Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of sexual violence, including harassment, rape, abuse, and other forms.
Sexual Violence
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News She defended disgraced author Chaim Walder. Now a revered rebbetzin is facing a backlash of her own.
The recent revelation of acclaimed children’s author Chaim Walder’s decades of sexual abuse has prompted a reckoning in the Orthodox community, or at least calls for one. It also prompted a prominent Haredi rebbetzin and scholar, Tziporah Heller, to write an impassioned Facebook post decrying those who shamed Walder and vilifying the reporter who first…
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Opinion Our Reform leaders sinned. Should we still sing songs they wrote?
Reform synagogues across the nation are struggling to make sense of the damning report released earlier this month showing nearly unfettered patterns of unwanted sexual contact between male faculty and female students at Hebrew Union College over five decades. Released on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the report, conducted by an independent law firm, showed that…
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Opinion I was America’s first female rabbi. I am brokenhearted to learn how the man who ordained me treated so many other women
Having read the recent report detailing the presence of gender bias, sexual harassment, discrimination and bullying on the four campuses of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, I am genuinely brokenhearted that the seminary with which I have been so closely associated for more than five decades has failed so abysmally to listen to its…
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News 25 years later, man sues bar mitzvah tutor, synagogue and day school for abuse
Nearly 25 years after his bar mitzvah tutor pleaded guilty to sexual misconduct, a 40-year-old New Jersey native has sued the former tutor as well as the synagogue and day school that employed him. The tutor, Akiva Roth, pleaded guilty in 1997 to four counts of lewdness, and lost his jobs at the East Brunswick…
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News In Y.U. child sexual abuse case, a ‘race against time’ to get elderly witnesses on the record
When Norman Lamm, the longtime leader of Yeshiva University, died last spring at the age of 92, he took his secrets to his grave. Lamm died of natural causes while a defendant in a high-profile sexual abuse lawsuit, before he could be called to testify and provide what the plaintiffs and their lawyer say is…
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News ‘I’ll struggle with my father for the rest of my life:’ Neshama Carlebach wrestles with the legacy of her father Shlomo and ‘cancel culture’
Neshama Carlebach knows what its like to take heroes off their pedestals. “I know now the value of pain and being able to look inside,” she said. “What began as the greatest moment of loss in my life, I now see as a rising, and in that rising I can find my real voice.” As…
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Fast Forward Connecticut Rabbi Sentenced To 20 Years In Jail For Sexually Assaulting Student
(JTA) — A rabbi in Connecticut was sentenced to 20 years in prison after being found guilty of sexually assaulting a former student at his yeshiva. Rabbi Daniel Greer, 79, the founding rabbi of the Yeshiva of New Haven, was sentenced on Monday. He is appealing the verdict. Judge Jon Alander ordered Greer to begin…
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Fast Forward Former Nanny Found Guilty Of Sexually Abusing Chabad Rabbi As Child
(JTA) — A jury in Utah has convicted the former nanny of a Chabad emissary in Salt Lake City of sexually abusing him for about 10 years beginning at age 8. Alavina Florreich, 70, on Friday was found guilty of five counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child and two counts of forcible sex…
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