https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qbe8bp/the-child-rape-assembly-line-0000141-v20n11
The Child-Rape Assembly Line
Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg—who is 63 with a long, graying beard—recently sat down with me to explain what he described as a "child-rape assembly line" among sects of fundamentalist Jews.
Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg, the lone whistleblower among the Satmar, a powerful Hasidic sect, who recently was the victim of a bleach attack in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. All photos by Christian Storm.
Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg—who is 63 with a long, graying beard—recently sat down with me to explain what he described as a "child-rape assembly line" among sects of fundamentalist Jews. He cleared his throat. "I'm going to be graphic," he said.
A member of Brooklyn's Satmar Hasidim fundamentalist branch of Orthodox Judaism, Nuchem designs and repairs mikvahs in compliance with Torah Law. The mikvah is a ritual Jewish bathhouse used for purification. Devout Jews are required to cleanse themselves in the mikvah on a variety of occasions: Women must visit following menstruation, and men have to make an appearance before the High Holidays, such as Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Many of the devout also purify themselves before and after the act of sex and before the Sabbath.
On a visit to Jerusalem in 2005, Rabbi Rosenberg entered into a mikvah in one of the holiest neighborhoods in the city, Mea She'arim. "I opened a door that entered into a schvitz," he told me. "Vapors everywhere, I can barely see. My eyes adjust, and I see an old man, my age, long white beard, a holy-looking man, sitting in the vapors. On his lap, facing away from him, is a boy, maybe seven years old. And the old man is having anal sex with this boy."
Rabbi Rosenberg paused, gathered himself, and went on: "This boy was speared on the man like an animal, like a pig, and the boy was saying nothing. But on his face—fear. The old man [looked at me]
without any fear, as if this was common practice. He didn't stop. I was so angry, I confronted him. He removed the boy from his penis, and I took the boy aside. I told this man, 'It's a sin before God, a
mishkovzucher. What are you doing to this boy's soul? You're destroying this boy!' He had a sponge on a stick to clean his back, and he hit me across the face with it. 'How dare you interrupt me!' he said. I had heard of these things for a long time, but now I had seen."
The child sex abuse crisis in ultra-Orthodox Judaism, like that in the Catholic Church, has produced its share of shocking headlines in recent years. In New York, and in the prominent Orthodox communities of Israel and London, allegations of child molestation and rape have been rampant. The alleged abusers are schoolteachers, rabbis, fathers, uncles—figures of male authority. The victims, like those of Catholic priests, are mostly boys. Rabbi Rosenberg believes around half of young males in Brooklyn's Hasidic community—the largest in the United States and one of the largest in the world—have been victims of sexual assault perpetrated by their elders. Ben Hirsch, director of Survivors for Justice, a Brooklyn organization that advocates for Orthodox sex abuse victims, thinks the real number is higher. "From anecdotal evidence, we're looking at over 50 percent. It has almost become a rite of passage."
Ultra-Orthodox Jews who speak out about these abuses are ruined and condemned to exile by their own community. Dr. Amy Neustein, a nonfundamentalist Orthodox Jewish sociologist and editor of
Tempest in the Temple: Jewish Communities and Child Sex Scandals, told me the story of a series of Hasidic mothers in Brooklyn she got to know who complained that their children were being preyed on by their husbands.
In these cases, the accused men "very quickly and effectively engage the rabbis, the Orthodox politicians, and powerful Orthodox rabbis who donate handsomely to political clubs." The goal, she told me, is "to excise the mother from the child's life." Rabbinical courts cast the mothers aside, and the effects are permanent. The mother is "amputated." One woman befriended by Dr. Neustein, a music student at a college outside New York, lost contact with all six of her children, including an infant she was breastfeeding at the time of their separation.
http://12160.info/page/2649739:Page:1860482
Sacha Baron Cohen: We Stumbled Upon Possible Pedophile Ring During 'Who Is America' Taping, Notified FBI
"We immediately turned over the footage to the FBI because we thought, perhaps there's a pedophile ring in Las Vegas that's operating for these very wealthy men."
Showtime host Sacha Baron Cohen revealed Wednesday that he stumbled upon what he thought could be a possible pedophile ring while taping his
controversial summer series "Who is America?"
During a classic Baron Cohen-style fake interview, the comedian plays a character named Gio who eventually asks a Las Vegas concierge to get him an underaged boy as a "date." After this concierge offered to put "Gio" in touch with a person who apparently procures such boys, Baron Cohen turned the troubling footage over to the FBI.
"We were shooting some of this at the time of Harvey Weinstein. We wanted to investigate how does someone like Harvey Weinstein gets away with doing what ... get away with criminality, essentially. And the network that surrounds him. We decided that Gio would interview a concierge in Las Vegas," Baron Cohen
explained to Deadline.
"During the interview, I revealed that basically Gio has molested an eight-year-old boy," he continued. "Now, mind you, this is extreme comedy and we thought that the guy would leave the room. Instead, this concierge stays in the room and I go, listen, you’ve got to help me get rid of the problem. And this guy starts advising Gio how to get rid of this issue. We even at one point talk about murdering the boy, and the concierge is just saying, 'well, listen, I'm really sorry. In this country, we can't just drown the boy. This is America we don’t do that.' And then, in the end, he puts me in touch with a lawyer who can silence the boy."
Baron Cohen then asked the concierge about getting him an underage boy as a "date":
"And then at the end of the interview I say, listen, I want to go out and celebrate now. Can you get me a date for tonight? He says, ‘what do you mean, a date?’
I go, you know, like a young man. He says, ‘well, what kind of age?’ I say, lower than Bar Mitzvah but older than eight. And he says, ‘yeah, I can put you in touch with somebody who can get you some boys like that.’