Top Australian Chabad Rabbi Cleared of Raping Student
A senior Chabad rabbi in Australia who was accused of raping a student inside a synagogue in the 1970s will not be charged.
Detectives in Melbourne confirmed Friday that they have closed an investigation into Rabbi Avrohom Glick, who was then deputy principal of Yeshivah College in Melbourne.
Rabbi Glick, 67, vehemently denied allegations that he raped a student and forced him to perform oral sex, when police questioned him in December.
He was released pending further inquiries but was suspended from Yeshivah College.
Rabbi Glick is visiting America, but his niece, Chevi Levin, said justice had triumphed.
“Today, Hashem’s help and guidance has set an innocent man free,” she posted on her Facebook page. “And today, well, today is the day that Rabbi Glick gets his life back.”
David Werdiger, a relative by marriage, took aim at Tzedek, the advocacy organization for Jewish sex abuse victims, which has been accused of fueling the rape allegations.
“At what point does zealous victim activism cross the line to vigilantism and vengeance,” Werdiger wrote on a blog on Sunday.
Tzedek CEO Manny Waks is the only victim in Australia to have gone public with his story, alleging in 2011 that he was molested by two officials at Yeshivah College.
“The board of Tzedek has decided that no public statement should be issued regarding this matter,” Waks said.
Lawyers for Rabbi Glick launched a defamation suit against Waks last December, alleging the rabbi’s name was “brought into hatred, contempt and ridicule” in several online posts.
Two former employees at the college, David Kramer and David Cyprys, were jailed last year for sex crimes against multiple students, prompting Yeshivah officials to apologize “unreservedly” to victims.
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.
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
