2 students at LA Orthodox school accuse staff member of “inappropriate relationship”

YULA did not identify the faculty member, but said it was a female working at the boys campus

The interior of the boys’ gym at Yeshiva University High School in Los Angeles, better known as YULA. Photo by Louis Keene

By Louis Keene May 28, 2024

Two students at an Orthodox Jewish high school in Los Angeles have come forward to report “an inappropriate relationship of a sexual nature” with the same female staff member, according to an email from the head of school obtained by the Forward.

Yeshiva University of Los Angeles, generally known as YULA, did not identify the employee identified by the students in the email sent on Tuesday to the school community, but said it was a woman working at the boys’ campus.

Rabbi Arye Sufrin wrote in the email that YULA received the first student’s allegation on Monday and the second student’s on Tuesday. He said the school had referred the matter to the Los Angeles Police Department.

“It is impossible to comprehend and beyond devastating that students would be facing this situation,” wrote Sufrin, who has worked at the school since 2008.

He said the woman is no longer on campus and has been directed not to communicate with anyone in the school community.

It is unclear how long she had worked at the school, or how old the students were at the time of the alleged contact.

The Forward obtained a copy of Rabbi Sufrin’s email on Tuesday from someone who got it from a parent who was on the original distribution list. When contacted about it, YULA administrators declined to comment further.

Located in the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Pico-Robertson, YULA is the oldest and largest modern Orthodox high school in Los Angeles, with some 400 students between its two campuses.

The accusation follows a report in November regarding accusations of sexual misconduct at a Houston school that involved the longtime former head of LA’s Shalhevet High School, Rabbi Ari Segal. In a similar community-wide email, the board president of the Houston school said that a private investigator had found credible evidence that Rabbi Segal had “engaged in sexualized, persistent, emotionally charged communications” with two students during his tenure at Beren Academy from 2004 to 2011, though no sexual relationship was alleged.

Have a tip? Send us an email.

Louis Keene is a reporter for the Forward. His work has also been published in The New York Times, New York Magazine and VICE. He is based in Los Angeles and can be followed on Twitter @thislouis.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO