CBS News on the Case of Rabbi Yisroel Shapiro
Mazel tov To The Survivors who are having their story told!
Accused Of Molesting Bar Mitzvah Students
PIKESVILLE, Md. (WJZ) ― At a kosher deli off Reisterstown Road in a Pikesville stripmall, Eyewitness News found Rabbi Yisroel Shapiro, a butcher who jumped out from behind his desk and hid from our cameras when we tried to ask him about new criminal charges that he sexually abused two young boys during Bar Mitzvah lessons.
ReportingShapiro never came out, but a coworker did. The man later yelled at Eyewitness News after we walked out the door that the allegations against Shapiro were "fabricated."
City prosecutors say "Over the past several months, police and prosecutors have conducted an extensive investigation that led to the charges."
The alleged abuse took place at Shapiro's home off Olympia Street in 1988 and 1994. Some neighbors caught wind of the allegations a few years back and posted flyers.
One victim tells police he was forced to chant passages from the Torah as he was inappropriately touched.
"The problem is that we don't know if there's more victims. We know a few but not how many there have actually been," said Vicki Polin.
Polin heads a support group for victims of rabbi abuse. She's concerned that some leaders in the Orthodox community keep abusers quiet.
"They're told they shouldn't report it to secular authorities because it could start another holocaust. Unfortunately, it starts another type of holocaust where an accuser has access to hundreds of children and each time they perfect their skills," she said.
For more information on this case of Rabbi Yisroel Shapiro in Baltimore
Here is the link to the case of Yisroel's father - Rabbi Ephraim Shapiro
posted by Jewish Survivors at Wednesday, December 19, 2007
6 Comments:
Critics: Rabbi's Son Treated Better Behind Bars
Baltimore, MD (AP) ―
http://wjz.com/topstories/Rabbi.Moshe.Khaver.2.417235.html
Prison for 19-year-old Moshe Khaver, son of a Baltimore rabbi, is slightly different from that of other violent criminals.
Khaver is kept segregated from the general prison population in Baltimore Central Booking and Intake Center, where he enjoys use of a solitary cell.
Visiting rules are relaxed. And nearly every day for the 10 months he's been behind bars, Khaver has had kosher meals brought to the prison by his mother.
Khaver, an admitted drug dealer, is serving a five-year term after pleading guilty nearly a year ago to first-degree assault. In May 2003, court records show, he used his father's Buick to run down a boy after a dispute over $20 worth of marijuana.
The victim spent about five weeks in a coma. Prosecutors said he suffered permanent injuries, including blindness in his right eye, loss of feeling in his right leg, facial scars, loss of memory and damage to his speech.
Khaver is the son of Rabbi Reuben Khaver. At his trial, he said he began using marijuana at age 13 and started selling it at 15. He was 17 when the assault occurred.
When Circuit Judge Kaye Allison sentenced Khaver to prison on Nov. 9, she vowed that he would not receive special treatment because he was Jewish and affluent in a city where the majority of defendants are black and poor.
"To many people in this room, this situation is unique," the judge said. "To this court, this situation happens too frequently.
This case is not different from those this court sees every day: young men making very poor decisions in the course of drug transactions."
Allison ordered Khaver taken to the state Division of Correction.
But at some point and for some reason, he never made it there.
Internal records obtained by The (Baltimore) Sun show that hours after Allison handed down her sentence, Central Booking's security chief ordered that Khaver be placed in protective custody and housed alone.
Two weeks later, the records show, Benjamin Brown, an assistant commissioner at the Division of Pretrial and Detention Services, ordered that Khaver was not to be transferred to the state Division of Correction without his permission.
Howard Cardin, Khaver's defense attorney, said his client is in lockdown 22 hours a day in a solitary cell because it is too dangerous for his client to be anywhere else.
"I believe he is in danger," Cardin told The Sun, adding he believed Khaver's treatment is "not anything special."
Herbert Berry Jr., a labor representative for the Maryland Correctional Law Enforcement Union, found Khaver's treatment astonishing. He said every state prison provides protective custody when needed and kosher meals. He said he has never heard of someone with a five-year sentence being housed at Central Booking.
"This doesn't even sound possible to me," he said.
Mark Vernarelli, a spokesman for the state Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, first said Khaver was being kept at Central Booking because of his kosher diet. Later, he said he was there because of his short sentence, the newspaper reported.
In a statement to The Associated Press on Thursday, Vernarelli said it was not unusual for inmates to serve time at Central Booking.
"While it is true that we generally move most DOC-sentenced inmates out eventually, it is not unheard-of for sentenced inmates with as much as seven-year terms to be housed at Central Booking," Vernarelli said. "Bear in mind that many inmates are required by law to serve only half or one-fourth of their total sentence, meaning a three-year term could allow in inmate to be out in nine to 18 months. This is the law, not our policy.
"In this inmate's case, he has the potential to leave the DOC in December of 2006," Vernarelli said.
The prison spokesman also delivered a statement from William J. Smith, commissioner of the state Division of Pretrial and Detention Services, who said Khaver's mother did not hand the meals to her son personally. The meals are "delivered through our Chaplain's office twice a week. There is no direct contact from family members. The meals are factory sealed. They are itemized by the officer on duty and inspected for contraband. The detainee does not
get any visits."
Vernarelli said "a decision on who should be placed in protective custody is a critical one made according to various risk factors, including whether a detainee or inmate is a threat to him/herself or others, and whether others are a threat to him/her.
The safety of the detainees/inmates and staff is the number one priority in all institutions. Protective custody space is very limited throughout the system.
"The Department of Public Safety is not in the business of 'giving preferential treatment' to anyone," Vernarelli concluded. "Our job is to protect the public, the staff, and the people in our facilities."
Added to the confusion surrounding Khaver's case, Gov. Robert Ehrlich appointed the young man to a state juvenile justice advisory council about a year after his arrest.
Sander Goldberg, a Baltimore rabbi who recommended Khaver for the governor's council, gave the benediction at Ehrlich's swearing-in ceremony and spoke on Khaver's behalf at his sentencing hearing in November.
Goldberg, a state tax court judge, told The Sun that he had "nothing whatsoever to do with where the permanent incarceration is. None of his advocates do."
Joseph Muller is the owner of W & L Kosher Meats Inc (Wasserman & Lemberger Deli) that employs Shapiro
7006 Reisterstown Rd D, Baltimore, MD 21215
Phone: (410) 486-4191 FAX: (410) 486-4099
Est. Annual Sales:$950,000
Data provided by Dun & Bradstreet
Comparing survivors of child sexual abuse with holocaust survivors
© (2007) By Vicki Polin
For those who have concerns with the analogy of comparing survivors of child sexual abuse with holocaust survivors.
For at least the last twenty-five years in the counseling field they have been making a connection to holocaust with survivors of sexual abuse, especially with cases of incest. They often refer to incest survivors "going through their own personal holocaust."
This is not meant in any way to take away from what those in the 1930s - 40's experienced. It refers to survivors of child sexual abuse having their whole lives taken away from them. Those who are being abused as children never know from one moment to the next if they would be safe or terrorized.
Survivors of child sexual abuse and for that matter of physical and emotional abuse never knew if their offenders would kill them the next time they came around. Often for children who are being abused at home, their parents can be scene as "Nazi's". Children are not being tormented for being Jewish, instead they were being for being alive, being born into the "wrong family".
Vicki you did great!
Does anyone know if Moshe Khaver was also molested by Rav Eliezer Eisgrau?
http://www.yasharbooks.com/JOonBlogs.pdf
Agudah hypocrites attack all blogs in this Jewish Observer article.
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