Wednesday, September 7, 2016
Tuesday, September 6, 2016
Ronit Bitton says that her son will not join his non-Jewish father in Belgium - despite court ruling
Sources close to Ronit Bitton, who sat in jail for three and a half years for interference with legal proceedings dictating custody of her 17-year-old son to her non-Jewish ex-husband in Belgium, deny claims that the youth will soon join up with his father.
“We’re talking about a 17.5-year-old youth,” the sources said. “He is haredi. It is impossible to force him to go live with his non-Jewish father. Word to the contrary on this matter is incorrect.”
The Jewish Belgian paper Regards reported that Bitton agreed that the son be given to his father’s custody; in exchange, authorities in Israel agreed not to press charges against Bitton’s accomplices for hiding her son.
According to that report, Bitton “kidnapped” her son from his father in Belgium in 2006, when the boy was seven years old. Belgian and Israeli courts ruled that the father, Vincent Georis, was the sole legal guardian, and that the son needs to be transferred to his guardianship. The mother claimed that she did not know where her son was and, in an interview with Arutz Sheva in 2013, had asserted that she hadn’t seen him for five years. An Israeli court sentenced her to five years imprisonment for interfering with legal proceedings; she began to serve her sentence in 2013.
Last month, she was released from prison. It is unclear whether a third of the sentence was simply deducted or whether some sort of bargain transpired between Bitton and enforcement authorities which enabled her early release. The son, as far as is known, reported to a Jerusalem police station, and took a DNA test that verified his identity.
The father told the Belgian newspaper that he had spoken with his son on the telephone. “I have no words to describe my happiness,” he had said.[...]
Friday, September 2, 2016
‘Private Hell’: Prep School Sex Abuse Inquiry Paints Grim Picture
Sexual abuse was so rampant that it created a “private hell” for some students at an elite prep school in Rhode Island in the 1970s and ’80s, investigators reported on Thursday, describing an atmosphere of terror in which at least 61 students were victimized and some staff members committed assaults for years before being forced out.
The investigation found that at least 51 students were abused by employees of St. George’s School, a prestigious private boarding and day school near Newport, and at least 10 others by fellow students — and that the true numbers are probably significantly higher. The inquiry came after years of pressure from victims who said that St. George’s had refused to squarely acknowledge the extent of the problems.
The report — with pages of vivid, painful detail from accusers — follows other revelations about sexual abuse at several prominent prep schools in the same area, but none have matched the sheer scale and pervasiveness of the misconduct discovered at St. George’s.
More victims will come forward, and “when the sun is set on this case, it could be the largest school sex abuse case in history,” said Roderick MacLeish, a lawyer and St. George’s alumnus who has worked with abuse survivors in pressuring the school to conduct the investigation. “It’s in the thousands of years of suffering this caused.”
The abuses that alumni have recounted, often after decades of silence, include forced intercourse, oral sex and digital penetration; one student sodomizing another with a broomstick; sexual groping; harassment; and taking photographs of naked students without their knowledge and showing them to other students.
The misconduct by one staff member, the report said, was so frequent and such common knowledge that many of the former students — now middle-aged, and many of them women — told investigators they did not see how other adults could have been unaware of it.
“Many of these students remember St. George’s as a place where their abusers created a kind of private hell for them — a place where they suffered trauma and emotional wounds that, for many, remain unhealed,” Martin F. Murphy, the leader of the inquiry, wrote in the nearly 400-page report documenting the findings.[...]
Re'eh; Listening To A Navi When The Torah Says Otherwise by Rabbi Shlomo Pollak
Rashi in Re'eh (12;13) quotes a Sifri, that learns from the words בכל מקום אשר תראה.... that the prohibition to bring a Karbon out of the Beis Hamikdash, is only when one wants to do so on his own. When a Navi commands Klall Yisroel to do it, it's OK . Rashi (still quoting the Sifri) then brings an example- Eliyahu Hanavi on Har HaCarmel.
The problem is, that Rashi in Parshas Shoftim (18;22) - ALSO quoting a Sifri - brings an entirely different source for the Har HaCarmel exception...
For questions and comments please email us at salmahshleima@gmail.com
Kaminetsky-Greenblatt Heter: Reb Sholom will explain how Elul is time to repent for sinning
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Thursday, September 1, 2016
The Minhag to say L'Dovid Hashem Ori; Why, When, and if, it should be said... Rabbi Shlomo Pollak
Guest post Rabbi Shlomo Pollak
Most have the Minhag to say "לדוד ה אורי" , many don't.
What is the reason for this minhag, and when did it start?
Why does Nusach Ashkenaz say it after Shachris & Maariv, and Nusach Sfard say it after Shachris & Minchah...??
Should it be said until after Yom Kipor, Shmeni Atzeres, or Simchas Torah??
[Note: This Shiur was given last year, so some of you saw it then.]
For questions and comments please email salmahshleima@gmail.com
False claims in Israeli Family Law destroying the fabric of Society as men suffer human rights abuse
Moran Samun, head of committee to investigate false claims in family law in Israel. She talks frankly of the problems with feminist organisations such as Wizo who are disempowering men, women and children and bringing in a new generation of men who are fearing women, and women who have all the power. Moran Samun loves her country and describes the need for a change in the law, exactly what the feminists abhor
Father finds son after 2-month search - with ex-wife in shelter for battered women
After almost two months of searching for his 3-year-old son, who had disappeared to a location unknown to him with his ex-wife, divorced father Ariel has discovered that his son is staying with his mother in a shelter for battered women.
Up until the time that his ex-wife disappeared with his son, Ariel enjoyed legal status as joint custodian of the child; the child stayed with him half the time, according to the agreed-upon arrangement of the court.
In the past, the mother had filed several complaints against Ariel for alleged violence against her, but all these cases had been closed. Two of the complaints had even been closed on grounds of "lack of guilt," a rare outcome in these sorts of cases (which police generally prefer to close on grounds of "lack of proof" or "lack of interest to the public" so as to prevent the possibility of future suits for false arrest).
Once he knew where the child was located, Ariel turned to court to request that his son be taken out of the shelter. The judge quickly answered the request, and instructed that the mother's reply be received. Ariel then went to the shelter accompanied by police (shown in the video below), in order to give the mother the court's decision. [...]
While the shelters do, undoubtedly, afford protection for women escaping from violence and abuse, often only with the clothes on their backs, there is another aspect to the problem. According to journalist Marianne Azizi, who has accompanied Ariel through his ordeal and filmed the clip above, "many women take advantage of the apparent slack screening in battered women shelters. The financial advantage for such women, and also the center, lends itself to the question of incompetence or corruption," she said.
Wednesday, August 31, 2016
Doctors continue to practice after sexually abusing patients - because they are too important and needed
A broken system forgives sexually abusive doctors in every state, investigation finds
In each of these cases, described in public records, the doctors either acknowledged what they’d done or authorities, after investigating, believed the accusations. While the scale and scope of the physicians’ misdeeds varied tremendously, all were allowed to keep their white coats and continue seeing patients, as were hundreds of others like them across the nation.
In a national investigation, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution examined documents that described disturbing acts of physician sexual abuse in every state. Rapes by OB/GYNs, seductions by psychiatrists, fondling by anesthesiologists and ophthalmologists, and molestations by pediatricians and radiologists.
Victims were babies. Adolescents. Women in their 80s. Drug addicts and jail inmates. Survivors of childhood sexual abuse.
But it could be anyone. Some patients were sedated when they were sexually assaulted. Others didn’t realize at first what had happened because the doctor improperly touched them or photographed them while pretending to do a legitimate medical exam.
Some doctors were disciplined over a single episode of sexual misconduct. A few physicians — with hundreds of victims — are among the nation’s worst sex offenders. But the toll can’t be measured by numbers alone. For patients, the violations can be life-altering. The betrayal even pushed some to suicide.
How do doctors get away with exploiting patients for years? [...]
Some victims say nothing. Intimidated, confused or embarrassed, they fear that no one will take their word over a doctor’s. Colleagues and nurses stay silent.
Hospitals and health care organizations brush off accusations or quietly push doctors out, the investigation found, without reporting them to police or licensing agencies.[...]
But when a physician is the perpetrator, the AJC found, the nation often looks the other way.
Physician-dominated medical boards gave offenders second chances. Prosecutors dismissed or reduced charges, so doctors could keep practicing and stay off sex offender registries. Communities rallied around them.[...]
The Roman Catholic Church, the military, the Boy Scouts, colleges and universities. They have all withered under the spotlight of sexual misconduct scandals and promised that abuse will no longer be swept under the rug.
The medical profession, however, has never taken on sexual misconduct as a significant priority. And layer upon layer of secrecy makes it nearly impossible for the public, or even the medical community itself, to know the extent of physician sexual abuse.[...]
Today, after months of unearthing rarely viewed documents and tracking some cases from beginning to end, the AJC is exposing a phenomenon of physician sexual misconduct that is tolerated — to one degree or another — in every state in the nation.[...]
Yet many, if not most, cases of physician sexual misconduct remain hidden. The AJC investigation discovered that state boards and hospitals handle some cases secretly. In other cases, medical boards remove once-public orders from their websites or issue documents that cloak sexual misconduct in vague language.
When cases do come to the public’s attention, they are often brushed off by the medical establishment as freakishly rare. While the vast majority of the nation’s 900,000 doctors do not sexually abuse patients, the AJC found the phenomenon is akin to the priest scandal: It doesn’t necessarily happen every day, but it happens far more often than anyone has acknowledged.[...]
Over and over again, records show, predatory physicians took advantage of a doctor’s special privilege — the daily practice of asking trusting people to disrobe in a private room and permit themselves to be touched.
Offenses ranged from lewd comments during intimate exams to molestation, masturbation by the doctor in front of the patient, swapping drugs for sex and even rape. Because many orders are vague or undetailed, it isn’t always clear if a doctor claimed the patient consented. However, the profession says consent is never a defense because of the power imbalance between doctors and patients.
David Clohessy, the executive director of SNAP, a support and advocacy organization for people sexually abused by priests, doctors and others, said many Americans view physicians with too much deference and automatic respect.
“We are so reliant on them, we are so helpless and vulnerable and literally in pain often times when we go in there. We just have to trust them,” Clohessy said.
“So when they cross the boundary and their hands go into the wrong places, we are in shock, we are paralyzed, we’re confused, we’re scared. We just do not want to believe, first of all, that a doctor is capable of this , and secondly that their colleagues and supervisors will not address this immediately and effectively when we report it.”[...]
Tuesday, August 30, 2016
Legislature passes law mandating jail time for sexual assault of a person who is unconscious or too intoxicated to consent
California is one step closer to making prison time mandatory for anyone convicted of sexually assaulting a person who is unconscious or too intoxicated to consent -- a measure inspired by former Stanford University student Brock Turner's sentence.
AB 2888 passed the state Assembly Monday by a unanimous 66-0 vote. It is headed to Gov. Jerry Brown's desk.
Lawmakers proposed the measure in June in response to the outcome in the former Stanford swimmer's trial.
Turner was sentenced to six months in jail and three years of probation for sexually assaulting a 23-year-old unconscious woman in 2015 behind a trash bin on the university's campus. Critics condemned the sentence from Santa Clara County Judge Aaron Persky as too lenient, leading to efforts to recall Persky and change sentencing laws for sexual assault.
The Santa Clara County district attorney's office had requested the maximum sentence of six years, based largely on the woman's condition.
Turner would have served the sentence in a state prison, as opposed to the sentence he is currently serving in the Santa Clara County jail. He is scheduled to be released Friday.
Under current state law, those convicted of certain sex crimes such as rape by force and aggravated sexual assault of a child are ineligible for probation or a suspended sentence and must serve prison time.
AB 2888 would amend the law to create the same punishment for those convicted of rape, sodomy, penetration with a foreign object and oral sex if the victim was unconscious or incapable of giving consent due to intoxication. [...]
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