Jewish camps, schools urged to adopt policies to fight sex abuse

Philanthropists, organizations pledge they will only fund institutions taking ‘adequate steps to prevent, report, investigate sexual abuse of minors’

By JTA 8 April 2016, 9:15 am

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It will be difficult to provide the feeling of summer camp while social distancing, but camps are pivoting to adapt to the coronavirus outbreak. (Courtesy the Foundation for Jewish Camp/via JTA)

Over two dozen philanthropists and organizations have pledged to fund only Jewish day camps and schools taking “adequate steps to prevent, report, and investigate sexual abuse of minors.”

The Child Safety Funder Pledge was introduced on Sunday, the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles reported Wednesday.

Some of its most prominent signees include Lynn Schusterman, co-founder and co-chairwoman of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation; Dana Raucher, executive director of the Samuel Bronfman Foundation; and Jay Ruderman, president of the Ruderman Family Foundation.

“Without an open, urgent and broad-based communal conversation about this issue, we will continue to see headlines about children being molested while in the care of our community’s organizations, which are supposed to keep them safe,” said Jumpstart CEO Joshua Avedon, who co-organized the pledge with Los Angeles-based philanthropist Rochel Leah Bernstein-Deitcher.

According to the Jewish Journal, the pledge was started in response to an unnamed study conducted over the past year that found “uneven policies at Jewish schools and camps aimed at preventing sexual abuse.”

The pledge website said the “one thing that all Jewish organizations have in common is that they depend upon charitable gifts and grants to function.”

“By creating an expectation that organizations comply with certain standards, we can require them to act responsibly or face major impact to their bottom line,” the pledge website reads.