Melbourne Police Question Former Yeshiva Principal Over Sex Abuse
Australian police have questioned the former principal of a haredi Orthodox Jewish boys’ school in Melbourne over allegations of decades-old child sex abuse.
Rabbi Avrohom Glick, a senior official inside the Chabad-Lubavitch community, made a voluntary statement to police and was released, his lawyer said Monday.
The allegations are understood to date back to the 1970s. Rabbi Glick vehemently denies them.
He immediately was removed from his position as head of Jewish studies at the Yeshivah College boys’ high school, its principal confirmed in a letter to parents Monday.
“Notwithstanding that Rabbi Glick is a highly respected staff member and community figure, in accordance with our policy and procedure, he was immediately stood down from his position at Yeshivah,” Yeshivah College principal Rabbi Yehoshua Smukler said in a statement. “Rabbi Glick has not attended the campus or had contact with the students since that time.
The rabbi will be suspended from work and all contact with the schools’ students pending the outcome of the inquiry, according to Smukler.
The college’s actions “should not be seen as prejudging the outcome of the investigation,” Smukler said in the statement, offering counseling and support to victims.
The incident is the latest in a slew of scandals that have embroiled the Chabad community in particular and the Australian Jewish community in general.
Glick was college principal in 1992 when convicted sex offender David Kramer was allowed to flee to America, where he sodomized another Jewish child. He was jailed and then extradited to Australia last year to face sex abuse charges against four students. In July, he was sentenced to 18 months in prison without parole.
David Cyprys, a former security guard contracted to the college, recently pleaded guilty to sexually abusing nine boys in an eight-year period. He is scheduled to appear in court next week for a pre-sentencing hearing.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Most Popular
- 1
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
Politics Meet America’s potential first Jewish second family: Josh Shapiro, Lori, and their 4 kids
- 4
Fast Forward Suspected arsonist intended to beat Gov. Josh Shapiro with a sledgehammer, investigators say
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Jewish students, alumni decry ‘weaponization of antisemitism’ across country
-
Opinion I first met Netanyahu in 1988. Here’s how he became the most destructive leader in Israel’s history
-
Opinion Why can Harvard stand up to Trump? Because it didn’t give in to pro-Palestinian student protests
-
Culture How an Israeli dance company shaped a Catholic school boy’s life
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.