Top Australian rabbis urge yeshiva officials to quit over child abuse report

The Rabbinical Councils of Australia and New Zealand, New South Wales, and Victoria call on officials at Yeshiva Bondi and Yeshivah Melbourne to step down after a government report released yesterday finds they discouraged members of the Jewish community from reporting allegations of child sexual abuse against their employees.

In a joint statement, the rabbis say: “Child sexual abuse has caused unimaginable suffering to the victims in our community, and RCANZ, RCNSW and RCV and their members are totally committed to removing this scourge from our community and from our institutions. We offer our deepest sympathies to the victims and commit ourselves to learning from the failures of the past.

“As the Royal Commission has made clear, child sexual abuse was allowed to continue because of actions and inaction by some rabbis and community leaders… We call on those who have been identified in the report as not fulfilling their legal obligations to protect children to stand down from their public positions.”

— JTA