Iriya gan scandal | Imamother

Tablepoetry

Mon, Aug 31 2015, 1:53 pm

amother wrote:

Quote:

I told my sister about this to protect her child but she said the gan has security locks and how can the cult members be threatening the gannenet if they can't get into the gan?

They can call her on the phone at home and tell her she must open the door tomorrow at 11:00.

But there's also an ozeret gannenet. She would have to be in on it too, as she works closely with the gannenet. Some ganim also have extra people come in during the day, like a melamed or a music teacher. If any of these people saw anyone else take out a child, or if anyone noticed a certain child missing at 11:05, then they would alert the rest of the team. Is everyone in on this together?

Sanguine

Mon, Aug 31 2015, 2:10 pm

cyj1836 wrote:

I have started a correspondence with a psychologist in the states who has a lot of experience with ritual abuse. Firstly, you must understand that the ritual abuse factor in these situations makes this different. Here is a quote in reply to my question about the possibility of children ages 3-6 NOT exhibiting symptoms of abuse. That is what scares me the most and is what I want to know for sure. I can be vigilant about child safety and know all the measures to take. I am well aware, Probably more than most of you and more than I'd like to be, about all the molestation that is and has gone on in the frum community. That can be dealt with much more easily with vigilance and educating our children. But when ritual abuse is involved and especially with such temimistic children as ours, it is on a whole other level.

Here is her reply to my question:

"This is difficult to answer, but keep these considerations in mind:

Generally, younger children are less able to deliberately/intentionally conceal trauma/abuse.

Sometimes, abusers very carefully groom/prepare young children for abuse, e.,g, by being gentle in s-xual abuse, so the child may not be terrified or show signs of fear.

Lots of signs of abuse are mistaken for, are similar to, signs of other kinds of problems, e.g., separation anxiety, fear of sleeping alone, can appear in response to lots of issues.

Psychologically-sophisticated abusers know how to manipulate a child's mind to reduce the signs of abuse and to greatly reduce the risk of direct disclosure.

Very bright 3-year-olds can deliberately make all appear well on the outside, especially if coached to do so.

You have a very, very serious decision to make."

So if the kids aren't saying anything nor showing signs of abuse, who says they're being abused?

chavs

Mon, Aug 31 2015, 2:42 pm

Furthermore what's being described in this thread is hardly (quoting) gentle zxual abuse. There were examples of penetration, burns and cat's heads bring chopped off.

cyj1836

Mon, Aug 31 2015, 3:29 pm

Sanguine wrote:

So if the kids aren't saying anything nor showing signs of abuse, who says they're being abused?

I'm not talking about the children who have spoken up. They are the ones saying they've been abused. I'm asking about how to see signs on my own child. I'm asking because I'v gotten so much information that I am seriously considering home schooling. My son is in gan in Mekor Baruch, not here, and it is aware of what's going on. But I want to know if it's possible for it to go unnoticed, which would make precautionary measures much more necessary. I don't have any doubt it's happening, and on a larger scale than we want to believe. If I can't read the signs and I know it's happening, than I may choose to have my sons day structured differently until public and civil awareness has increased enough for arrests and convictions to move forward.

cyj1836

Mon, Aug 31 2015, 3:36 pm

chavs wrote:

Furthermore what's being described in this thread is hardly (quoting) gentle zxual abuse. There were examples of penetration, burns and cat's heads bring chopped off.

read the quote again...
she said that they are groomed (prepared) for abuse by using "gentle abuse". the actual ritual abuse comes later, after they've gotten more time to manipulate the child psychologically and build a relationship with the child. Some of the children haven't been s-xually abuse at all, just show others begin abuse and tortured. There ar no signs on their bodies, they are just terrified and threatened. Check out the andmark case of the McMartin trial. I mean really check it out. There are several sites for survivors of ritual abuse and cult ring pedophilia that provide way more concrete information about ritual abuse than the incompetent article from Tablet magazine that is linked off of the Daas Torah website.

I will say once again, do not take this lightly. Do your research. Deal with the fact that there is very difficult content to be informed on. It's much easier to digest this all on your own as an adult, than to hear it from your child,c"v. The other mothers of victims on this blog, and elsewhere, mostly heard of this from their children. It is shocking, but it's real.

Sanguine

Mon, Aug 31 2015, 4:16 pm

Big question - What is the father's involvement in handling this situation? If you live there and know what's going on, what does your husband think you should do?

DrMom

Mon, Aug 31 2015, 4:23 pm

If my child is acting abnormally, that's a sign he may have been abused?
And if my child is acting normally, that's also a sign he may have been abused?

The abuse is brutal (cats beheaded/burns, blood)? The abuse is gentle (so gentle the child doesn't notice)?

It seems there's a story for every situation, and all these narratives end the same way: Your child is being abused.

This type of advise only encourages paranoia and hysteria.

cyj1836

Mon, Aug 31 2015, 4:39 pm

Sanguine wrote:

Big question - What is the father's involvement in handling this situation? If you live there and know what's going on, what does your husband think you should do?

we haven't been affected, thank H-shem! If you're asking about my husband? we're thinking of moving; not sure where. We're just getting a handle on the information we've been given. We have a lot of collective background in this, ie, family members that are in mental health, social work, therapy, federal police, etc. So, we are considering...

MagentaYenta

Mon, Aug 31 2015, 6:02 pm

I don't recall if this April 17 article from the tablet has been posted. If it has been it maybe apropos for it being posted again in its entirety since this is long long thread.

AN OPEN LETTER TO A COMMUNITY IN PAIN
The Jerusalem neighborhood of Sanhedria Murchevet is beset by fears of a pedophile ring. Here’s what they need to consider.

By Menachem Kaiser
April 17, 2015

In the last few weeks, I have received a startling number of calls and emails regarding an ongoing crisis in Sanhedria Murchevet, a neighborhood in north Jerusalem where many—including some prominent rabbis and communal leaders—believe that an organized ring of criminals have been abusing, raping, and torturing Jewish children and have been doing so for a number of years. There is also widespread belief that the abuse is at least partially religiously motivated—that operating in the community’s midst is a cult, a ring of men and women who are subjecting the children to ritual torture.

Many of the people who have contacted me, however, did so because they believe that this is, at least to some degree, a case of mass hysteria; that a significant percentage (or even all) of the allegations, especially the most fantastic, may be unfounded; that innocent people may have been or will be accused; that an untold number of lives are being ruined; and that cases of actual molestation and/or abuse could potentially be obfuscated.
What is indisputable is that the community is in the grips of a devastating panic. The scope and severity of the allegations are continually increasing: More and more children are claiming (or are claimed) to have been abused; more and more people, including men and women in the neighborhood, are being accused of raping and abusing children. To those in the community, the influence and reach of the perpetrators seems terrifyingly limitless. The police are dismissed as inept at best, corrupt and/or complicit at worst.

I am here because I feel a responsibility to share some of what I learned when I spent more than a year investigating and reporting a similar and related case in a nearby Jerusalem neighborhood in 2012. I want to emphasize, from the outset, that I am not here to report the case; I am not here in any journalistic capacity. I have not conducted interviews. I have not done any significant reporting. I cannot make any firm claims about what is or is not going on in Sanhedria Murchevet—whether this is, in fact, a case of mass hysteria, on whether or not any of the allegations are founded.

But regardless of whether this is or is not a case of mass hysteria, those in the community (and beyond) must not ignore the lessons learned in past similar cases. The stakes cannot be higher. People died in the wake of what happened in Nachlaot. An 80-year-old woman was beaten with a crowbar and hospitalized, because she was believed to be a key member of a Christian missionary cult behind the abduction, torture, and rape of Jewish children. Many lives were destroyed. Children underwent corrective therapy for traumatic events that almost certainly did not happen—therapy that thereby created and reinforced that trauma. All these were needless tragedies born, ultimately, of misinformation.

***

Before all else, it is critical to understand that hysteria is a very real and extremely well-documented phenomenon. In literally thousands of cases, hundreds or sometimes even thousands of children have reported abuse that did not happen. These cases have occurred in nearly every single industrialized country, and from the mid-1980s to the mid-’90s was a veritable mania in the United States. Not once have any of the reports been substantiated.

It has happened so many times, in fact, that a model has been developed: Cases of hysteria have certain characteristics that differentiate them from “regular” cases of abuse. These include: The victims are far younger (ages 0-5) than in substantiated cases of molestation; the allegations include fantastic or impossible elements, like moving walls, elaborate tunnel systems, hallucinogenic drugs, bullets that bend around walls; the molestation being alleged is extraordinarily violent and sadistic, often involving tools, weapons, chemicals, and extreme torture; the torture/abuse is rarely one-to-one, but involves many perpetrators and many children and significant planning/logistics, often including transportation to and from sites of abuse; an outside religion/cult/order has allegedly infiltrated the community, intent on destroying from the inside; the cult is extremely sophisticated and often international in scope; the accused are often outsiders, such as converts, and include a very high fraction of females; and a huge percentage of the allegations include film/photography.

Many people resist or dismiss entirely the concept of hysteria because they cannot understand it: How could a child come to believe something that isn’t true? How could so many children corroborate a story that isn’t true? I encountered this stance literally hundreds of times in my reporting of the case of Nachlaot. But it is a misguided and dangerous perception.

I cannot definitively explain how hysteria works, how the children have come to believe what they believe. In cases that involve dozens or hundreds of children, especially those in a close-knit and insular community, it’s impossible to trace how information is passed from child to child, from parent to child, from parent to parent, from therapist to child, from therapist to parent. We have some idea of how it works—young children are extraordinarily suggestible; and parents and therapists can be, even without realizing, extraordinarily suggestive—but far more important than understanding the mechanics is understanding that this a real phenomenon. This means that children, in thousands of past cases, have reported abuse that did not happen. In all of those cases the children corroborated each other. In all of those cases the children spoke about subjects—anything from relations to technology—that their parents hadn’t exposed them to. In all of those cases one or more children were believed to have made claims that were unprompted.

Again, this makes no claim that what the children are saying is false; it makes the claim that what the children are saying could be false, despite our intuitions and sympathies, and that we therefore cannot make any firm conclusions on the basis of children’s allegations. This remains the case no matter how impossible it might seem that the child could be saying anything but the truth—no matter how young the child is, no matter how insulated the child is believed to be, no matter how many other children are corroborating the story. While the allegations should of course be properly investigated, they must not be granted credibility without independent, reliable evidence—evidence that is not and does not rely on children’s testimonies.

When I began my investigation of the case in Nachlaot, I had no reason to doubt anything. I was horrified at the existence of this enormous pedophile ring, at the scope of the crime. But when I returned to New York and started to research, I began to speak with people who have seen thousands of similar cases, who have worked with the FBI for more than 25 years. And my perspective changed. It was an enormously trying experience, having my entire world inverted, going back to Israel, re-interviewing everyone. But the case in Nachlaot displayed every single characteristic of mass hysteria. For months, I pressed the people spearheading the efforts very hard for evidence I could use, for evidence that what the children were claiming really happened. But there was none.

I was forced to accept what is still one of the hardest lessons of that story: Children in cases like this are not reliable witnesses, no matter how difficult it is to understand why a child would say something not true, no matter how difficult it is to come to terms with how the child might have otherwise learned of such things.

Many assume that, given the scope and nature of the allegations and incidents, something must be going on, even if it’s not a cult, even if it’s not a full-out case of hysteria. While this, again, could be true, it is not necessarily true: Without proper evidence, nothing can be known with certainty. I am not claiming that molestation didn’t happen—again, I don’t know. Any allegations should be carefully investigated, without prejudice, by people who have been properly trained. But that understandable intuition that something must be going on, that where there’s smoke there’s fire, cannot be implicitly trusted in cases like this.

The trauma is likely real. Children in cases like this aren’t “lying”—they’re convinced that this happened. Psychological signs of trauma, such as bedwetting or nightmares or phobias, might only indicate that the children believe they were traumatized. Many of these children are sent to untrained therapists whose job, as they see it, is to coax the story out. I have heard accounts of what some of these therapy sessions are like, and they can be outrageously irresponsible. One of the many tragedies here is that it becomes harder and harder to get to the bottom of what really did and did not happen.

Much of what I am saying here will, I know, be dismissed by decision-makers in the community. But it is important to understand that I am not pushing a theory as to what happened—I am pleading for the community to take a more careful approach, for a sober and historically aware examination of what’s being presented as evidence, and for an honest and rational questioning of whether that evidence indicates the existence of a conspiracy, a cult, or any kind of organized effort.

If what is being alleged in Sanhedria Murchevet is true, if even a fraction of it is true, this would not only be unprecedented, it would be, by several magnitudes of order, the biggest conspiracy/crime in history. That this many people are involved, and for this long, and no admission, no adult witnesses, no film, and no website has emerged (despite extensive efforts) is cause for skepticism. And if these holes are explained by a growing conspiracy—involving the church, corrupt police, etc.—we should be on guard. There will be answers to any questions raised—computer experts, international syndicates, decades-long church conspiracies to rape and inculcate Jewish children. But when a conspiracy adapts, if any skepticism is countered by an ever-reaching plot, it is, again, cause for skepticism. Allegations in many past cases of mass hysteria involved comparably incredible conspiracies; the fantastical elements only reinforced the overwhelming unlikelihood of the existence of a cult.

amother

Oak

Mon, Aug 31 2015, 6:19 pm

A whole family with school age kids moved back from EY after pesach to the states near me just saying they were ready to move back mid year.. I wonder if this is y they moved back..

imasoftov

Tue, Sep 01 2015, 8:20 am

amother wrote:

A whole family with school age kids moved back from EY after pesach to the states near me just saying they were ready to move back mid year.. I wonder if this is y they moved back..

To continue Dr. Mom's idea, anyone who doesn't leave may have been threatened to get them to stay

Soon no one will marry off their children, because abused children may grow up to be abusers themselves. And as the Gemara says in Bava Batra 60b
דין הוא שנגזור על עצמנו שלא לישא אשה ולהוליד בנים ונמצא זרעו של אברהם אבינו כלה מאליו

ProudMommie

Tue, Sep 01 2015, 8:20 am

Dear Imamothers,

I talked to Shauna from Magen, whose number was given on the thread. She says that NOTHING has been proven and no credible evidence has been found regarding the rumors that are going around... .

Yes, there is abuse in E'Y, BUT no more and no less than anywhere. This "ritual abuse" stuff has NEVER been proven or really verified. It is all someone said that someone said that someone said that their child was abused... and they left Israel... etc. etc... and if you ask questions that are perfectly logical of those that just "believe" this is happening, you may even seem to be the enemy, and part of the cult r'l!

I personally think that one mentally ill person with a possible dark agenda or just screwed up hashkafa could blow up nothing into something ...as in this case ... something that has made many parents, including me, very very uncomfortable. it already happened in Nachlaot. The rumors of this ring/cult are almost as bad as the possibility that it is true.

The likelihood of what people are "repeating" to be true is very very very slim.
If we watch our children, trust our instincts, and daven that Hshem should protect our family we will bezras Hshem be fine.

No one is saying the world is safe, but a mass conspiracy against chareidi anglo children with mind control -over time- with involvement of everyone ... does not see plausible

Maybe the rumors though are meant to scare us out of Yerushalaim. Rolling Eyes

5mom

Tue, Sep 01 2015, 10:17 am

I think we've been saying this all along. Abuse exists. Ritual abuse rings don't.
So now we know why it was so difficult to get any real evidence. Next, how should we help the disturbed folks who are scaremongering?

Sanguine

Tue, Sep 01 2015, 11:31 am

imochka wrote:

Maybe the rumors though are meant to scare us out of Yerushalaim. Rolling Eyes

That's a good way to bring down the high real estate prices in Yerushalayim.

amother

Lime

Tue, Sep 01 2015, 11:42 am

cyj1836 wrote:

I admit that I have found this thread to be utterly confusing as well as unbelievable.

Abuse exists but certainly it defies any kind of reason to imagine that a conspiracy had managed to exist successfully with tentacles into every aspect of a democratic country with a literate population. Though I am not Israeli, I consider the country to be "western" with a highly literate population and a government which is not third world - I.e. it might have a few corrupt individuals but not systematic corruption on every level. I am not naive but I would find it impossible to believe that a successful pedophile ring existed in New York City which involved thousands of people including police, hospitals, government workers etc and that there was never any leak by anyone involved or approached and that NO ONE had ever seen anything strange and thought to alert authorities - or that authorities when alerted did nothing because they were involved in the conspiracy.

But to cite McMartin as an example of why the Israeli conspiracy is believable just proves the opposite. Every single credible examination of McMartin showed it to be a textbook example of community hysteria. Of course, one can find "proof" that it was real just as people find proof for every kind of crazy allegation - ever seen the "proof" that the Holocaust wasn't real or that the USA or Israel was responsible for 9/11.

Personally I think that focusing on this kind of hysteria allows instances of real abuse to exist because it's like the boy who cried wolf.

Again, I have no doubt that individuals were abused but that is not the issue being discussed on this thread.

DrMom

Tue, Sep 01 2015, 11:43 am

imochka wrote:

So why was everyone so secretive about this simple (and very much expected) explanation from Shana? Why did everyone say so mysteriously, "Oh, you'll just have to call her and see for yourself?"

Fave

Tue, Sep 01 2015, 12:13 pm

I must admit that I didn't follow the entire thread. I'm kind of surprised that it took 35 pages of posts to come up with the theory that it's baseless hysteria.

youngishbear

Tue, Sep 01 2015, 12:42 pm

Fave wrote:

I must admit that I didn't follow the entire thread. I'm kind of surprised that it took 35 pages of posts to come up with the theory that it's baseless hysteria.

It took 35 pages to give the idea a chance to prove itself.

Sanguine

Tue, Sep 01 2015, 12:52 pm

This is a very confusing thread. The story seems to change from day to day. All those things that didn't make sense - Every ganenet, Rav, bus driver, policeman, doctor and the Prime minister are in on this conspiracy... There's no way to explain it. So now we just wake up and it all was just a dream Sleep

. I hate when stories end like that? But what about the headless cats?

youngishbear

Tue, Sep 01 2015, 1:10 pm

Sanguine wrote:

. I hate when stories end like that? But what about the headless cats?

Who cares about the headless cats? What about the tortured children? There were mothers who mentioned their children had severe marks on their bodies.

I am honestly not happy with either the satanic ritual abuse cult theory or the mass hysteria version. I think neither makes a good case for itself. The latter rubs me the wrong way because its main argument is "it's never happened before in history." That's not good enough.

Perhaps there is a sadistic pedophile ring in Jerusalem. Perhaps there is mass hysteria. Neither side has much proof that I can use to decide the truth.