Other Jewish institutions and contexts Hasidic and Haredi communities Melbourne and Sydney, Australia · 2017

Royal Commission Case Study 22: reporting suppressed at Yeshivah institutions

Record class

Institutional event

Evidence status

Official finding

Authority role

rabbinical and school leadership at Chabad institutions

Organization

Yeshivah Melbourne, Yeshiva Bondi

Spiritual nexus

The Commission's findings identify a doctrinal mechanism operating on victims and their families: religious norms about reporting to secular authorities suppressed disclosure and punished those who disclosed.

Institutional obedience or isolation
Threatened spiritual consequence

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2017-01-01 · royal commission finding

Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Australia — Case Study 22. Examining the Cyprys, Kramer and related matters, the Commission identified 15 male victims of institutional child sexual abuse and found that the concept of mesirah — a prohibition on reporting a fellow Jew to secular authorities — was applied in ways that discouraged reporting, and that survivors who went to police were treated as community outcasts.

Documented coercion mechanisms

application of mesirah concepts discouraging reports to secular authorities
community ostracism of survivors who reported

Primary record

Sources

official statutory inquiry report inquiry report Royal Commission, 'Report of Case Study No. 22: Yeshiva Bondi and Yeshivah Melbourne' (2017).: The Commission's findings on suppressed reporting and community treatment of survivors.

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