MELBOURNE’s Yeshivah Centre has been slammed for covering up sexual abuse in a damning report handed down by the child abuse royal commission today.
The findings come almost two years after the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse started its probe into the orthodox Jewish community’s Melbourne and Bondi centres.
In its 112 page report the commission rejected key testimony given by some of the centre’s top officials and found the community had covered up child sex abuse over several decades.
It also found:
— VICTIMS and other members of the community were discouraged from reporting abuse,
— THERE was a marked absence of supportive leadership for survivors of child sexual abuse and their families, and
— THE leadership did not create an environment conducive to the communication of information about child sexual abuse.
“The evidence strongly suggests many leaders within the community focused insufficient attention upon the community’s concerns and the intersection between the secular criminal law and Jewish law,” the report said.
Read the full article by Shannon Deery at the Herald Sun.