The sentencing of aWilliamsburgresident to over 100 years in prison last week has once again brought the issue of child abuse in our communities to the fore. Many of us do not want to believe that child abuse in any form is found in the Torah community. Or we imagine that if it does exist it is confined to obviously deranged and marginal individuals. At the very least we wish that somehow matters could be worked out in private in a way not pointing a bright searchlight on our community and forcing us to confront difficult realities.
Alas there is no possibility of quiet resolution — at least not if we want to protect our children’s bodies and souls. A community that attempts to deal with abuse issues quietly in ways that protect our peace of mind is a community that emboldens predators into thinking that they can get away with it — that sympathy for their families or the instinctive recoil from admitting that such things can happen in our world too or communal shame at being exposed before the secular world will serve to protect them.
Every predator will take steps to ensure that his victims remain silent. He will warn them of dire consequences if they tell or try to convince them that no one will believe them if they report what has happened to them. If children’s complaints are routinely suppressed or discounted the perpetrator’s warning “No one will believe you ” gains credence and make it less likely that the victims will report. Experts in the field estimate that only one out of ten victims reports what happened to him or her to an adult in a position to help them.
The feeling that they will not be caught emboldens predators. And by the same token the assurance that they will be caught and prosecuted is the most effective way to stop abuse.
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