Melbourne’s Orthodox Jewish Yeshivah Centre has the chance to avoid a potential $2.5 million damages claim if a rabbi who sits on its board says sorry to a victim of historic sexual abuse and resigns from his position.
The man behind the Supreme Court of Victoria action, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told The Age he would settle his claim if Yeshivah director Rabbi Chaim Tzvi Groner apologised for the abuse he and others suffered at the St Kilda East school and nearby facilities.
The man said his offer to withdraw the claim was also contingent on Rabbi Groner, a long-standing Yeshivah Centre board member, quitting his board post to demonstrate that the centre’s leaders accepted the gravity of the failure to keep children safe.
If the man’s claim is successful, his demand for $2.5 million in damages for his alleged repeated abuse as a 12-year-old by convicted paedophile David Cyprys would be among the highest ever awarded against an institution in Victoria.
The man has been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder and a persistent depressive disorder, with psychiatric reports referenced in his statement of claim attributing them to the abuse he suffered as a child.
Though there is no suggestion Rabbi Groner was aware of the abuse at the time it occurred, he has been a trustee of the Yeshivah Centre for decades and is ranked among the most senior representatives of the Chabad Lubavitch movement in Australia.
Read the article by Richard Baker in The Age.