Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of sexual violence, including harassment, rape, abuse, and other forms.
Sexual Violence
The Latest
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Community As Orthodox Parents, Being Horrified By Child Sexual Abuse Is Not Enough
In recent years, some horrible stories of child sexual abuse in Orthodox settings, such as schools and summer camps, have rocked the religious Jewish community. A phenomenon that used to be underreported and largely taboo has come to light, and the fact that people are now speaking and writing about it more and more in…
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News Sex Abuse Prevention Program Targets Orthodox Camps
This summer, as parents pack their children’s things for Orthodox Jewish sleep away camps, their soon-to-be counselors are preparing in a different way: By taking a sex abuse prevention course. The course, created two years ago by an Israel-based nonprofit called ASAP, will be in use this year at over a hundred summer camps, mostly…
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Community “13 Reasons Why” Has Gone From Worthwhile To Dangerous
For several months in 2017, our teenage students spoke of nothing but Netflix’s “13 Reasons Why.” In early April, we had a handful of teens who watched this sleeper show. But in what seemed like mere days, all of our teenagers were binging this series — sometimes staying up all night to watch the entire…
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Life How One Faith Group Fights Abuse — One School At A Time
When Dr. Shira Berkovits worked as a consultant for the Orthodox Union, among other Jewish organizations, in synagogue youth programming, she was asked to give presentations that trained synagogue staff members in keeping children safe from abuse. “I thought I was going to do it for one year and walk away,” she says. Yet when…
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News Ex-Camper Accuses Female Orthodox Counselor Of ‘Traumatic’ Sex Abuse
When Leah Sokolovsky was 15, she spent many Friday nights sleeping over at the home of the 20-year-old assistant head counselor of her ultra-Orthodox summer camp. The two had not been particularly close at camp. But during the school year that followed, the counselor, an ultra-Orthodox woman named Gittie Sheinkopf, cultivated Sokolovsky. Sokolovsky says Sheinkopf…
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Opinion Zeev Porath Chronicled Nazi Rapists And Other Atrocities – In His Drawings
Sometime in 1943, a 35-year-old architect sat at a drafting desk on the third floor of the headquarters building in the infamous Janowska concentration camp in Lviv in what is now Ukraine. Over 80,000 Jews were murdered at this camp and it served as the main deportation center for 160,000 Jews of Lviv (a number…
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Fast Forward Moses Farrow Defends Woody Allen Against Sexual Assault Allegations
(JTA) — Woody Allen’s son Moses Farrow defended him against sexual assault allegations made by his sister. “I’m a very private person and not at all interested in public attention. But, given the incredibly inaccurate and misleading attacks on my father, Woody Allen, I feel that I can no longer stay silent as he continues…
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Fast Forward Jewish Frat Leader Charged With Attempted Rape, Arrested On Way To Birthright
A former president of a Jewish fraternity at Temple University in Philadelphia was charged with attempting to commit rape and was arrested at the airport on his way to Israel for a Birthright trip, the Jewish Exponent reported. Ari Goldstein, 21, was reportedly taken into custody on May 13 at Boston Logan International Airport and…
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