Chief Rabbi welcomes findings of child abuse inquiry
Ephraim Mirvis and groups including Nahamu endorse conclusions of seven-year process that calls for new law ensuring people in positions of trust report child sexual abuse.
The Chief Rabbi has backed the findings of the seven-year Child Sexual Abuse inquiry (IICSA) which has called for a new law ensuring people in positions of trust report child sexual abuse.
The IICSA described the sexual abuse of children as an “epidemic that leaves tens of thousands of victims in its poisonous wake”. Its final report was published on Thursday.
As part of its remit the inquiry, which was publicly launched by then home secretary Theresa May in 2015, looked into processes at Jewish organisations dealing with minors. It found some fail in their moral duty to prevent child sexual abuse, with some Jewish organisations having no child protection policy at all.
The child protection policies of major Jewish communal organisations came under the spotlight, with a number of umbrella bodies such as United Synagogue, Chabad Lubavitch, and Masorti named as taking the “positive step” of a centralised child protection policy.
But other religious groups did not have such a policy at the time of the inquiry’s hearings last year, including the strictly-Orthodox Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations (UOHC).
The inquiry said that there was “a mismatch between the organisation’s stated position and its actual practice in responding to allegations of child sexual abuse.”
The body’s representative, Rabbi Jehudah Baumgarten, told the inquiry that the rabbinate was clear child sexual abuse must be reported to the relevant authorities.
But the inquiry noted that in 2013, the UOHC’s then-chief Rabbi Ephraim Padwa was recorded undercover dissuading an abuse victim from reporting to the police – and that eight years later, a child protection policy was still not in place.
Reacting to the report’s publication, Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis said: “We must do more to ensure child protection policies and procedures are up to date, actionable and effective across our communal organisations. We must also do more to educate our entire community, particularly our children, so that we better understand how to identify, challenge and report inappropriate physical contact with others, as well as the patterns of behaviour that can lead to child sexual abuse and any other form of abuse.”
Leading criminal lawyer Simon Myerson KC responded by calling for the community to show its commitment to support organisations that support Jewish victims of abuse such as Nahamu, Migdal Emunah UK and Jewish Womens Aid “with specific pledges to start training by December and fund that training. Nothing else will do”.
Yehudis Fletcher of Nahamu said: “We are pleased to see that IICSA has recognised the devastating impact that unregistered schools have on the safety and wellbeing of children. Their recommendation to increase Ofsted’s powers in relation to such establishments are welcome.
“We also wholeheartedly welcome the recommendations relating to mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse. However, we are concerned that IICSA’s recommendations do not go far enough in this regard. A regime with teeth that will ensure that all reasonable suspicions of child sexual abuse is urgently required.”
Among a raft of wide-ranging recommendations, IICSA has called for a “national redress scheme” to get compensation for victims “let down by the state and non-state institutions in the past” to be launched.
The £186.6 million inquiry looked at 15 areas scrutinising institutional responses to child sexual abuse – including investigations into abuse in Westminster and the church.
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