Many feel that to report a Jew to non-Jewish authorities constitutes the religious crime of mesirah:[5][6] Samuel Heilman, a professor of Jewish studies at Queens College, writes that one reason why cases or patterns of sexual abuse are rarely reported to law enforcement is because "they think that anyone who turns over anyone to the outside authorities is committing a transgression to the community at large".
Agudath Israel of America, a leading Haredi organization, has stated that observant Jews should not report allegations to law enforcement without first consulting with a rabbi.
[5] However, other rabbis, including a Chabad-Lubavitch rabbinic court in Crown Heights and Yosef Blau, disagree, and encourage reporting abusers to police, stating that the ban on mesirah does not apply.
[12] Establishment reprisal against sexually abused children and their parents could be severe: Parents were shunned by the community, with rabbis forbidding congregants to speak to them, while abused children were barred from schools and treated as undesirable marriage candidates by matchmakers, hurting the marriage prospects for other siblings and family members.
He was praised for starting a program in 2009 called Kol Tzedek (Voice of Justice), which is geared toward Haredi Jews and encourages them to co-operate with law enforcement; according to Hynes, it reduced the amount of victim intimidation.
[17] The first high-profile child sex abuse case that Hynes brought against the Hasidic community after his election in 1989, was that of Nechemya Weberman, an unlicensed youth counselor and prominent member of the Satmar community, who was convicted on December 10, 2012,[18] of repeatedly sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl he was supposed to be counseling,[19] and sentenced to 103 years in prison.
It was claimed that the victims were "extremely reluctant to testify publicly", according to a law enforcement source familiar with the case, as quoted in the NY Daily News.
[22] Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg, a Hasidic Rabbi from the Satmar community in Williamsburg, created a hotline featuring weekly, impassioned lectures in Yiddish, Hebrew, and English - imploring victims to report sexual abuse to the authorities, while accusing community leaders of silencing the reporting of child abuse.
Rosenberg also uses his social media presence to share his opinions on the state of child sexual abuse in the Jewish community, and chronicle his efforts and struggles as an activist.
In March 2016, Rosenberg discouraged his followers from participating in a protest against the alleged cover-up of child abuse in Yeshiva Oholei Torah of Crown Heights because it was to be attended by members of the gay community.
[5] Despite his decades of activism, Rosenberg has yet to be involved in the investigation, arrest, or prosecution of any member of any Jewish community for child sexual abuse.