Clergy misconduct

The issue of clergy sexual abuse has gained increased attention in the 10 years since it was first investigated by JTA.

Thatearlier investigation, which focused primarily on rabbis who sexuallycoerce adult congregants, indicated that the problem was morewidespread than had been assumed � and that the Jewish establishmentwas beginning to grapple with it, but not always effectively.

Forexample, formal denominational policies governing rabbinic conduct weresometimes slow to develop. Although behavioral guidelines are now thenorm, some other systemic problems uncovered in that earlier JTA seriesstill persist.

Sincethat original investigation was published, the Catholic Church has beenrocked by a massive pedophilia scandal, while the Jewish community hasbeen buffeted by high-profile cases of sexual impropriety involvingrabbis and other authority figures.

Thelist of offenders includes Orthodox youth leader Rabbi Baruch Lanner, aformer regional director of the National Conference of Synagogue Youth,who is now serving a seven-year prison sentence for abusing teenagegirls while he was principal of a New Jersey yeshiva. The scandal setoff a storm in the Orthodox world stemming from allegations thatrabbinic leaders and others had long been negligent in supervisingLanner.

Morerecently, David Kaye, a prominent 56-year-old Conservative rabbi fromRockville, was ensnared in a nationally televised pedophile stingoperation.

Kaye,the former vice president for programs of Panim: The Institute forJewish Leadership and Values, was sentenced Dec. 1 to 6 1/2 years inprison for trying to solicit sex last year from someone posing on theInternet as a 13-year-old boy, a case that was featured on the networktelevision show Dateline NBC.

Virtuallyall denominations, except segments of fervent Orthodoxy, now haveformal codes on the books that outline unacceptable clergy behavior andmandate precisely how complaints of sexual impropriety are to beinvestigated and adjudicated by in-house ethics panels.

Inits investigation, JTA examined those policies with the help of mentalhealth providers, victims' advocates, rabbis and others whoseassessments reflected a mix of encouragement and skepticism. Among thefindings of this series:

•�Theanti-abuse guidelines represent a well-intentioned, yet sporadicallyflawed, attempt to address a problem that had once been neglectedentirely. One evaluator gave the policies a C-plus grade, another aC-minus.

•�Thesystem, according to critics, suffers from an institutional fear oflawsuits and excessive secrecy � both byproducts of an ethical quandaryfaced by decision-makers. They must balance an individual's right toprivacy against the obligation to protect the public from a potentialsexual predator.

•�Asymbol of that ethical push-pull is the Awareness Center, a private,5-year-old Baltimore-based Jewish organization that is devoted toprotecting the public from abusers. The center has been both criticizedand praised for its policy of identifying rabbis and other sexualpredators on its Web site, whether or not they have been tried incourt.

•�Perhapsthe most serious impediment to controlling clergy abuse is what Chicagopsychologist and psychoanalyst Vivian Skolnick calls "the plague ofsilence" � the continuing reluctance of victims to reporttransgressions.