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| Rabbi Eisnenman - on the right side of the issue |
I realize there is a reason for this. As I said earlier, the level of trust in someone that dealt with child abuse in such a sensitive and accepted way to the point of his books being on the shelves of many Charedi households with the approval of their Charedi rabbis. That trust was shattered beyond belief by the revelation of his serial abuse. Which was exacerbated by his suicide and accompanying note proclaiming his innocence. The high level of trust and revelation of the profound violation of it in the Charedi world that is the reason for the shock and ongoing discussion.
That Walder’s behavior should be condemned is by now pretty much accepted by all responsible people. Charedi rabbis included. I have seen some pretty harsh words about it from those rabbis. But as is also well known in some cases that criticism came with some very serious rebuke about how the community was reacting to it.
The most controversial commentary came for Rav Gershon Edelstein, Rosh Yeshiva of Ponovezh. Although he corrected a public misrepresentation of his words, he nevertheless doubled down on the Lashon Hara side of the issue. Saying that it was forbidden to speak ill of someone that was no longer alive who could no longer defend himself; that there was no good purpose on doing so; and that it unnecessarily hurt Walder’s family who are innocent.
Yes. It hurt his family. But to say there is no good purpose in speaking out was utterly refuted in the most ultimate of ways. By the suicide of one of his victims. She saw comments like that – plus the restoration of Walder’s reputation by much of the Charedi media afer his suicide – praising all the ’good’ he has done; and saw the huge funeral, aggrandizing eulogies, and the Shiva call by the Chief rabbi.
(On that last one, the rabbi later explained that he was not letting Walder off the hook at all - but felt that as a close friend of the family who had no part in Walder’s nefarious deeds, he needed to console them. I disagree with how he did that because it added to the distress of Walder’s victims – but that is beside the point. He hurt the victims and as Chief Rabbi he should not have gone over there. It sent the wrong message even though I’m sure it was not his intention.)
This conversation is not going away any time soon it seems. And that is a good thing. But the fact is that some of the reactions are disappointing, even of they are being said L’Shma – for the sake of heaven.
Great rabbis are human beings subject to their own biases. No matter how holy and sincere they are. There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that Rav Edelstein’s comments were said with the fear of heaven typical of great rabbis. But that doesn’t help the victims much. And he was not alone in saying that Walder ought not be food for public discussion. Other great rabbis have said similar things.
On the other hand there are many prominent Charedi rabbis that are also L’Shma that had the opposite reaction. Some of whom I recently quoted.
One prominent Charedi Rav (whose name I will not mention out of the great respect I have for him. I do not want to be responsible for the inevitable bashing he will get - which he does not deserve) reacted with all the outrage against Walder he could muster.
I was gratified to see that. But there was one very important thing missing in his commentary. Which is that credible accusations must be reported to the police immediately. Instead he said that a special Beis Din of rabbis who expert in these things must be set up to determine whether accusations of abuse are actually credible. Which would also be under the scrutiny of another religious entity to assure as unbiased an assessment as possible.
He could not bring himself to to say: Go directly to the police. I am absolutely convinced that his reasons were L’Shma. He fears the consequences of the rare false accusation that would ruin a someone’s life. Which has happened. I am aware of one such false accusation many years ago which proved to be false. But in that case, the falsely accused individual is doing fine. He has not suffered in any way since. His children all got married. No problem. But I digress. The fact is that a falsely accused individual does ot always react the way my friend did. The psychological harm of a false accusation can be life altering. not in a positive way
Does that mean that this Charedi rabbi was right about using religious courts to ascertain credibility?
To me the answer is clear. Absolutely not! Orthodox rabbis are not trained to determine the veracity of such allegations. And if they would be there will always be bias involved - even if unintentional. Especially of the accused is a prominent highly productive and contributing member of the Charedi world. That will surely affect how a Beis Din judges the veracity if an accusation of abuse. It is also well establishsed that false accusations are rare. There have been more than a few credible accusations of abuse by prominent Charedi individuals that were improperly judge by the most sincere of rabbis. In one rather famous case like that a huge Talmid Chahchm that was part of the Lakewood Yeshiva community went to the police after he man accused of abusing his son stopped complying with the requirements of the Beis Din he was judged by. That did not end well at the time for this Talmid Chacham who fled town after being torn apart by a highly respected Rav who defended the accused out of what I am sure was his belief in the accused's innocence. (The Talmid Chacham has since returned and is apparently now well accepted. But not without going through a tremendous upheaval in his life because of the bad judgement of a respected Rav.
This situation cannot prevail. There can be no rabbinic courts that determine whether accusations are credible. What about the false accusations? They are rare but do happen. However, compared to the number people sexually abused they are a drop in the ocean. Vetting accusations through a religious court will more often hurt the victims of abuse than they will help the falsely accused. That should be obvious from the statistics.
How, one may ask, can anyone be sure that an accusation of abuse is credible? That is what the well trained experts in the police departments are for. Experts that do not have a dog in this hunt. As do the rabbis who value the reputation of an accused high achiever, he family, and the reputation of their community
If someone is accused of abuse, it more often true than not. By a very wide margin. If an accused abuser is innocent, the police will find that out. But they will also not be influenced by the accused's reputation.
It appears that all the legitimate outrage expressed over Walder by so many Charedi rabbis stops short of doing the right thing. And that will only perpetuate the problem.