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David Bressler

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Cold and Unapologetic

August 23, 2019

Yeshi­va Uni­ver­si­ty spent decades cov­er­ing up the preda­to­ry behav­ior of mul­ti­ple rab­bini­cal staff, includ­ing that of the assis­tant prin­ci­pal. 38 of the Yeshiv­a’s vic­tims are speak­ing out and seek­ing jus­tice thanks to the pass­ing of the NY State Child Vic­tims Act.

My wife likes to say that I dis­like injus­tice… though it usu­al­ly comes in the form of unfair queu­ing at Whole Foods (seri­ous­ly, WTF Whole Foods?!).

As I read the cov­er­age of our recent law­suit, it sticks with me that many call the abuse “alleged.” For those who do that, I sus­pect that word does­n’t mean what you think it does.

You appear to use the phrase “alleged” abuse, because at the moment, our legal action against Yeshi­va Uni­ver­si­ty is just that — a claim in the courts.

How­ev­er, it’s impor­tant to know the full his­to­ry of our claim of abuse against Yeshi­va Uni­ver­si­ty going back to 2013 in order to under­stand that Yeshi­va Uni­ver­si­ty does­n’t dis­pute that there was abuse or a cov­er up.

If we claim abuse and Yeshi­va agrees it hap­pened, there’s noth­ing alleged about the claim.

It’s just that Yeshi­va Uni­ver­si­ty don’t want to be held account­able. That atti­tude requires a dif­fer­ent word (or phrase… but I’ll leave that to the read­er).

An Independent Investigation Took Place

At the time of our ini­tial suit, Yeshi­va Uni­ver­si­ty com­mis­sioned in inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion by the law firm of Sul­li­van & Cromwell to inves­ti­gate the claims we made of preda­to­ry sex­u­al behav­ior by some of the rab­bis and the coverup of said behav­ior.

Sul­li­van & Cromwell com­plet­ed a report that one of Yeshi­va Uni­ver­si­ty’s own law school pro­fes­sors called dis­ap­point­ing and which, in her view, “did not do the right thing.”

There was no ques­tion that the abuse occurred. Even this inde­pen­dent com­mis­sion “report” made that much clear:

“mul­ti­ple inci­dents of vary­ing types of sex­u­al and phys­i­cal abuse took place at YUHSB [and at oth­er schools com­pris­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty] dur­ing the rel­e­vant time peri­od… includ­ing, in some instances, after mem­bers of the admin­is­tra­tion had been made aware of such con­duct.” This is lit­tle more than a con­tin­u­a­tion of the cov­er-up that appar­ent­ly already occurred.

The abuse is not dis­put­ed in the report, or by the Yeshi­va lead­er­ship. Richard Joel felt that a less-than-sin­cere apol­o­gy was enough to get the heal­ing process com­plet­ed though:

Leadership Admitted the Abuse Occurred

“I express my deep­est and most heart­felt remorse, and tru­ly hope that our recog­ni­tion of these issues pro­vides some lev­el of com­fort and clo­sure to the vic­tims,”

I’ll say it again.

No one dis­putes that the abuse hap­pened. There­fore, it should not be referred to as “alleged abuse.”

It’s 2019 and the Yeshi­va can’t hide behind anti­quat­ed laws that pro­tect preda­tors or their enablers.

Yeshiva’s Own Law School Professor Spoke Out

I’ll leave you with one last quote from Mar­ci Hamil­ton, the Car­doza Law School Pro­fes­sor who urged the Yeshi­va to do the right thing, but felt they did not. Her words stuck with me as I re-read all of the ear­li­er press and court tran­scripts:

this [inves­ti­ga­tion into the abuse and sub­se­quent report] is an affront to sur­vivors every­where. I have nev­er read a doc­u­ment of this genre with less ver­biage speak­ing direct­ly to the sur­vivors. It is, in a word, cold. YU needs to fig­ure out how to become more child-cen­tered in its approach to abuse, or it will be fight­ing these bat­tles for decades to come.

Mar­ci Hamil­ton, 5 Sep 2013 (link)

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David

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Comments

  1. Helen Schulman says

    August 25, 2019 at 11:22

    It is with sad­ness and deep regret that I read the recent news regard­ing the abuse you and so many oth­ers at MTA and oth­er YU affil­i­ates. When these alle­ga­tion first came light, it was clear to me that if it looks like sh**,and smells like sh** then it sure­ly is sh**. No amount of apolo­gies, sin­cere and insin­cere words can undo the pro­found dam­age done to you and col­leagues. I was very vocal about it then much to the cha­grin of fam­i­ly and friends who denied cul­pa­bil­i­ty because of the rela­tion­ship with the then pres­i­dent of YU. I knew you dur­ing those try­ing years and now real­ize how sig­nif­i­cant your anger was then and how pro­found­ly affect­ed you are now, right­ful­ly so. I wish you suc­cess in this law­suit and hope that if noth­ing else it brings some lev­el of clo­sure and piece of mind.

    • David says

      August 25, 2019 at 19:58

      🙏

      • Jeffrey Rockman says

        September 2, 2019 at 20:39

        David: Does the law­suit include claims for emotional/mental abuse? I attend­ed MTA for four years (1974 – 78) and my life was made a liv­ing hell by George Finkel­stein a/k/a the “Malach Hamoves.” Please advise. P.S. Macy Gor­don was my “rebbe” for two of those years. P.S.S. Bar­ry Fre­un­del was my coun­selor at Camp Morasha in the sum­mer of 1974. P.S.S.S. Baruch Lan­ner was the leader of many NCSY events that I attend­ed dur­ing this time frame.

  2. MICHAEL SCHRIEBER says

    August 27, 2019 at 17:36

    The things that took place at YU were well known and always made me angry. When I recent­ly learned that I grew up with one of the vic­tims, I felt per­son­al­ly abused.

    We should always ral­ly to sup­port every vic­tim of abuse regard­less of whether or not they are from our own com­mu­ni­ty. And we must always hold the per­pe­tra­tors ful­ly account­able, espe­cial­ly when they’re part of our own com­mu­ni­ty.

    David, I hope you are suc­cess­ful in the law­suit and can get the jus­tice and peace of mind you deserve.

  3. Jenna says

    September 14, 2019 at 22:23

    You are very brave for com­ing for­ward and seek­ing jus­tice for your­self and oth­ers. You are also help­ing chil­dren in the future as well by shin­ing a spot­light on what has been cov­ered up for decades. Any­one who con­tributed to vic­tim­iz­ing you either direct­ly or pas­sive­ly by enabling the filthy per­verts deserves to get run over by a cement mix­er. Good luck and stay strong!

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