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Moq, you have some good ideas there, and we’re mostly on the same page.
Chemical castration – don’t know too much about it. I’m sure it mostly works. I’ve never heard of it being used in New York. I vaguely recall that it doesn’t work for some, they still have the teiva.
Capital punishment? Unconstitutional in America, recently held by the US Supreme Court. The court held that the death penalty for the non-homicide crime of child molestation violates the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and inhuman punishment. Louisiana had sentenced a child molester to death, and his punishment was accordingly reduced to life imprisonment.
Here are a couple reasons why I respectfully disagree with the opinion of Rabbi Klein, and I do agree with the majority of poskim holding that molesters should be brought to the police.
1. The underlying assumption behind Rabbi Klein’s opinion above is that once fired from a school, the molester is no longer a danger to the community. Not so. He can work in another school, or in another job near children, or move to a different community or country. Even the best of school authorities, in attempting to keep track of the molester’s whereabouts, will not succeed. Child molesters are notoriously devious, and their deviant yetzer hara is never fixed. Even with therapy, the consensus of psychologists is that there is absolutely no cure for child molesters. They have a high rate of repeat offending. Religious school authorities are no match for the power of the secular criminal justice system. A successful prosecution can result in a prison term which will take the molester off the streets for a period of time. There will likely be some publicity in local newspapers, so the community will know that this man is a molester, and proper precautions can be taken. Additionally, he will have a permanent criminal record, easily checked on the Internet, and it is unlikely that he will ever work again near children. Yeshiva administrators do not remotely have the ability to do any of this.
2. Additionally, Rabbi Klein appears to insist that a beis din may only adjudicate a molester through “proper witnesses”. Bizman ha’zeh, as others have ruled, this is too high a procedural burden, given what we know about the number of molesters out there, and the damage they inflict. Children and women need to testify.
Notably, also, Rabbi Klein acknowleges that other rabbis hold that molesters should be reported to the police.
As far as a beis din being required to reach a judgment with perfect “100 percent” certainty, I would suggest that those who raise this issue cite a source. I’ve never heard of this, and logically, it doesn’t make much sense. There are frequently witness credibility issues, memory issues, perception issues, and scientific, objective evidence has not always existed, obviously.
I’m familiar with Rav Klein’s opinion, and it definitely appears to be in the minority.
Rav Dovid Cohen says, Go to the police. Rav Hershel Schachter, of RIETS, who is respected in the yeshivish and Chassidish communities, says, Go to the police.
I don’t believe the type of burden of proof you’re insisting upon is actually being followed in the vast majority of battei din today where child abuse cases have been adjudicated, in the recent past. There have been special battei din dealing with these cases in Los Angeles and Chicago, for example, where rabbis and professionals have worked together, and they could not have applied the ultra-high burden of Torah law that existed in the past, i.e., two witnesses, and warning.
Another example is a case heard by Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky, written about in the Forward. There was victim testimony only, he was persuaded by the testimony, and he forwarded his findings to a beis din in Eretz Yisroel. They decided not to pursue the case, because they felt it was too old. The important point here, however, is that the strict Torah rules of beis din were relaxed. If not, we’ll have child abusers running amok, which, to some extent, is what is happening.
Yes, it appears that the questioner was asking about a specific case, but the factual details are omitted from Rav Elyashiv’s opinion. That’s critical. As a result, we don’t truly know what evidence would satisfy Rav Elyashiv. I read the “p’sak” more as a guideline, than as a definitive halachic ruling. There are other teshuvos where the evidence is specifically referred to. In secular law, there are also appellate court precedents where, in discussing burdens of proof, specific evidence is referred to.
Ben Torah, Wikipedia is not perfect, but this particular passage is footnoted with references, it confirms what I wrote above, and I suggest it should work for now, and this is what I copied and pasted:
“A 1992 meta-analysis suggests that false allegations represent between two and ten percent of all allegations.[6] False reports are more common in custody disputes.[15][16][17] Children appear to rarely make up false allegations of their own accord[18][19][20] but will make false allegations if coercively questioned by individuals who believe abuse has occurred but refuse to accept children’s statements that they were not abused (as was common practice during the satanic ritual abuse moral panic).[7]”
In our community, the psychologist Dr. David Pelcovitz has publicly stated, over and over again, that false child abuse claims are very rare. He is a frequent lecturer, and specializes in the treatment of abuse victims.
You make a Talmudic argument: “You wouldn’t know what percent were false claims; only what percent were later proven false. Those false that resulted in a false conviction, your stats will still show as true.” Only in Shamayim will we know which convictions, if any, were false. Meanwhile, here on Earth, Jews and b’nei Noach are required to establish a justice system. Your argument does work in the beis medrash, but not when we’re dealing with life-and-death. Child abuse is a type of slow homicide. MRI brain scans and other tests have been performed on deceased child abuse victims. There is brain damage, and cell changes. Their life spans are statistically shorter. They suffer higher percentages of severe depression, alcoholism, drug abuse, and suicide. Dr. Michael Salomon, a psychologist, addressed this issue at our Brooklyn conference on October 24 at R’ Gershon Tanenbaum’s shul; and Dr. Nachum Klafter, a psychiatrist, addresses this issue in our Jewish Board of Advocates for Children Position Paper (jewishadvocates.org).
Next you write, “Furthermore, the psak from Rav Elyshev is that it is ONLY permissible to report to the secular authorities after it has been 100% ascertained as factual.” From the English translation above, which I’ve seen before, Rav Elyashiv does not insist that the burden of proof be satisfied 100 per cent.
100 per cent is also not the burden in a secular court; nor in a beis din, where child testimony is now accepted, and also women’s testimony, and you don’t need two witnesses, and warnings.
Credible victim can be adequate, particularly when accompanied by other proof: e.g., did the victim complain shortly after the crime, was there medical and/or psychological treatment, were there other credible complaints about the alleged perpetrator. Physical and scientific evidence are not required in order to get a conviction.
I also point out that Rav Elyashiv was speaking in general, not as to a specific case in front of him. I suggest the Rav was giving general guidelines, and not hard-and-fast rules. As you probably know, perhaps better than I, a p’sak dealing with an actual, live case in front of the rav-posek should be given greater weight than a general commentary. I heard a good shiur on this once, dealing with an agunah, but can’t recall the details.
As a lawyer practicing in the field, a few more comments.
Some of the comments here are throwing out too many roadblocks to criminal prosecution. I’ve accompanied abuse victims to District Attorney offices in several counties here in the New York area, and I can relate that the process of prosecution is fair and very civilized. I’ve seen the DA and police question victims. The police and DAs are generally empathetic, trained, and highly educated people, and they’re doing a good job. Not a perfect job, but a good job, and let’s remember, Torah lo sh’bashamayim hi, the Torah wasn’t given to angels, we fallible mortals are to apply the Torah in our daily lives, including in the justice system. A US Supreme Court Justice once wrote, A defendant is entitled to a fair trial, not a perfect trial.
I would also add that false child abuse claims are very rare, especially in the age bracket of 6-7 through late teens. I don’t have the precise statistics in front of me, but about 95 percent
of children are telling the truth. The false claims in the past arise from situations where pre-school children have been coached by extremely zealous prosecution investigators; and also in custody battles. Here in the NY area, we’ve seen very, very few false child abuse claims in our frum community since the cases started happening the last few years.
Not believing children in the past has caused terrible results. Parents and children have therefore been discouraged from prosecuting, and the molesters continued inflicting damage.
I don’t believe we need to make a pilpul out of child molestation. When the typical case is the child relating that an adult did something strange to him, and the parent sees adverse behavioral changes (altered mood, poor school work, inappropriate conduct, bed wetting, etc.), you report the crime to the police.
Why do some in our community cover for molesters? A few reasons:
It wasn’t so long ago that covering for molesters was considered the frum thing to do. Don’t make a shanda for the goyim. The difficulty here is that cover ups rarely work, and the exposure of the cover up is sometimes worse than the actual crime itself. So now there are two shandas for the goyim instead of one, the crime of molestation, and then the cover up.
Others wrongly believed that covering up would give the molester the chance to get cured. Except there is consensus among psychologists that molesters cannot be cured. General society has handled molesters far better than we have in the past. The Government demands prison, and upon release, the legal label of registered sex offender, which means that a simple background check will likely prevent this deviant from working near children.
Still others covered for molesters because they believed the denials of the molesters, and not the accounts of the children. There is an element of self-preservation at work here. Confronting the evil of a crime like child molestation is not an easy thing to do. Confronting evil means challenging evil, and doing something about it. Look at how many people denied the Holocaust while it was happening. And there have been other genocides since then that some have denied. Moshe and Ahron had to confront Paroh alone. Others stepped away.
We’re now going in the right direction, and Yeshiva World News, and vnishmartemmeod, should be credited for hosting this important discussion.