trivialising sexual abuse

catefrancescatefrances Posts: 29,003
edited February 2013 in A Moving Train
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2013/s3680844.htm



Shock at Rabbi trivialising child sexual molestation


( minutes)
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TONY EASTLEY: As Australia prepares for its Royal Commission hearings into child abuse a New York Rabbi who has connections to Jewish colleges in Australia has likened sexual molestation to diarrhoea and has said victims of sexual abuse should "get over it".

Rabbi Manis Friedman, a New York leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, made the comments in an interview posted on YouTube.

His extraordinary comments have been condemned by an organisation representing Australian Rabbis.

With more, David Mark:

DAVID MARK: The video of Rabbi Manis Friedman appears to be an interview with one or more members of his Chabad-Lubavitch movement.

Talking about molestation he says it's not an averah - a sin.

MANIS FRIEDMAN: And if it's not a big averah, then it's not a big averah so what are you suffering from? It's a much healthier, truer definition of what we're dealing with than this indescribable trauma that we can't put our, can't get a handle on it. And it's just, oh are you that damaged? Oh okay. You're not that damaged, cut it out.

DAVID MARK: At one point the interviewer tells Rabbi Frieman that he knows someone who was molested by a family member for three years. He goes on:

INTERVIEWER: And he feels he's okay and he went out with a girl and after a while he revealed that to her and she dropped him because she said if you feel okay something must be wrong with you.

MANIS FRIEDMAN: What's wrong with him is that he mentioned it.

(Laughter) (Inaudible statement, more laughter)

No they've asked me that: I'm going to start going out, do I have to tell that I was molested? I said do you have to tell that you once had diarrhoea? (laughter) It's like embarrassing but it's nobody's business.

MEIR SHLOMO KLUWGANT: I watched it once and that was about as often as I could look at it.

DAVID MARK: Rabbi Meir Shlomo Kluwgant is the president of the Rabbinical Council of Victoria and the vice-president of the Organisation of Rabbis of Australasia.

MEIR SHLOMO KLUWGANT: I was shocked. There was rather ridiculous comments that are certainly not in line with the contemporary approach of the rabbinic world towards the issue of child molestation.

DAVID MARK: Rabbi Kluwgant says there are moves to make an official complaint against Rabbi Friedman over his comments.

Here Rabbi Friedman says abuse causes, quote, "collateral damage":

MANIS FRIEDMAN: It's not the event itself. It's the loss of trust. Those issues are issues even if you weren't molested. But the event itself, I'm damaged from the molestation, no you're not. And in fact you've learned that not every, not every counsellor is haywick (phonetic) and not every uncle is your best friend. You've learned an important lesson.

MEIR SHLOMO KLUWGANT: The damage that this kind of talk can do is to victims of child molestation. To watch those things and to hear those things is deeply, deeply concerning.

DAVID MARK: Rabbi Kluwgant, if a young person was to come to you and say that they were molested, whereas Rabbi Friedman might say get over it, what advice would you give that person?

MEIR SHLOMO KLUWGANT: Well the very first thing is to validate and to empathise with a person who has had such an experience.

Rabbis, at the end of the day are not psychologists and not members of the police force. We offer encouragement. The approach is to encourage people to make disclosures to the police on all such matters but also to seek counsel and support from professionals in how to address those issues within their life.

We certainly would not be trivialising it and comparing it to diarrhoea.

TONY EASTLEY: Rabbi Meir Shlomo Kluwgant, the vice-president of the Organisation of Rabbis of Australasia ending David Mark's report
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  • catefrancescatefrances Posts: 29,003
    http://www.theage.com.au/national/sex-a ... 2dnks.html


    A LEADING rabbi who compared child sex abuse to diarrhoea - ''it's embarrassing but nobody's business'' - will be sued in Jewish courts by a victim advocacy group that wants him to stand down.

    In a lecture posted on YouTube but later removed, Rabbi Manis Friedman says that not reciting a blessing after eating cake is worse than being sexually abused, that victims learn ''an important lesson'' from abuse, and suggests victims ''are not that damaged, cut it out''.

    Rabbi Friedman is an emissary at large from the Chabad Lubavitch headquarters in New York, and has been generally regarded as a serious and moderate figure in the Orthodox movement. That movement, and particularly its Melbourne Yeshivah centre, has been embroiled in child sex abuse controversies.

    Manny Waks, an abuse victim at Yeshivah himself in the 1980s and founder of the Tzedek advocacy group for Jewish abuse survivors, said on Thursday he had launched lawsuits against Rabbi Friedman in the Jewish court or Beth Din in Sydney and Crown Heights in Brooklyn, New York. The courts would decide which of them had jurisdiction.

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    In the YouTube video, in which Rabbi Friedman is talking to male students, he is asked about a man whose girlfriend dropped him when he told her he had been abused. Rabbi Friedman replies: ''What's wrong with him is that he mentioned it. Do I have to tell that I was molested? Do you have to tell that you once had diarrhoea? It's embarrassing, but nobody's business.

    ''There's collateral damage. It's not the event itself, it's the loss of trust, the feeling of weakness or vulnerability. Those issues are issues even if you weren't molested. But the event itself - 'I'm damaged from the molestation' - no, you're not. In fact you've learnt that not every uncle is your best friend, you've learnt an important lesson.''

    In another recording, Rabbi Friedman tells a girl from a Russian family: ''What! You think you were the only one molested? You think your mother and grandmother back in Russia made it through their teenage years without being molested?''

    Mr Waks says in his application to the Jewish court that Rabbi Friedman is ''doing untold damage to the entire Jewish community. As a global leader, he is damaging the reputation of the Jewish community broadly. He is also perpetuating the negative perception many have of the ultra-Orthodox community.

    ''Most concerning, he is having a direct, damaging impact on victims and survivors of child sexual abuse and their families. [His] remarks may give succour to elements within the Chabad-Lubavitch Yeshivah community in Melbourne, who have responded abysmally to the serious allegations of abuse within their institutions.''

    Mr Waks wants the court to make the rabbi retract his remarks and apologise. He told Fairfax Media that victims might be deterred from reporting abuse to police or from seeking therapy by the rabbi's ''deeply hurtful and offensive'' comments, and that the rabbi should stand down from every leadership position.

    Rabbi Moshe Gutnick, president of the Organisation of Australasian Rabbis, said in an email to Mr Waks that Rabbi Friedman seemed to trivialise and minimise the damage sexual abuse caused victims.

    ''It is simply ignorance to say we are all 'damaged' in the same manner as victims of sexual abuse and it is the height of insensitivity to suggest the treatment for a victim is just to perform additional mitzvois [good works].''

    Fairfax Media could not contact Rabbi Friedman.


    Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/national/sex-a ... z2JdJQzPLn
    hear my name
    take a good look
    this could be the day
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  • catefrancescatefrances Posts: 29,003
    hear my name
    take a good look
    this could be the day
    hold my hand
    lie beside me
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  • hedonisthedonist standing on the edge of forever Posts: 24,524
    This is not only sad, but angering as well - the "get over it" mentality. Comparing it to explosive shit. Calling it embarrassing.

    This rabbi's VIEW is embarrassing.

    (I just typed out a recount of my own experiences and then deleted it - too personal and a bit heavy for the light state of mind I'm in this morning - or, am trying to remain in this morning. I'll say though, that his view of ''What! You think you were the only one molested? You think your mother and grandmother back in Russia made it through their teenage years without being molested?'' is shared by some in other cultures, as I've been told, "oh, it happens to everyone at some point...gotta suck it up." My response? Fuck that.)
  • cincybearcatcincybearcat Posts: 16,072
    Crazy, just crazy.
    hippiemom = goodness
  • What a piece of shit.
    Believe me, when I was growin up, I thought the worst thing you could turn out to be was normal, So I say freaks in the most complementary way. Here's a song by a fellow freak - E.V
  • These people circumcise boys with their mouths. What do you expect them to say. They hold on to certain things like a gold ticket and dismiss others like they are the only people on earth.

    Edit: I wonder if the interviewer were to have said: "everybody knows somebody who has died a horrific death", if it would have flew.

    Fucking people, need to get over things to help the world move along.

    The poison from the poison stream caught up to you ELEVEN years ago and you floated out of here. Sept. 14, 08

  • BentleyspopBentleyspop Craft Beer Brewery, Colorado Posts: 10,524
    http://rt.com/usa/news/catholic-priest- ... sters-005/

    A prominent New York Catholic priest stated in an interview that minors often seduce older clerics, leading them to commit sex acts. The interview was subsequently removed and the paper that posted it called its publication an “editorial mistake.”

    In an interview with the National Catholic Register, the Reverend Benedict Groeschel was asked how to deal with priests who sexually abuse minors.

    Groeschel suggested that the priest was not always fully responsible for his actions.
    “Suppose you have a man having a nervous breakdown, and a youngster comes after him,” he noted. “A lot of the cases, the youngster — 14, 16, 18 — is the seducer.”
    He suggested that first-time offenders should be relieved of a jail sentence “because their intention was not committing a crime.”


    Former Penn State coach Jerry Sandunsky, who is now likely to get life imprisonment after being found guilty of sexually abusing at least eight young boys, was also referred to in one of his answers as a "poor guy.”
    The interview, which was posted on the National Catholic Register’s website, was subsequently removed and replaced with an apology from both the editor-in-chief and Groeschel himself.

    “The editors of the National Catholic Register apologize for publishing without clarification or challenge Father Benedict Groeschel's comments that seem to suggest that the child is somehow responsible for abuse,” editor-in-chief Jeanette R. De Melo wrote. “Given Father Benedict's stellar history over many years, we released his interview without our usual screening and oversight.”


    Groeschel stated that he did not intend to lay the blame on victims.
    “A priest (or anyone else) who abuses a minor is always wrong and is always responsible,” he said. “My mind and my way of expressing myself are not as clear as they used to be. I deeply regret any harm I have caused to anyone."

    An extensive statement from Groeschel’s community of the Franciscan Friars of Renewal also pointed to the Reverend’s deteriorating health conditions as potential reasons for why he made such a controversial statement.

    The statement took note of the fact that the priest had been in a coma for over a month after being struck by a car seven years ago.

    “In recent months his health, memory and cognitive ability have been failing,” the community’s note stated. “He has been in and out of the hospital.”

    The Archdiocese of New York, for which Groeschel serves as the director of the Office for Spiritual Development, also blasted his comments, saying they were “simply wrong.”

    “The sexual abuse of a minor is a crime, and whoever commits that crime deserves to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” a spokesperson for the Archdiocese said.
    Apart from being a priest, Father Groeschel is also an author, activist and host of the weekly Sunday Night Prime TV show that appears on the Catholic Eternal World Television Network (EWTN).
  • BentleyspopBentleyspop Craft Beer Brewery, Colorado Posts: 10,524
    http://current.com/community/93793007_we-ve-all-accepted-that-catholic-priests-molest-children.htm
    June 1, 2012 by William K. Wolfrum

    Today’s Sermon,

    Say you’re a big fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers. They put a decent team on the field most years. You get a lot of enjoyment from them. But, occasionally, a couple of their players go out and molest kids. And then the team messily covers it up. Sure, that’s bad and all, but no reason to hate the Dodgers for that. You’d still be a big fan, right?

    This, essentially, is how people deal with Catholic priests molesting children. Actually, however, it’s worse. People run to defend the Catholic Church for producing a never-ending stream of pedophiles in positions of power while they cover it up.

    The fact that an inordinate number of Catholic priests molest children has been known for years now, and been openly debated for almost a half-century. It has literally become a running joke in popular culture.

    And in the time we’ve discussed, researched and reviewed the “why” of the situation, we have apparently come up with an answer: It just happens. And we all accept it.

    Yes, my friends, the Catholic Church is the epitome of “Too Big to Fail.” They send their men into the world into positions of power, and at very least one in 20 of them molest a child.

    By the way, let’s make sure the thesis here is not overlooked: Catholic priests sexually molest children. Pedophiles are considered the worst of all offenders. In every prison around the globe, pedophiles are the bottom of the barrel. They are universally scorned.

    Unless they’re Catholic priests. Then we just move on. Hell, we even allow the Vatican to be involved in the political process.

    It’s really just mind-blowing if you were to think of it. If there were a chance that your babysitter would molest your child, would you hire that babysitter? Yet Catholics will gladly defy those odds if that babysitter was a Catholic priest.

    Yes, there are court cases and the Vatican has had to grudgingly admit that there some problems, as it doles out millions of dollars to victims. But really, imagine of cops were molesting children at the same rate as Catholic priests? There would rightfully be anarchy.

    So it bears repeating: Society has accepted that Catholic priests molest children.

    To people who feel I’m generalizing, or have any other argument to make about my thesis, here is my reply: I am finished debating this issue. The crimes overwhelm the excuses. Catholic priests molest children. The issue has been given more than enough thought, and it now comes down to just one thing – it must stop.

    Sadly, it won’t. More children will be molested and abused by Catholic priests. Because the societies of the world have just accepted it.
  • PJ_SoulPJ_Soul Vancouver, BC Posts: 49,473
    Not just molestation, but sexual harassment as well. I did a research paper in university on sexual harassment in high schools, so I went and interviewed several girls' gym classes and gave them surveys to get an idea of what kind of behaviour was accepted and what was not, and how common sexual harassment of girls by their peers was (I did not explore harassment of boys by girls, which I'm sure also exists). I was SHOCKED. I won't go into the stats, but one stat must be stated: 76% of the girls were clearly sexually harassed by their male peers on a regular basis. Sexual harassment had become an accepted part of everyday life for those girls. Many of them had a fairly profound reaction when I taught them what would be considered sexual harassment (and I took a fairly liberal take on it). Many of them realized for the first time that the behaviour of boys towards them was actually inappropriate and demeaning - they'd actually grown to accept it as perfectly acceptable - I'm talking actual grabbing of body parts, unsolicited sex talk, often done in groups, etc. It had become normal. And that is worrying. This was back in 1997 or something like that btw. Not sure how it might be now... I would hope better.
    With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy. ~ Desiderata
  • Thoughts_ArriveThoughts_Arrive Melbourne, Australia Posts: 15,165
    Catholic brother offers excuse of discipline for molestation...

    http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-or ... 6581941977

    Pig.
    Adelaide 17/11/2009, Melbourne 20/11/2009, Sydney 22/11/2009, Melbourne (Big Day Out Festival) 24/01/2014
  • Catholic brother offers excuse of discipline for molestation...

    http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-or ... 6581941977

    Pig.

    The defence lawyer is suggesting that these perverse acts were 'disciplinary'. When there is no defence... create a defence.

    We live in a fuked up world. What the hell is wrong with us?
    "My brain's a good brain!"
  • brianluxbrianlux Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 40,592
    Catholic brother offers excuse of discipline for molestation...

    http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-or ... 6581941977

    Pig.

    The defence lawyer is suggesting that these perverse acts were 'disciplinary'. When there is no defence... create a defence.

    We live in a fuked up world. What the hell is wrong with us?

    Because I've been reading some very intense history lately, I've been asking this same question a lot lately, Thirty. This history of civilization sometimes appears to be a litany of gross injustice, brutality, abuse and inequity. I think it's wise to be educated and useful to be aware of these atrocities but at the same time it's hugely important keep in mind that many good and great things have been done by and for others. There has to be an antidote to despair to give our lives purpose. Granted, some days that's asking a lot.
    “The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man [or woman] who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
    Variously credited to Mark Twain or Edward Abbey.













  • brianlux wrote:
    Because I've been reading some very intense history lately, I've been asking this same question a lot lately, Thirty. This history of civilization sometimes appears to be a litany of gross injustice, brutality, abuse and inequity. I think it's wise to be educated and useful to be aware of these atrocities but at the same time it's hugely important keep in mind that many good and great things have been done by and for others. There has to be an antidote to despair to give our lives purpose. Granted, some days that's asking a lot.

    Is it fair to say that, in general... the public is not as 'compassionate' or 'global' in our train of thought as we might need to be in order for the world to ever develop into a state of utopia? In other words, there are some great minds out there that can conceptualize great possibilities for the earth and its inhabitants... but can the general masses ever reach the same mindset given the hardships so many face on a daily basis?

    Further, and probably more importantly, will the leaders of our planet ever put aside their interests and work collaboratively and on behalf of the people to assist with this transition?
    "My brain's a good brain!"
  • brianluxbrianlux Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 40,592
    brianlux wrote:
    Because I've been reading some very intense history lately, I've been asking this same question a lot lately, Thirty. This history of civilization sometimes appears to be a litany of gross injustice, brutality, abuse and inequity. I think it's wise to be educated and useful to be aware of these atrocities but at the same time it's hugely important keep in mind that many good and great things have been done by and for others. There has to be an antidote to despair to give our lives purpose. Granted, some days that's asking a lot.

    Is it fair to say that, in general... the public is not as 'compassionate' or 'global' in our train of thought as we might need to be in order for the world to ever develop into a state of utopia? In other words, there are some great minds out there that can conceptualize great possibilities for the earth and its inhabitants... but can the general masses ever reach the same mindset given the hardships so many face on a daily basis?

    Further, and probably more importantly, will the leaders of our planet ever put aside their interests and work collaboratively and on behalf of the people to assist with this transition?

    Excellent questions well worth pondering. My gut feeling and honest answer would be, no, we as a species are going to continue to destroy ourselves and our world. That doesn't give me reason to stop hoping though and trying to do my little part in moving things in a better direction.

    My sister made an interesting comment one time. She said, "Most people in the world are too preoccupied with surviving to have time to think about anything else." I guess we are fortunate to have that luxury... but we might also consider this that makes it our responsibility as well to try to make a positive difference.
    “The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man [or woman] who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
    Variously credited to Mark Twain or Edward Abbey.













  • CosmoCosmo Posts: 12,219
    The Rabbi telling victims of sexual abuse to just 'Get over it, already' is the same thing as people telling Jewish people to just 'Get over the Holocaust, already'.
    Both are sickening and assinine and can only come from the mouths of unsypathetic fucking assholes.
    Allen Fieldhouse, home of the 2008 NCAA men's Basketball Champions! Go Jayhawks!
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  • catefrancescatefrances Posts: 29,003
    Catholic brother offers excuse of discipline for molestation...

    http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-or ... 6581941977

    Pig.

    The defence lawyer is suggesting that these perverse acts were 'disciplinary'. When there is no defence... create a defence.

    We live in a fuked up world. What the hell is wrong with us?

    disciplinary? this reminds me of the provocation justification men use when they murder their women.
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