Remember the recent revelations of how Yeshiva University covered up sexual abuse by faculty of students for decades and that led to the chancellor resigning?
Now nineteen former students of the high school run by it have filed a massive lawsuit.
“Yeshiva University High School held itself out as an exemplary Jewish secondary school when in fact it was allowing known sexual predators to roam the school at will seeking other victims,” said attorney Kevin Mulhearn, who filed the suit on behalf of the 19 plaintiffs. “Childhood sexual abuse in the Orthodox Jewish community can no longer be condoned and excused.”
The manipulation used by these abusers is disgusting.
Sixteen plaintiffs say they were physical and sexually assaulted by Finkelstein, who was named principal even though several students had complained he had abused them. Finkelstein allegedly kept students quiet about the abuse with emotional manipulation.
“Finkelstein, as a YUHS administrator, specifically targeted vulnerable boys for physical and sexual abuse. He preyed upon children of Holocaust survivors and after he abused them implored these children to not add to their parents’ suffering by telling them about his assaults,” the suit claims.
I will never, ever understand the mentality of such people. I hope that this lawsuit encourages other victims in that closed community to come forward so that future abusers realize that they cannot get away with this kind of thing.
He preyed upon children of Holocaust survivors and after he abused them implored these children to not add to their parents’ suffering by telling them about his assaults,
That’s…I don’t have a word for what that is. I think I’m glad for that. Evil doesn’t cover it. I hate having to think about human beings being this despicable.
What I don’t understand is the obvious cognitive dissonance connected to such doings.
On the one hand, they consciously decide to spend their time in religious places, doing religious things and on the other hand, they commit unspeakable crimes that cannot possibly be reconcicled with their conscience (if they have one) OR the things they believe to be part of their religion.
How exactly do these people see themselves ? Do they not reflect on these things they do ?
Sophocles had a word for it in Antigone, but it’s hard to translate: deinà, which can variously mean wonderful, monstrous, terrifying, … --you get the idea. And he says this about all humankind, which is also true: compare the RC clergy, who abuse children while claiming to represent their deity. To describe it, we have to fall back on Greek tragedy.
“Aw(e)ful”, in its older sense, had this idea. It has since morphed to just meaning “of really poor quality”, but its root is in the awe and fear of a great power. Good point.
Having read the bible I don’t find anything in it that would lead me to believe that the jewish-christian deity wouldn’t condone the rape of children. After all he decrees their murder on multiple occasions, and orders rape of any survivors of the battles. He also favours incest and child murder. I am forced to conclude that child sexual abuse by clergy, unlike eating shellfish or wearing clothing of mixed materials, is not actually against their religion at all. That’s why they don’t have a problem with it.
This is something that I too puzzled about. The best I can come up with is that either they are total psychopaths who do not believe in their god at all and have no consciences or they are so addicted to their practices that they go through cycles of committing abuse and then repenting.
What I don’t understand is the obvious cognitive dissonance connected to such doings.
More than cognitive dissonance. A compartmentalized psyche, dissociation, …, who knows? The RC has peddled the notion that the victims really wanted it, and tempted their poor paedophile priests beyond human endurance. Cf. Adam in Gen 3,12: … she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And then there’s the demoniacal-possession theory, applicable to vicitm and victimizer alike. There’s no shortage of ready-made rationalizations available.