, but what I just don’t understand is why this is not RICO level stuff? Rabbis are conspiring to hide charges of molestation and abuse and who knows what else, and are openly admitting it. How is this not obstruction of justice and about 500 other felony counts of criminal behavior?
geg6
Perhaps you should ask the Catholic Church. They would certainly know.
Soonergrunt
Perhaps for the same reason that so many Catholic Bishops have not been prosecuted.
I’m sensing a common thread here, but I can’t tell what it might be.
Anonymous At Work
RICO is a possibility but it’s at the prosecutor’s discretion and the prosecutors in this area, in this situation, didn’t want the grief. Turn it into a RICO case and that makes it political in ways you are not likely to survive.
schrodinger's cat
Turns out that Karl Marx was not that wrong about religion. I think it is especially true about institutional religion. Power is corrupting, even if you are a priest or a rabbi or a mullah or a pundit (no not the ones on TV).
Randy P
Yeah I saw that and was going to post on it. Those who go to the authorities are shunned in the Hasidic community. Not only won’t their neighbors talk to them, but there’s a coordinated effort to try to ruin them financially.
Villago Delenda Est
Well, more or less what geg6 and Soonergrunt said.
I guess being a “man of God” exempts you from a great many things.
The crime is even more appalling in this case because these men occupy positions of trust. Obviously to most of us, utterly misplaced trust.
Suffern ACE
Mrs. Englemann is droll. Sometimes that beats shrill by a wide margin. I hope that reading her family’s story now will encourage the next victims to start filing the charges.
Calouste
IOKIYAR:
It’s OK If You Are Religious
4tehlulz
I blame Israel.
chopper
so sometime in the last 4 years a 64-year-old great-grandmother had a son turn 23.
then again, i know orthodox women with 15 kids so the shit happens.
MattF
@geg6: That too. Just remember: these cardinals, rabbis, imams, whatevers, are all entirely modern people pretending to uphold various ‘sacred’ fables about various medieval social structures. Their real goal, plain and simple, is control– and greater control than any of their idealized predecessors could ever have had.
Forum Transmitted Disease
Haven’t I heard this somewhere before? Recently?
PS: For abuse and concealment of, nobody but nobody can hold a candle to the Amish. Some of the stories coming out of that community make me literally want to puke.
PIGL
Whenever you have children under the care of adults in a culture that values secrecy, security and group solidarity, there systematic sexual abuse will be practiced routinely and continually.
This goes for prisons, cults, orphanages, homes for the deaf, or religious schools or other institutions.
The solution for public institutions is engage in hiring and oversight practices that acknowledge the problem and are designed to prevent it, or when prevention fails, to execute the perpetrators over a slow fire.
The solution for private institutions is to keep children away from them. No private education, no private schools, no camps, no fuckall. Indoctrination can take place in the home, but nowhere else. They can go to religious schools all they want after they are 18.
TINA
Jack Burton
Forget it John, it’s what Jessie Jackson stupidly and offensively called New York.
Legalize
I don’t think mass molestation invokes a RICO predicate act. It’s horrible, but probably not “racketeering”. Maybe intimidating witnesses would be though. I think some Diocese cases have come down that way. And even in some of the Diocese cases, it was hard to prove a conspiracy. Although RICO doesn’t require a financial component, and the definition of a RICO enterprise is actually pretty broad
Bill Donahue
Leave it to these greedy Christ-Killers to steal rights our Lord and Saviour granted only to Catholics!!
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@schrodinger’s cat:
Minor correction.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Funny how we don’t hear these stories coming out of the faith groups that are liberal, where people are less devoted to authority qua authority, value critical thinking, and are more accepting of sexuality in general. It is always the conservative-authoritarian groups for some reason. But why? How could this be? Hmmm .. it must be an unfortunate coincidence.
Joey Maloney
This is what I wrote to a Facebook friend who brought this up:
It’s like these rabbis looked at the Catholic Church – worldwide disgrace, lawsuits, hierarchs fleeing countries one step ahead of the law, adherents quitting in disgust – and said, “wow, how can we get in on that action?”
Steve
It’s also considered completely unacceptable to sue someone in civil court rather than submitting your dispute to a private Jewish tribunal. Basically, there’s an overarching sentiment among the Hasidim and ultra-Orthodox that you’re supposed to “stand apart” from civil society. So in a limited sense this is a different deal than what we’ve seen with the Catholic Church, or at least it’s happening for different reasons. For example, among the Catholics you don’t often hear of the victim’s mother being an active part of the cover-up.
Also too, RICO means something different than “a criminal conspiracy.” The reasons why RICO likely doesn’t apply here would be legalistic and boring as hell. Pretending you never heard of RICO in the first place is preferable to constantly asking, “How is this not a RICO violation?”
Gin & Tonic
@Anonymous At Work:
The prosecutor in that area (the Brooklyn DA) remains in office due to the electoral clout of the community in question.
If you find this story appalling from a political perspective, don’t read about the upstate NY community of Kiryas Joel, which will turn your stomach.
4tehlulz
@Steve: That and referring a member of the community to civil authorities is the same as handing them to the Czar.
schrodinger's cat
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor: Sam Harris is a bigot, and not all that smart. I have seen him on TV a couple of times and he always makes me want to punch his smug mug. Just the other day he was advocating racial profiling at the airports.
ETA: I was referring to Marx’s quote about, religion being the opium of the masses.
Brachiator
It’s that Freedom of religion thing, where abusers hide behind a deity.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Steve: I’ve heard this. Some of the more insane versions of Islam practice this crap as well, as do the Amish (as I mentioned earlier). Ought to be banned by law and that law ought to be rigorously enforced.
Kay
I think it’s a great question, not the specific charges, I don’t know anything about RICO, but I’ve wondered for a long time about political pressure from religious groups on state and county prosecutors in these particular child abuse cases.
You know, we all were outraged at the (continuing) abuse story out of Ireland the other day, but I noticed that the abuser priest in that story died one month into a 15 year sentence. He was charged and convicted.
Seems like they’re doing a better job than the US with this, on the state side. Might be worth looking at why that is.
Schlemizel
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
NAH! Its the liberal influence that made them do it. According to various defenders of the one true church pedophile priests didn’t exist before the hippys of the 60’s and/or outside the United states. I’m sure its the same deal here, simply the loose moral standards having a Democratic President can cause.
SatanicPanic
@Forum Transmitted Disease: What a second, I thought we were in favor of Sharia law. Did I not get the memo?
lacp
“Other than that we are wonderful.” WTF? Fuck me on toast.
Pender
It’s funny how often organized religion and child molestation seem to go together, isn’t it?
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
The more extreme religions get, the more similar they become, until the extremism becomes unto a religion itself.
This is why I have generally given up on organized religion as a whole. I don’t oppose religion in general even if I tend to ignore the mysticism and put more stock in the philosophy itself. But the organized structure and hierarchies…well, like said before, the similarities are haunting.
Arclite
Wow, horrific. And for that mother to accept her child’s abuse is equally horrific.
I hold my children close. Not suffocatingly so, but I always know where they are and what they’re doing, and I maintain a good line of communication so they can feel free to tell me whatever.
I have also raised them away from religion. There are so many other interesting things to focus on and learn in this world, and morals need not a religious structure.
Rathskeller
The interesting thing about this story is that a common thread also seems to be avoid shame of the community from publicly revealing these crimes. Well-played, then fellas, since now you’ve got all of New York City thinking of the Hassidim leadership as enabling child molesters. You know that’s going in the album of the anti-Semites, sure to be endlessly replayed for decades to come. And unlike the Protocols of Zion, this one is true.
As I said before about the Catholic priest molestation stories, it doesn’t trouble me that there are priests who molest children. They’re human, and this is a mental illness that will be spread more or less randomly through any group. I don’t understand it or like it, but I accept it, like murderers.
What bothers me is exactly the kind of coverup that you see here. Protecting child molesters is the kind of cold-blooded crime that I literally cannot understand. What kind of monster must you be to ignore a child’s suffering, to permit a pedophile to continue — when you yourself are not in the grip of that mental illness? My mind reels.
JoyfulA
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: My liberal denomination has district workshops on the topic of child abuse, which these people seem to need, too.
Mnemosyne
@Soonergrunt:
You mean other than pedophiles going into jobs where they will have guaranteed access to children and will be protected by a powerful hierarchy? Remove the religious aspect, and you have Penn State.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@schrodinger’s cat: Marx said religion is an opiate, not an aphrodisiac.
burnspbesq
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor:
Except that Karl Marx didn’t openly advocate genocide against people of faith, as Sam Harris has done.
schrodinger's cat
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: It is an opiate for the masses, that lets the religious leaders gain power, and it is that power which is an aphrodisiac.
shortstop
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: This. Not that this stuff doesn’t happen everywhere, but you don’t get this kind of wagon-circling anywhere but in authoritarian institutions/communities.
schrodinger's cat
@burnspbesq: Has he? I only know about this guy because of Sully. If he does it wouldn’t be surprising, he does seem as intolerant as the fundies he claims to abhor. His atheism is very Talibanesque.
I believe in live and let live, so long as anyone doesn’t try to save my soul I am fine, they can do whatever they want as long as it doesn’t harm others and is not criminal.
yopd1
@Rathskeller: Even worse is that is common anti-semite allegation that the Talmud condones molesting children. These fuckers in NY should get the Jewish law equivalent for their crime, False Witness to a Capital Crime, which is also a Capital Crime.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_capital_crimes_in_the_Torah
shortstop
@Rathskeller: And this. Exactly. Covering up for and protecting the sickness while paving the way for other children to be victimized–there’s no deeper betrayal.
Brachiator
@Rathskeller:
It’s really quite simple. Say it with me.
The Greater Good. The Bigger Picture.
Always reliably used to rationalize abuse. Whether it is a religious group, or Penn State or other insitution. Or even the Boy Scouts.
It’s sad how these organizations are willing to sacrifice children to keep things quiet, to minimize potential scandals which might harm the organization’s existence.
4tehlulz
@Mnemosyne: Now you’re talking about football, the one true faith.
@burnspbesq: That depends on your reading of On the Jewish Question I suppose.
arguingwithsignposts
@schrodinger’s cat: Who the hell is Sam Harris? When he presides over a worldwide organization that is run by a bunch of authoritarian assholes who demeans women, contraception, choice, separation of church and state, and practices a cover-up of pedophiliac atheists, burns can play the equivalence game.
geg6
@Kay:
Because the Irish are braver than Americans, that’s why. One of the most loyal Catholic populations on earth took a look at what rot had been exposed in the Catholic Church and tossed it over the side where it belongs. Weekly church goers are down to 40%. The government did numerous and exhaustive investigations, which were made public. Victims are treated with respect and sympathy. And the government and people of Ireland are attempting to find ways to disentangle Ireland’s infrastructure from the Church. In Ireland, almost all primary schools and hospitals are Church-owned, but they are working to find ways to end that.
I don’t see anything like that in American. In fact, I see more and more religion becoming entangled with the workings of our government, at all levels.
I’m a broken record on this, but religion needs to die.
cthulhu
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Not that it never happens in more liberal organizations, but is it really that surprising that being constantly told how bad/dangerous sexual behavior is would make victims less likely to approach authorities for help.
4tehlulz
@geg6: Then go kill it.
kindness
The Hasidic community in New York is very different. Think Amish but with even less willingess to interact with outsiders but will use electricity and appliances (except on the Sabbath). We had a community on the border of the Village I grew up in (Tarrytown). If someone who wasn’t a Hasid went in they would all gather together and pelt you with stones till you left. Consequently it wasn’t something one did more than once.
There are no excuses for protecting those who prey on the mentally infirm or children. Those that do protect these heinous people will have their deeds handed to them later. Karma does work. But I also know it isn’t enough for some. Revenge is a strong motive. At some point some folk are going to find themselves suddenly dead. I for one won’t be sorry for their souls. Yea…I’m not a very good Christian. Well, while I was raised Protestant, I no longer consider myself Christian. I’m a cafeteria Buddist now.
gex
@Kay: They haven’t quite merged with a political party there like they have here. Between Republicans who wouldn’t do anything to one of their biggest GOTV efforts and Republicans who would claim religion is being politicized if a Democrat tried to do something, their role in our electoral politics makes them untouchable.
shortstop
@kindness: I have a pal who refers to his family of origin as “a bunch of lapsed Buddhists.” That always makes me smile.
schrodinger's cat
@arguingwithsignposts: True, his egregiousness is not in the same league.
ETA: He= Sam Harris. He is just your average punditubbie, contrarian and all, his schtick happens to be religion or the lack there of.
geg6
@Mnemosyne:
Please point me to the vast numbers of Penn State employees who have molested children. Hell, from what we know right now (and I realize this could change), Sandusky did none of his child raping through Penn State. He did it through a charity, which was not affiliated with Penn State. And let’s not even mention the fact that people, even people with huge institutional power, lost their jobs and will, most likely, go to jail over it. Can’t say the same for anyone in the Catholic Church or these Jewish groups.
I couldn’t be happier that Sandusky and the administrators who covered for him will go down. But I’m sick to death of people talking as if the employees and students at Penn State are no better than your average Catholic priest. I can tell you that just from my own experience with both, I’d take Penn State over the Catholic Church any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
shortstop
@gex: Yes, the omnipresence of the RCC in Ireland has kept it largely separate from partisanship, if not politics. It’s easier for people to join to fight the monster of church-committed and protected pedophilia when it’s everybody’s monster.
geg6
@4tehlulz:
I’ve done my best to do it, in my own small way.
dedc79
With the catholic church I always wondered how much of it was due to the requirement of abstinence and how much was suppressed homosexuality (yes, i know, there’s some overlap there given that some people take the vow of abstinence b/c they are fighting their homosexual urges). In the orthodox community the abstinence is gone (in these communites, people tend to marry very young) but the suppression of homosexuality is still there.
gex
@Brachiator: And this “I did nothing wrong, I just followed the rules of the institution” crap is tiresome. They also live in a country with a rule of law that carries more import than the rules of one organization. I’m sure they’d be totally fine if it was their kid and the adults who could help just followed the letter of their employer’s rulebook.
DFH no.6
@MattF:
Exactly right. Religion is first and foremost about people in power controlling others, whatever other purposes and effects it may have.
I wasn’t there, and no one will ever know for sure, but I believe it’s most likely that’s exactly how institutional religion began.
Maybe even way back in our hunter-gatherer days, with whatever varieties of shamanistic religions those people had, but certainly as we started living in settled communities at the dawn of civilization.
Some were clever and persuasive enough to spin fables about why there was lightning and floods, and why the sun rose every day, and where did this all come from anyway, etc., and got those around them to get with their program and follow their rules and dictates. Next thing you know we’re sacrificing on altars, stoning apostates, building pyramids, and conquering the people on the other side of the river who believe a different set of fables, all because the religious leaders say so.
And the cleverness and persuasion in service of power has continued apace to this very day.
That’s religion, in all its million variations thereof.
You pious types will take exception to that, but you’re wrong, because none of the fables are true. The truth claims of each and every religion are unprovable (and often very disprovable) nonsense, and that leaves only the exercise of power in people’s lives as religion’s primary purpose.
Yeah, sure, Catholic Charities, et al, and Stonehenge and the pyramids and the cathedrals and so on are impressive and very cool to look at, and religious people may (I suppose) feel comfort at funerals that their dear one is in heaven or whatever.
But power and control is what it’s really about.
4tehlulz
@geg6: By how? Waiting for it to die?
schrodinger's cat
@DFH no.6:
So true, see the control of women by the religious, it doesn’t matter which religion really.
ETA: Control by enforcing conformity and using fear.
gex
@dedc79: Because gay = pedophile, right?
Sick of that shit. Most adult male pedophiles target girls. But somehow pedophilia is a gay thing. Gay men are not more likely to rape a child than a straight man.
Mnemosyne
@geg6:
There aren’t “vast numbers” of priests who have molested children. There is a very small number who, because they were protected by the Church and were shuffled from parish to parish without warning the parish authorities, were given the opportunity to molest a large number of children.
The problem with the Catholic Church is not that all priests are molesters, any more than the problem with Penn State was that every administrator was molesting kids. The problem is that the institution used their power to support the perpetrators and cover up the crimes committed.
If every member of the Catholic Church is guilty of the crimes of pedophile priests, then every employee of Penn State is guilty of Sandusky’s crimes. You can’t draw a broad brush over one institution and then insist that your institution is innocent when it comes out that they did the same thing.
I know you have a special and understandable hatred for the Catholic Church that they earned, but the underlying problem is institutional power and the institution’s efforts to protect itself.
Jack Burton
@geg6: What about the idiot students? You know, the ones rioting because “Coach”, who knew and did nothing, got rightfully canned rather than rioting over kids not being fucked on campus. Sorry, that sort of stupidity deserves scorn and derision. It sucks when your ox gets gored but take off the blinders.
chopper
@kindness:
last time i rode up bedford through the chasidic nabe in williamsburg on my old loud-as-shit 2 stroke on a friday evening when all the orthodox families were out walking to shul i couldn’t help but think they’d throw rocks at me if they could.
dedc79
@gex: gay definitely does not equal pedophile. You correctly note that most male pedophiles target girls. In these instances (the church and the orthodox community) it seems that they are targeting boys.
Now one theory would say it’s because they have easier access to boys than to girls, and that may sometime be the case. But it also just so happens that in both communities, homosexuality is frowned upon and suppressed.
cthulhu
@schrodinger’s cat: As an atheist, am I not much of a fan of Harris. I read his first two books and wasn’t impressed. In fact, what I remember most about the first one is he and his wife having a major freakout in realizing their hotel in Paris might be too close to potential Islamic terrorist targets. I imagined two hipster-types in their hotel room, agitatedly running in circles and anxiously chattering about their predicament until accidentally running into each other and knocking themselves unconscious. What loons.
Martin
@Kay:
The Irish haven’t institutionalized religious victimhood by the state like Americans have. Diversity is hard work.
Bubblegum Tate
A very nice, non-molestery Jewish man told me a joke once:
A Catholic priest and a Rabbi are sitting on a park bench watching a young boy play. “What a lovely boy,” the preist says to the Rabbi. “Do you think we should screw him?”
“Screw him out of what?” replies the Rabbi.
These kiddie-touchers have even made that joke quaint and outdated. Yeesh.
kay
@gex:
A juvenile in Ohio who is adjudicated delinquent for a charge like gross sexual imposition is subject to detention until he or she is 21 years old and can have a 25 year sex offender reporting requirement, depending on “tier” and a judges discretion.
Prosecutors regularly bring those charges, where both the victim and perpetrator are children.
So, I wonder why I don’t see more charges in these cases. Because we are not shy in this country about hammering sex offenders.
gex
@dedc79: Or, we could call people who want to fuck children pedophiles and avoid constantly associating the two things. Every goddamn time we have a thread on pedophiles someone will have a comment that just sort of leaps from that topic to gays. Like you. Surely a coincidence, and not at all reflective of the RCC’s attempt to scapegoat gays for the problem.
dedc79
@gex: do you think there are gay pedophiles and straight pedophiles or do they just all have no preference in your view?
To be clear, if it is partly the result of suppression of homosexuality, I blame the church and the individuals who molest, not homosexuality.
gex
Plenty of male priests break their abstinence vows with adult partners, female or male. So maybe, just maybe we can call the ones who abuse kids to break their vows pedophiles. And maybe we can try to stop constantly reinforcing a really destructive stereotype.
gex
@dedc79: Pedophiles are people who are into CHILDREN. What is so fucking hard about this?
Jack Burton
@gex: Yeah, that really bugs me as it provides cover from attack and animosity towards gays. I love having sex with women (really only my wife), I don’t want to have sex with underage prepubescent girls. I believe the same applies to gays. It allows the hater to further the argument where the underlying theme is revolting acts.
Brachiator
@DFH no.6:
No, it’s the sex.
@geg6:
I am not sure that this is true at all. That is, the authorities there still continue to struggle with abuse cases and the intransigence of the Church.
A recent BBC documentary dealt with revelations that Cardinal Sean Brady failed to inform parents or the authorities about a priest who had abused boys. He had knowledge of the crimes. He is now the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland. He is resisting calls for his resignation, and few Irish leaders seem willing to to strongly call for his ouster, let alone his prosecution for any crime.
The Irish Times notes that charges of abuse were known since the founding of the Republic.
And so it goes.
Worse, the Church in Ireland had agreed to help fund a settlement related to abuse claims.
The cost to date is close to 1.5 billion euros. But the Church is moving to cover its assets.
And so it goes.
Another Halocene Human
Everybody, check out the blog “Failed Messiah.” Shmarya has been exposing the corruption, racial bias, and sexism in the Orthodox/Ultra-Orthodox/Frum/Haredi community for years.
The reason the fraud is so deep is that ultra-orthodox are basically living in a cult. Not much different from RCC, Mormons, and JWs, although maybe even more extreme? (Very similar to JWs, lot of child abuse in that community as in frum community, all covered up, as in frum community. RCC is actually less bad in some ways because they can’t effectively shun and cut off community members any more.)
The frum crooks have gotten more brazen in recent years, leading to some major scandals, such as the sale of poor Israeli’s organs to wealthy New Yorkers a few years ago, or the Rubashkin meat processor plant scandal. And then there is the increasing breakout of antisocial violence by Haredis in Israel which garnered international attention when some Haredi men spit on a young girl walking to school. (The reason was because her family belonged to the wrong ethnic branch of Judaism and they meant to expel her from their school, in defiance of Israeli law.)
On the more amusing side, you have the Schneersohn kooks putting up billboards evangelizing about their dead rabbi being the messiah. Hoooo-kay.
For all the bad press, the ultra-Orthodox communities in America total only in the five figures. Not so in Israel, where they are a rapidly growing demographic, one which is undereducated, underemployed, dependent upon welfare funds, and which, moreover, reject the legitimacy of the state of Israel and who most of whom have been exempted from and refuse service in the IDF. (And when they do serve, they launch into hissy fits about female soldiers singing, and other aspects of secular life.) Their demands are becoming increasingly extreme.
dedc79
gex: are all men who have sex with other men in prison gay or are some probably just dealing with the suppression of their ability to have sex and taking what is available? It doesn’t seem so crazy to me to think that among the people doing this, for some of these priests they are taking what they can easily get and children make easy targets.
That is not to blame homosexuality or homosexuals in general for anything, nor is it to excuse the church. In any event, I should have made myself more clear, and I’m possibly still not expressing this well. I understand your point that too often this crisis gets blamed/scapegoated on gays, and that is most certainly misguided and wrong. I’ll be more sensitive to avoid conflating these issues going forward.
Shawn in ShowMe
@cthulhu:
Sam Harris is one of the proud Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the others being Richard Dawkins, the late Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett. I support their willingness to speak out against religious fundamentalists, specifically when the latter deny the findings of science. Dennett is the most easy-going of the bunch while Hitch of course revelled in his reputation as an unapologetic asshole.
Harris is a younger, more deadpan version of Dennett in terms of personality. His particular beef is with Islamic extremists, not Islam in general.
If he’s now advocating racial profiling at airports, that’s news to me.
Another Halocene Human
Also it’s been known for years that frum Jewish men, the kind who make a show of lerning all day, will be very nasty to shiksas they meet in the street but are seen openly partaking of the wares in NYC strip clubs and so on, I suppose confident that their wives and daughters will never see them there.
Another Halocene Human
For a really scary story, read Failed Messiah’s series on metzitzah b’peh.
Also, I just went through a couple of weeks of posts and Shmarya has been covering this story with the NY DA giving a free pass to frum pedophiles like a bee sting covers my brother with welts. Seriously, please check Failed Messiah if you want an insight into this story.
Another Halocene Human
@schrodinger’s cat: I’ve always wondered if Harris came from money. How do you write a book like that and get it published at such a young age?
28 Percent
Clearly, clerical celibacy is at the root of the problem.
28 Percent
Clearly, clerical celibacy is at the root of the problem.
goblue72
@Steve: yeah well unfortunately for them, they don’t “stand apart.”. Last time I checked, Williamsburg was in the United effing States of America. Which means playing by our effing rules.
schrodinger's cat
@Another Halocene Human: I have no idea and haven’t read his book, nor do I think I will anytime soon. I know him through Sullivan’s blog, usually I find Sully’s religion posts boring so I skip over them.
Shawn in ShowMe
@Another Halocene Human:
I’m stunned when hipster intellectuals
come from money.
Brachiator
@28 Percent:
Part of the problem. But some of the priests who abused children were also having sex with adults as well (of both genders). Sandusky of Penn State was married, as were a number of men in the Scout scandals.
Another Halocene Human
@gex: Exactly right. The pedophilia going on in the ultra-orthodox community is basically a crime of opportunity. Young boys go in the murky mikvah with grown men, and there is no-one to protect them if one of the men is a groper.
There also has been a scandal with school buildings. Schools today have windowed doors so adults cannot take children into a room aside and molest them, but orthodox in the Netherlands have not only built a school with solid doors but advertise the fact that they have private rooms–as if they are advertising for pedophiles.
Extreme authoritarianism tends to discount the testimony of the powerless, in this case children. They are just silly or liars. Btw, exactly what happened at Penn State, because the victims were boys from broken homes.
Authoritarianism was exactly behind what happened at Penn State, and I don’t appreciate the apology when the football program knew he had raped boys on their property and continued to allow him access AND never reported it to the authorities. They were enablers.
Jack Burton
@Shawn in ShowMe: Fuck you asshole!!
/28 y.o. living in one of the most expensive cities in the world working on his “art” walks off in a huff with his Asian g.f.
Another Halocene Human
@dedc79:
Father Geoghan stated at trial he preferred girls but their mothers would “go hysterical” (or similar language), so that is why he settled on molesting boys.
Also see above as to why boys are the target in the frum community.
By contrast, the rape and torture of female relatives seems to be the common crime in the Amish community, with their own mothers covering it up.
CHILD RAPE IS A CRIME OF OPPORTUNITY. Stop looking for Freudian motivations, or special “evil” people. This simply enables the rape of more children. The MCC has never had a child rape case. Penn State and the RCC should follow their protocols. (The basic axiom no adult is ever alone in a room with a teenager, and it goes from there.)
Another Halocene Human
@Bubblegum Tate: Obviously, it was a Conservative Rabbi.
(Frummies do not consider conservatives to be real Jews. They also hate regular Orthodox, which they term Modern Orthodox or OTD, off the derech (or path).)
Another Halocene Human
@gex:
Or we could stop wanking about pedophilia and paraphilia altogether and work together on stopping child rape.
Plenty of clinical pedophiles never molest a single child, while the majority of those who rape children are NOT pedophiles.
Clime Acts
@geg6:
Mnem is an expert of sorts at the sloppy use of the broad brush…it’s her schtick.
Djur
@chopper: I’m 25 and my mother is 66, so it doesn’t seem unreasonable to me.
Jack Burton
@Another Halocene Human:
Please excuse my ignorance here in asking this question. I honestly would like to know? What do you call them, then? Do you mean because they rape older children and are pederasts or is it wrong to put any term to it? I confused.
Another Halocene Human
@Brachiator: :
I find I must contend with this assertion. As Kissinger quipped, power is the greatest aphrodisiac. These sickos are turned on by the power they have over these young, innocent children and that motivates the rape. (In communities like the Tibetan Buddhist community, where there is easy access to unattached women, but less so to children, they rape grown women instead.)
Sure it’s disgusting, but it’s childish to pretend that some, if not the majority, of rapists are getting a kick out of dominating and torturing their victims. Hell, it’s the whole motivation behind sadomasochistic literature. It’s not something alien to the human experience. Hell, yes, there are people who do this for real, not just in an elaborate fantasy.
And that is not an absolutist statement (ie, “it’s about power, not sex”) but, even though sexual pleasure is part of the motivation for many rapists, there have been a number of cases of rape where the perpetrator did not use his own penis or, in fact, couldn’t get it up. In one case at BU a male student forced blunt objects down the throat of a female student against her will. The perpetrator is receiving pleasure from the dominance and humiliation even though it does not end in sexual “completion” in the conventional sense.
Another Halocene Human
@dedc79: I think the church perverts men’s minds but not in the way that you think.
By being enabled and seeing others enabled in their horrific crimes, it gives them authoritarian institutional permission not only to offend again, but the escalate the offense.
Joey Maloney
@Djur: Yeah, but are you also a great-uncle?
Another Halocene Human
@goblue72:
That’s why some of them ran away to Canada to try to continue the incest and molestation, in at least one case.
Williamsburg is almost small potatoes compared to some other frum communities worldwide in terms of insularness and outrages.
Google “gur community” from some extreme extremity. They force children to marry very young and have many children so they are trapped. One man lost his faith entirely but fears for his children should he abandon them. There is no love or friendship between him and his wife and he therefore cannot trust her. He is literally alone.
Another Halocene Human
@Jack Burton: In psychology, a pedophile is someone who is fixated on children and incapable of a sexual and romantic relationship with an adult. (Although incapable may be somewhat of a hyperbole. However, unlike non-pedo child molesters, they have or imagine they have romantic relationships with these children.)
Michael Jackson and Sandusky are classic pedophiles, affecting a childlike coutenance themselves. Lewis Carroll is probably one of the most famous pedophiles of all time. He was allowed access to children but it was supervised and there’s no evidence he ever molested any children.
There is a term, ephebophilia, for attraction to young children, as opposed to pedophilia, which is technically attraction to pre-pubescent children. Both are paraphilias.
However, your typical raper of children or young teens is in a stable relationship with someone their own age or has a history of such relationships in the past. They rape children they have access to such as step-children, their children’s friends, or in some extreme cases, their own children. There are also the infamous groping uncles and handsy grandpas with dementia (or without).
Another Halocene Human
Father Geoghan was most certainly a pedophile and admitted as much.
Father Shanley seems more likely to be a case of extreme NPD or straight up sociopathy. He raped very young children, a coerced sex from runaway teens and had sexual relationships with men his own age and dabbled in pandering with said runaway teens, so basically just a monster/sex criminal.
I am not a psychologist. I just read obsessively about this stuff. So take my pronouncements with a grain of salt. (There’s some mental illness in my family that went unacknowledged for years so I have personal reasons for obsessively over DSM diagnoses.)
Another Halocene Human
@Another Halocene Human: Oh, fudge, what I mean of course was to say “pretend [that they] aren’t getting a kick out of [raping children]”.
I’m kinda tired right now.
Jack Burton
@Another Halocene Human:
WTF? Wasn’t Sandusky married for a long time to a fellow old lady and a football coach which if I remember right from my days of ball playing wasn’t inhabited by many child-men. He coached the best defense in the land. Pretty macho bullshit types. Which admittedly and regretfully I was a full part of. So I am having a tough time taking your well thought out (I think) thesis seriously if you excuse my impertinence.
Brachiator
@Another Halocene Human:
Pretty accurate description, compares well to what I remember about news reports on this case. But there are so many others, so I not sure that there is any “typical” pattern.
And it does not tell us much about those who protected these abusers, and allowed them to continue to abuse.
Also, there is the additional dimension of priests and others who created a kind of sex abuse club, passing children to another after they had been used by them. This and other acts, adds a predatory dimension to their behavior, along with their deliberately using their relationship and authority to enforce compliance and obediance. They didn’t threaten violence, but used the authority and special status as clergy (or in Sandusky’s case, a child advocate who could bestow gifts and benefits) to keep getting what they wanted and to keep their victims quiet and vulnerable.
Jack Burton
And another thing about Goddamn Penn State. They were tied to Second Mile about as close as one could get. Where is this revisionist bullshit coming from? Paterno often served as the MC of fundraisers (he was a part of PSU, right?) Dottie Huck is/was a 2nd Mile board member, who is married to Lloyd Huck, PSU trustee. 2nd Mile board member Linda Gill heads Penn State for the Future, a PSU fundraising campaign. The property deal between PSU and 2nd Mile was some sort of sweetheart deal. Sandusky was in Paterno’s press box a week before the scandal erupted and had kids at practice as late as 2010.
That whole place and all its defenders should be razed and the ground salted for the self righteous bullshit they are trying to spin here. “But we have a big dance contest for charity!!!!” Shut up, shut up, shut the fuck up.
cthulhu
@Shawn in ShowMe: I guess of the four, I’d go with Dawkins. I suppose Harris tends to focus on personal (perhaps societal) threat; he’s pretty squishy when it comes to eastern spiritualism. But whatever floats your boat.
Mike S.
If you had ever gone to http://failedmessiah.typepad.com/
you’d have known about all of this more than a year ago.
A Humble Lurker
@Clime Acts: No opinions to contribute on the topic at hand? Or would you rather not, considering how this topic exposed you last time?
And by the by, speaking of Mnem, how was Mnem’s analogy inaccurate?
TenguPhule
The same way they vote Republican. And go teabagging.
They’re evil. And they’re allowed to live.
PJ
This has been going on for a long time in New York. It’s common knowledge in the criminal justice system (I’ve heard horror stories about child and animal abuse in the Hasidic community from an acquaintance who is a criminal psychologist) but there has been a media blackout on it in New York until this week (the Guardian ran a series about it in March which got no mention in US media), and politicians here won’t go anywhere near it due to the political ramifications. If you read the second NYT article, you’ll see that the Brooklyn DA has been complicit in not prosecuting these cases or in arranging sweetheart plea deals.
El Tiburon
Look, if it ain’t hippies or the blacks or the mafia or Martha Stewart, no fucking crime and move along.
RichinPiria
@geg6:
Yeah, check with the Catholic hierarchy. They apparently know how to avoid prosecution.
chopepr
@Djur:
is you mom also a great grandmother?
chopper
@Djur:
is your mother also a great grandmother?
chopper
@Clime Acts:
maybe the children like being raped. that’s it, right?
Clime Acts
@A Humble Lurker:
Exposed, Smexposed…I proudly embrace and celebrate my chosen lifestyle with all the boys.
One of them is severely handicapped like these Jewish kids…he says a special hello to you also, Pedo lover.
Clime Acts
@chopper:
Well now, I don’t know. Do you have some information on that which might shed some light in this case?
Or are you just fixating again? When you write these comments does it make you tingle?
All my boys, AND the little Chihuahua, say hello to you especially Chop Chop.
cynn
@Another Halocene Human: You seem very well informed, and thanks for the links. Plus, via them, I got to read Heeb’s tribute to Beastie Adam.
SqueakyRat
@chopper: Well, if her son turned 23 four years ago, he’d be 27 now, so she would have borne him at age 37. That’s not even unusual.
Rome Again
@chopper:
What is your point? Lots of women conceive and bear children in their late 30’s to early 40’s. My mother was 37 when she had me. I’m a 50 year old woman, and so far, nature has not told me that I can’t conceive. It may not be advisable for me to conceive, but nature hasn’t put an official stop to that possibility yet.
SqueakyRat
@geg6: Wasn’t he caught screwing a kid in the Penn State showers?
Rome Again
Oh, I see that chopper is arguing the “great-grandmother” point. Well chopper, I had siblings who were born when my mother was in her late teens after having married at 18 (I came along much later).
If you take 3 x 19, you end up with 57. Any point after that age is appropriate to have a great grandchild and not be considered a promiscuous teen or the mother or grandparent of promiscuous teens. It’s very possible she was a great grandmother at age 60.
mtraven
@schrodinger’s cat: When Marx said that religion was the opiate of the people, he meant it relieved their pain. Context:
gaz's wife
@Another Halocene Human: I appreciate everything you shared on this topic. Especially what you were saying about how trying to hunt (mythical) monster pedos gets in the way of recognizing real danger and protecting real kids.
Because recognizing real danger might mean seeing things that we don’t want to see. Might mean that a kid we love has been acting out, is confused and unsure of himself, and seems to really have a grudge against his little sister. Might mean we see it. Might mean we believe her when she says that he tried to rape her. While his eighth grade report card is on the fridge next to her drawing of a mermaid.
Aren’t monstrous acts better committed by a monster? But they aren’t and we have to recognize that when visitation is over and we hug the little boy in the baggy jumpsuit before he goes back to his lodge with all those (other) pedos and child rapists.
Djur
@chopepr: Certainly could have been if my oldest brother had spawned early. My understanding is that Orthodox Jews are pretty intensely natalist. Have a child at 20. That child has a child at 20. You’re 40. That grandchild has a child at 20. You’re 60 and a great-grandmother. Doesn’t seem odd to me in the context of an intensely natalist culture.
Another Halocene Human
The reason I believe Sandusky is a pedophile has to do with statements he made, statements people close to him made and some of the non-criminal aspects of the scandal.
Far from have a macho self-image, Sandusky was referred to as “a big kid”. (As I recall, he made some odd statements in his autobiography from about a decade back.) He groomed and fixated on boys. There was a certain individual that he remained in contact with for years. He’s what police profilers call the romantic type rapist, which means that he has a delusion/self-justification that his victim is just really into him and they’re in love and the sex acts are consensual. Also, from what very little has been reported about his relationship to his wife, it sounds more like codependency rather than a normal adult relationship.
If you’re curious, you’ll find the reporting all in one place on the blog Deadspin, which was really Sandusky news ground zero.
A lot of people covered for Sandusky for a long time.
@Jack Burton: As for the perpetrators of child rape not all fitting one, neat profile–well, that’s my point. There’s an overlap between these paraphilias and this sort of anti-social behavior, but by no means a perfect correspondence.
From what I understand, most victims of child rape are girls and most of them are raped by men who know them and most of these men are not pedophiles.
Pedophilia may catch our imagination because of the utter weirdness of it.
There are plenty of resources on the web if you want to know more.
West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.)
Well said, MattF (post #11)… It does appear that most (all?) churches are all-too-much about controlling the masses via fear and guilt. Individual members might be wonderful, intelligent human beings, but the crusty hierarchy is often drunk on power.