The Politics of Child Sexual Abuse in Brooklyn

Six-term Brooklyn District Attorney Charlie Hynes has to be feeling the heat from a recent series of New York Times articles roasting his office for its velvet-glove treatment of ultra-Orthodox Jewish child sexual abusers.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Public Advocate Bill deBlasio, and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, responding to the Times series, have denounced Hynes' handling of child sexual abuse cases in Brooklyn's ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.

Bloomberg has faulted Hynes for not publicly opposing ultra-Orthodox advocacy organization Agudath Israel of America's policy of telling observant Jews that they need to get a rabbi's permission before reporting child sexual abuse to the police.

The legal community has accused Hynes, by his silence, of enabling the ultra-Orthodox community to evade state law, which mandates that teachers, social workers, teachers, social workers and others report child sexual abuse allegations directly to law enforcement.

Hynes is doing exactly what the Catholic Church once tried to do, legal critics say.

Victim advocates blame Hynes' passivity on his fear of Brooklyn's politically-connected rabbis.

New York City's fast-growing ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, centered in Brooklyn, numbers an estimated 250,000. Hynes, once a shabbos goy in predominately Jewish Flatbush, has long traded on his "Jewishness" as a political campaigner.

The ultra-Orthodox community includes the Hasidim, governed by dynastic leaders called rebbes who run their congregations according to Jewish law, tradition and custom, resisting what they see as the contaminating influence of the outside world.

The Hasidim observe ancient religious taboos against handing a Jew over to the non-Jewish authorities or accusing another Jew in public.  Hasidic rebbes have been characterized as fearing the outside world more than they do the sexual deviants among them.

Ultra-Orthodox victims of child sexual abuse, their families and advocates, fear bullying and intimidation from within their community if they come forward.  One Brooklyn Supreme Court justice commented that the community has a "blame the victim" mentality.

Even so, it is beginning to come to terms with the problem of child sexual abuse. As adult survivors have begun to tell their stories on blogs and on call-in radio over the past few years, the community's response, notably in the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic neighborhood, is, ever so glacially, changing.

Depending on which side you talk to, Kol Tzedek, the Brooklyn District Attorney's new ultra-Orthodox child sexual abuse unit, is either part of that change or a deterrent.

The chief of the Sex Crimes division in the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office calls Kol Tzedek, which shields the names of ultra-Orthodox child sex abuse defendants, offers them soft plea deals and leaves ultra-Orthodox victims and their families at the mercy of their communities, an "incredible success."

Critics call Kol Tzedek little more than a tool of the rabbis and a lucrative franchise for well-connected ultra-Orthodox political operatives.

Former prosecutors disagree with Hynes' rationale for shielding the names of ultra-Orthodox child sexual abuse defendants, calling it "illogical". The more information you release, they say, the more likely that other victims will come forward.

Hynes needs to start releasing those names, like every other DA in New York City, they say.

Read the New York Times coverage here, here, here, and here.

If you know a child sex offender's name, Kol Tzedek will tell you whether that person is a defendant in an abuse case. [Jewish Week.]