Rabbi Yitzchok Frankfurter, editor of Ami Magazine, attacks author Dr. Michael Salamon, without reading the book!
On the Zev Brenner Program this past Saturday Night, Frankfurter was upset that Dr. Salamon singled out the "Chareidishe Community" viz a viz the coverup of child sexual abuse in his latest book. He also stated that Dr. Salamon (an orthodox Jew) is not from his community and therefore he had no right writing about a community that he was not part of. If the "unprepared"Frankfurter would have bothered reading even the first chapter he would have seen that Dr. Salaman included all the Jewish Communities, but Frankfurter didn't want to be confused by the facts. Frankfurter also compared the "Black and Chinese" Communities to the Frum Community, (that stood at Har Sinai,) and wondered out loud why Dr. Salamon is focusing only on the frum community.
It is followed by the long, sometimes screaming fight between Ami Magazine's publisher Rabbi Yitzchok Frankfurter, a very dishonest man, and Pinny Taub, an abuse survivor who clearly has a form of Stockholm Syndrome and an affinity for Patty Hearst, on one hand and Dr. Salamon (with some brief help from Tzvi Gluck and Mark Meyer Appel) on the other.
Mr Zvi Gluck one of the most respected leaders in our community on this issue said the 89 arrests of pedophiles since 2009 claimed by the Brooklyn DA (but for which the DA refuses to supply a list of names and case dispositions) are mostly cases that were fixed by haredi community fixers.
MR ZVI GLUCK also told a story of a haredi rabbi who told a victim's family that because there was no penetration, there was no abuse and police should not be called.
A caller from Borough Park named Avrumele cited cases he knew of where rabbis told people not to call police even though actual child sex abuse clearly happened. And another caller named Esther strongly challenged Frankfurter, who is truly a disgusting human being.
At the end of a show a person emailed saying he had been abused by his father and grandfather and that he had tried to talk to the rabbis about it but they wouldn't listen. Because of that, more children were being abused every day, he said.
Brenner asked Salamon if he had any advice for the man. Salamon said he hoped the man was getting help because otherwise the after effects of the abuse could be with him for years, but Salamon did not tell the man to call police.
Frankfurter's treatment of Salamon was atrocious.
Pinny Taub has a form of Stolkhom Syndrome. Taub likes to tout extremely minor progress by haredi rabbis as if it were major progress, and he likes to forget what had to be done to force that change.
Taub has also been telling victims not to accept help and financial assistance from certain advocates.
When challenged about this, Taub said he did that because the victims who accepted help from a certain advocate were attacked in the community because they did. Taub didn't blame community leaders or community members for this. Instead, he implied it was the fault of the advocates because they are perceived as being anti-haredi because they have openly criticized rabbinic leaders who have covered up for pedophiles.
In other words, if a victim who needs money for therapy or even for food takes it from an advocate who has worked hard to fight for change, the victim is viewed as a traitor by the community. Taub not only does nothing much to stop this abuse of victims and smearing of advocates, he almost endorsed it.
So what about the fact that until now the haredi community has done nothing to help victims?
Taub is working on that. Why, he's even starting a program with money given to him by haredim
after he started publicly bashing the advocates who are only people who are helping victims.
What a sick little man.
Salamon also said CDC figures show that the rate of child sex abuse is about the same in all communities, and that the cops he deals with concur – which is quite strange, because the cops, social workers, DAs and other professionals everyone else including me deals with seem to think the rate is higher. Salamon then said that he personally thought the level might actually be lower in haredi communities than elsewhere. Later in the show he noted that the haredi community had blocked all attempts to gather information that would give us an accurate rate of child sex abuse in the haredi community.
In other words, there are not statistics for haredi communities, the CDC's figures do not specifically apply to haredi communities, and Salamon was, at least earlier in the show, apparently fudging the facts a bit to curry favor with Frankfurter & Company.
Oddly, the brief phone calls from Tzvi Gluck and Mark Meyer Appel were some of the most lucid moments of the program and are well worth listening to. (Ben Hirsch of Survivors for Justice also called in. He was fine, pointing out that Rabbi Eyashiv's written opinion is different from what Agudath Israel of America claims, and that written opinion is clear that police should be called. But Hirsch would have been far stronger if he would have noted that the written opinion agrees with what Tzvi Gluck say Rabbi Elyashiv told him – report to police. And what if your suspicions are wrong, someone nearby asked Rabbi Elyashiv. The police know what to do and know how to investigate these things its their job let them do it is (paraphrased) how Rabbi Elyashiv answered.
Please click the gray bar to listen: show starts 20 minutes after click
So, here we have an editor of a popular magazine advocating continued cover up of child sexual abuse by Rabbis. Towards the end of the program Frankfurter tried to backtrack and said that he is all for reporting child abuse, but then continued to attack Dr. Salamon and was very unconvincing. Frankfurter kept saying throughout the entire interview that we are "all mandated reporters," but he was referring to reporting the abuse to the clueless Rabbis first, that will and have swept these stories under the rug. The fact is that most Rabbonim are for covering up these crimes.
Mark Meyer Appel from the Voice of Justice, called in to the program and chastised
Pinny Taub, a victim himself, for telling the victims not to accept funds from programs that advocate for victims. Pinny Taub after getting help from bloggers, who put him on the map, and stood by him at all times, turned on them and threw them all under the bus.
One caller kept asking Frankfurter why he keeps misrepresenting the ruling of Harav Eliyashav Shiltah, that clearly states that one must immediately report Child Abuse to authorities. Frankfurter, without naming any Rabbis, answered that he follows other "poskim" that would rather sweap it under the rug.
A caller named Esther took Frankfurter to task and remarked that "G-D is crying" listening to Frankfurter comparing the non-reporting of abuse in Penn State to the non-reporting of Yeshivas and Rabbis, implying that we are all the same, Esther asked "aren't we supposed to answer to a higher authority?"
E- MAIL FROM A CONCERNED PARENT
I just finished listening to Rabbi Frankfurter editor of ami magazine on the radio and I have a hard time wrapping my head around the insanity of this kind of person. This Frankfurter is missing some sour-kraut!! It's amazing that people like him write magazines for our community. It's completely backward, primitive, retarded, naive, and so twisted it makes me sick. He obviously cares more about protecting his twisted image of the community than dealing with reality. He is the type of person that would smack his own kid, if his kid would come home and tell him that he was just molested.
The only explanation of a mindset like Frankfurter is that he is in denial. He even said that he doesn't believe the story where the Rabbi told the victim to apologize. I must assume that he is also in denial about the existence of child abuse altogether. I honestly believe that he doesn't believe any of these stories. He pretty much admitted to that when he compared sexual abuse victims to cancer patients and ordinary kids with problems. So with that said, they only way he sees this, is that it's an attack on his beloved community. He feels threatened by this attack because he has a comfortable position as somewhat of an important member of this community, as editor-in-chief of one of its main publications. His status is being threatened.
So why doesn't he want to believe that sexual abuse is real and happening here? Because accepting that fact would require him to take his head out of the sand for a moment and look around and smell the coffee of reality. And would he to dare do that, his whole existence of lies and the false image he has created for himself about the “Frum Community” would fall apart instantly, and he wouldn't be able to continue to function as a human being. Freud once said “denial is a mechanism of the immature mind, because it conflicts with the ability to learn from and cope with reality”
And when brings with him Pinny Taub to continue his denying of sexual abuse in our community, he is in essence continuing to molest Pinny Taub all over again. Frankfurter is in 'intentional denial' and is smart enough to use Pinny Taub as a tool to protect his rotten unconscious. People like him, who put their religion and self image before the innocent children are no better than Hitler who put his ideology and Aryan-nation image before innocent children. We need to continue speaking out and destroying people like Frankfurter, and as Barry Goldwater once said “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”
The Jeanne Clery Act
The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, codified at 20 USC 1092 (f) as a part of the Higher Education Act of 1965, is a federal law that requires colleges and universities to disclose certain timely and annual information about campus crime and security policies. All public and private institutions of postsecondary education participating in federal student aid programs are subject to it. Violators can be "fined" up to $27,500 by the U.S. Department of Education, the agency charged with enforcement of the Act and where complaints of alleged violations should be made, or face other enforcement action.
The Clery Act, originally enacted by the Congress and signed into law by President George Bush in 1990 as the Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act of 1990, was championed by Howard & Connie Clery after their daughter Jeanne (pictured right) was murdered at Lehigh University in 1986. They also founded the non-profit Security On Campus, Inc. in 1987. Amendments to the Act in 1998 renamed it in memory of Jeanne Clery.