[10] Maimonides further explains: "It is forbidden to hand over a Jew to the heathen, neither his person nor his goods, even if he is wicked and a sinner, even if he causes distress and pain to fellow-Jews.
[1] Chaim Kanievsky, a leading Israeli rabbi and posek in Haredi society ruled that reporting instances of sexual child abuse to the police is consistent with Jewish law.
[15][16] The mesirah doctrine came under intense public scrutiny in Australia in early 2015 as a result of evidence given to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse relating to an alleged long-running and systematic cover-up of child sexual abuse and the institutional protection of perpetrators at the exclusive Melbourne boys' school Yeshiva College.
On 28 January 2015 Fairfax Media reported secret tape recordings and emails had been disclosed, which revealed that members of Australia's Orthodox Jewish community who assisted police investigations into alleged child sexual abuse were pressured to remain silent on the matter.
Criminal barrister Alex Lewenberg was alleged to have been "disappointed", and to have berated a Jew who had been a victim of a Jewish sex offender and whom he subsequently regarded as a mossur for breaking with mesirah tradition.
[18] In February 2015 Zephaniah Waks, an adherent of the ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Chabad sect in Melbourne, Australia, testified in front of the Royal Commission.
Waks also told the Commission that despite his anger, he felt constrained from going to the authorities: I thought this was absolutely outrageous, however if I reported this to the police I would be in breach of the Jewish principle of mesirah.He added that the concept of mesirah prevented Chabad members from going to secular authorities: At the very least, the breach of mesirah almost certainly always leads to shunning and intimidation within the Jewish community and would almost certainly damage marriage prospects of your children.
[20]In December 2017, the Commission's final report included a recommendation to Jewish institutions: All Jewish institutions in Australia should ensure that their complaint handling policies explicitly state that the halachic concepts of mesirah, moser and lashon hara do not apply to the communication and reporting of allegations of child sexual abuse to police and other civil authorities.