Stories today from Israel, England -2, Wales, Australia and India
Yeshiva School Sup'r gets 17 Years for Sexually Abusing His Nieces Hundreds of Times
Yeshiva School Sup'r gets 17 Years for Sexually Abusing His Nieces Hundreds of Times
The Mashgiach (Yeshiva school supervisor) from Jerusalem who was arrested last year for sexually abusing three sisters from his own family, has been sentenced today to 17 years in prison. He will also pay 145,000 Shekel (<$40,000 USD) in compensation to the victims.
The sentence was handed down by the Jerusalem District Court after the Mashgiach admitted to some of the charges as part of a plea bargain. The identity of the Mashgiach is under a gag order at the request of the family of the victims.
The original 17-page indictment, obtained by JTA in May of last year, accuses the Mashgiach of raping his alleged victims — sisters now aged 24 and 28 — hundreds of times since they were 6 and 7, sodomizing them, performing obscene acts on them and assaulting them while telling them that the sexual contact was required by religious law, or halacha. He also is charged with attempting to perform and performing an indecent act under deceitful pretenses on a third sister, now 30, when she was 19.
The indictment said the alleged acts happened at the Mashgiach’s home, at the homes of the complainants, at his office at the yeshiva and in his car. Spanning over 20 years, his actions are said to have begun in his alleged victims’ early childhood and continued until they were young mothers in their 20s.
According to the indictment, the Mashgiach began molesting one of the girls when she was 6, “turning her into an instrument for the fulfillment of his sexual desires.”
“The defendant used his status in the family and the community, as an authority on the Torah, and the fact that he supported financially the families of the victim, while encouraging her sense of dependence and duty,” the indictment said of one victim. “As she matured, the defendant added to these manipulations, falsehoods and lies, claiming halacha makes his actions not only permissible, but a mitzvah.”
The document also said The Mashgiach claimed his life and health depended on the girl’s compliance and that his actions with her were necessary to repair damages to her soul sustained during a previous incarnation.
Police reveal scale of probe into historical
child sex abuse in Derbyshire
Derbyshire police have identified 30 potential victims and 10 suspects
Police have revealed the scale of an investigation into allegations of historical child sex abuse in Derbyshire with 30 potential victims being identified in 12 months.
A dedicated team of detectives, working as Operation Hydrant, is running eight investigations into allegations against 10 suspects - and so far 96 charges are being prepared against six people.
The team consists of a detective inspector, detective sergeant and four detective constables and was set up by Derbyshire police to specifically probe cases of non-recent child sexual abuse. And the scale of its probes have been revealed in a report which is being put before Derbyshire police’s Chief Constable Peter Goodman and police and crime commissioner Hardyal Dhindsa.
The report states: “Over the past 12 months the team have dealt with numerous investigations into non-recent child sexual abuse. There are currently eight live investigations ongoing, involving 30 victims and 10 suspects. Five of these investigations are going to crown court and 96 charges currently being laid against six suspects.”
Detective Sergeant Steve Judge, who works in the Public Protection Major Investigation Team which oversees Operation Hydrant, is encouraging more victims to come forward.
He said: “We understand the impact that non-recent, physical and sexual abuse has on people when they reach adulthood. People report this type of crime to us at different times. I would encourage anyone to come forward and report such offences to us, regardless if a criminal investigation is already ongoing.”
A spokesman for the NSPCC said he hoped the progress of the police’s investigations would give more victims the confidence to report historical crimes. He said: "Child sexual abuse can have a devastating impact lasting into adulthood.
“We want survivors of child sexual abuse to come forward in the knowledge they will be listened to. They do not need to suffer in silence.
“It can take tremendous bravery to speak out, but help is available.
“Whether the abuse happened once or hundreds of times, a year ago or 70 years ago - whatever the circumstances, it is never too late.
Derbyshire, UK
Woman sexually abused by her teacher as a child hopes other victims will come forward
Former primary school teacher Gordon Fleming was jailed
for 10 years for sexually abusing 24 girls
A woman who was sexually abused by her primary school teacher as a child has spoken of her relief after he was finally jailed. The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, says she is now determined to move on with her life after Gordon Fleming received a 10-year prison sentence.
Fleming, 66, from Oswestry in Shropshire, admitted sexually abusing 24 girls at schools in north Wales in the 1970s and 80s.
The woman said she was about 10 when she was abused as a pupil near Aberystwyth.
She said the abuse has affected her relationships with her husband, family and children, as well as causing her to experience repeated nightmares and flashbacks.
She added: “I hope that by speaking out, others who have suffered abuse by those who were supposed to be in a position of trust will feel they can come forward and that justice can be done, even after so many years.”
Peter Lorence, a specialist abuse lawyer at Irwin Mitchell, who is representing her, described the woman as “extremely courageous”.
He said: “Many people who suffer sexual abuse as a child can be affected by the ordeal for the rest of their lives. Their experiences can have a significant impact on the way they develop as an adult and how they live.”
The court heard Fleming was jailed for several years at Chester Crown Court in 1992 for charges of a similar nature while he was headmaster at a village school near Welshpool.
The charges Fleming admitted in April relate to an earlier time when he was teaching at another primary school in north Wales.
Dyfed Powys Police launched an inquiry after a number of his pupils reported what happened to them while they were in his classroom. Officers appealed to girls he taught at the school between 1976 and 1981 and charges were brought in respect of two dozen of his former pupils.
Fleming admitted 35 counts of indecent assault.
At a plea hearing in April, Judge Geraint Walters told Fleming to expect a “significant prison sentence”.
He added: “You have admitted systematically sexually abusing no less than 24 young girls who were in your trust at the time. This represents a serious breach of trust for a junior school teacher abusing so many young girls.”
Fleming was jailed for 10 years and ordered to register as a sex offender.
Mandatory celibacy contributes to child sex abuse
in Catholic Church, new report suggests
Jardine Malado
A priest waits for faithful in confessional during World Youth Day in Krakow, Poland, July 26, 2016.
The study, authored by Professor Desmond Cahill and Dr. Peter Wilkinson, claimed that the patriarchal nature of Catholic institutions is one of the reasons why abuse often goes and challenged, noting that the risk of offending was much higher in institutions where priests had minimal contact with women.
"Their contact with women in teacher training institutions would have been carefully proscribed and then they were appointed to male-only schools where they were in charge of young boys and adolescents," the 384-page document stated, as reported by The Christian Post.
"And they were living in all-male religious communities. They had to make do with a sacralised image of a sexless Virgin Mary. It was a recipe for a psycho-spiritual disaster," it continued.
The authors warned that children are "at risk" at more than 9,000 Catholic-run orphanages around the developing world.
The report, titled "Child Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church: An Interpretive Review of the Literature and Public Inquiry Reports," was released last week by the RMIT University in Melbourne amid debates about whether priests in Australia should be required to break the sanctity of confession to expose child abuse.
Last month, Australia's child sex abuse royal commission recommended that priests who refuse to report child sexual abuse to the authorities because they heard it during a confession should face criminal charges.
The proposal was opposed by the archbishop of the archdiocese of Melbourne, Denis Hart, who said that he would risk going to jail rather than report allegations of child sexual abuse raised during confession.
Cahill, a former Catholic priest who resigned from the ministry to marry, stated in his report that Pope Pius X's 1910 mandate to lower the age at which children make their first confession to seven years indirectly contributed to putting more children at risk of abuse. He further noted that the Church, on several occasions, had allowed the seal of confession to be broken.
He believes that a priest had an obligation to report abuse if they heard about it from a child during confession. He said that doing so would not break the sanctity of confession because the child had not sinned, and reporting it to the authorities would not reveal any sin of the child.
If the priest hears about the abuse from a perpetrator during confession, Cahill said that it would be practical to tell the perpetrator that they would not receive forgiveness until they allowed the priest to tell the police, or confessed to the authorities of the crime themselves.
Cahill and Wilkinson formed their conclusions after examining reports from royal commissions, academic studies, police reports and church reports from around the world since 1985. The report estimated that about seven percent of priests had committed sexual abuse against children between about 1950 and 2000.
All good stuff! However, 1) 7 % is a conservative estimate, I believe, as some societies boast paedophile rates in the 30-50% range. 2) the priesthood will continue to be a magnet for gay paedophiles as long as there are children. The fact that the Catholic Church can't weed these perverts out, or even prevent them from coming in, is a sorry indictment of the church.
Man downloaded 80,000 images of child sexual abuse to stop him becoming a predator
Russell Kay claimed he was abused as a boy, and watching these images kept him from preying on children.
By Roger Baird
Swindon Crown Court
Russell Kay, 48, stored the pictures and videos for over 20 years, much of it hidden away on disks he kept in the loft of his Chippenham family home.
But after hearing that the father had himself been abused as a child and used the material "in the way a heroin user takes methadone", a judge at Swindon Crown Court imposed a suspended sentence.
Kay pleaded guilty to three counts of making indecent images of children between July 1995 and 30 April last year, reported the Swindon Advertiser.
The jury heard that police received intelligence that kay's IP address had been used on a file-sharing website that posted these images. Officers seized a laptop, three external hard drives and a box of CDs, which were full of child abuse images, from the loft at Kay's home.
Grace Flynn, prosecuting, said there were 271 items in the worst category of abuse, including 64 movies, 431 in the middle bracket of which 45 were films and 81,650 in the lowest level, including 155 movies.
She added when police questioned Kay he admitted collecting these images for over 20 years, but blamed a traumatic childhood.
Abused as a child
Peter Binder, defending, said Kay was abused as a young boy by a male friend of his parents, and used this material to avoid becoming a predator himself.
Binder said: "His understanding was: having been a victim himself, as in his view victims in his words are hard wired to become abusers. And so he feels he was looking at this material in the way a heroin user takes methadone.
"It was really the lesser of two evils as it reduced the risk of him committing a contact offence. He seems to be of the view that what he was doing was in a sense preventing the situation from getting worse. It is hard to fathom. Apart from this secret life of storing this material he has been in many ways a model citizen."
Binder added that following his arrest in April last year Kay had sought help for his problem and now had blocking software on his electronic devices.
The lawyer said that Kay had lost his job as a result of offending but his wife and daughters, who are aware of his past, are standing by him.
Judge Tim Mousley QC said: "Every time you looked at those images for your perverted gratification you were witnessing a young child or children being violently abused."
But the judge said as there is a chance Kay can be managed in the community, he would impose a suspended a 12-month jail term for two years.
The court added that Kay will also be under supervision for two years and must abide by a sexual harm prevention order. He will be registered as a sex offender for 10 years.
A new front opens on the war against
child sex abuse in India
Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi, interacting with children after the launch of Leher YI project at
Bal Bhavan, Cubbon Park, in Bengaluru on Saturday. In the next few months, 52 one-minute videos,
aimed at educating children and the public about sexual abuse of children will be shot and released
as part of a campaign by Young Indians, the youth wing of the Confederation of Indian Industry.
On Saturday, Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi launched the campaign ‘Leher’ which will focus on finding people to produce 52 films out of a total of 70 shortlisted scripts. These will be made available for all to share as part of their awareness campaigns.
Mr. Satyarthi, speaking about his ‘Bharat Yatra’ campaign to make India safe again, said, “Fear stops children from talking about sexual abuse. This is more so when it happens in the family. We are marching to tell people to speak out. There must also be a new law against trafficking. Through technology, a sex offender registry can be created that will make public the identity of all offenders.”
Speaking about Leher, Kaushik Murali, Chair of the Young Indians CII, Bengaluru, pointed out that there was a dearth of video material of the topic that is socially relevant in India. “This campaign was born from the idea that we could release a one-minute video every week for a year. If you are a film-maker and want to be the change, register for Leher,” he said.
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