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Doni Silverstein at the Torah Umesorah Presidents Conference 12-22-2017 (Part 5 of 5)
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Amudim, Relief Resources and Torah Umesorah's Project Lishmor present "The Chareidi Communities response to Sexual Abuse, Addiction and Suicide" December 22, 2017 at the 10th annual Torah Umesorah Presidents Conference
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Transcript
Auto-generated transcript. Not time-synced to the video.
Sweet.
Thank you.
Rabbi Blatt, thank you.
When Sweet asked me to speak
here this year
at the Tom Sawyer Presidents Conference,
so I asked him, I said, "Well, you know,
what do you want me to say?
You know, we're starting off a new
project in Israel and in Israel."
And I said, "You want to hear about
cases? Should I discuss
some of the numbers that we see? It's
not so different than what you see in in
in America."
And he said to me something very
interesting.
That's really what I'm going to talk
about.
Is that where does the stop
for the children
in our school systems? At what point do
we say, "Okay, we've done enough."
High school?
Seminary? Yeshiva?
First year of the marriage? Kyle?
When?
And the truth is that it never stops.
The of a child continues
until maybe they have children, maybe
after they have children,
even for his grandchildren.
And I think it's part of the reason why
it was started is because
we found that there was a huge gap
and a big problem just for the American
students in Yeshiva, the guys who came
to Israel.
And they would get there
and unfortunately a lot of things would
come out.
And unfortunately a lot of issues would
come up and there was no place to turn
to.
They were getting calls from Israel,
from America about horrible stories that
were happening
without any
without any work.
Those of you that got the email, I sent
the email out the other week
about an 8-year-old girl
from an Anglo family
who was raped
by an American Yeshiva boy
who was there learning.
He was a friend of the family.
Apparently he was there quite often.
We know right now it's only the girl,
but there are other issues in some of
the other children and we might find out
that there was more.
Right now the authorities are dealing
with it,
but we're dealing with the family.
We're trying to focus on what they need
and how we can help get them services.
But where was everybody else
when this guy went off to Yeshiva?
Where was he? Where was his Rabbi? His
friends? His
from America?
Nobody knew.
He had no history.
I personally find that hard to believe.
But it's not our job to do the
investigation.
Our job is to help the people that are
victims.
We've heard from Rabbi Blatt
and Sweet
and Zev about the idea of data
collection and the importance of what
the numbers say.
And many times we can throw numbers
around
and they sound like they're
they're completely blown out of
proportion.
And there's part of those numbers that
when they're when they're mentioned it
makes us very uncomfortable.
And the first thing we say is we deny
it. It's not really true. They're
blowing it they're making it more They
get X amount of calls. They get calls
they hang up.
Or the calls are about something else.
Or it's the same person calling about
the same case.
And in the beginning I have to be honest
I was also very skeptical.
And I went to the office in New York
and I sat there for a week.
And I sat with Sweet and I sat with the
case managers.
And I was there for hours upon hours
upon hours and there were hundreds and
hundreds of calls every single day.
Different calls.
You can't even keep track.
Every single thing that comes into the
offices, just like in
Rabbi Blatt can attest to this,
is documented, is written down, is
cross-referenced.
If it's not new, it's an old one, it
goes in the old pile. If it's a new
call, it is written down as a new call.
The person
Rabbi Blatt was telling me I was talking
to him before about
earlier years and the what they're doing
with some of their numbers and belief
and he's saying that they're many many
more calls years ago for bipolar
disorder.
Recently they've had a lot less.
He said one of the reasons they think is
because they had a backlog and a lot of
people who had bipolar disorder
called way back when. But today they're
getting they're getting those calls and
they're dealing with them, but they're
not getting the numbers that they once
had because they had no place to turn.
I just want to touch upon, I know it's
getting late,
the idea of
you know, important metrics. We've been
discussing a lot about data and metrics
and understanding it and the amount of
knowledge
and transparency and accountability that
it can actually give an organization.
For people to understand it and to see
it and you can find out exactly what is
going on at any given time in those
organizations.
So two examples I just want to talk
about where
data could help. Rabbi Blatt earlier
spoke about alcoholism in the from
community.
Balabatin,
Kiddish clubs.
But in Israel there's a phenomenon now
that both men 17, 18, 19, 20
that is across the board,
every Yeshiva
from the best from the Aleph to Bet to
Gimmel, it doesn't make a difference,
where alcoholism is completely accepted.
Nobody talks about it. Nobody says it's
a problem.
Says it's just part of life.
Nothing's being done.
So the fact that you're seeing it on a
Balabatin level
isn't really surprising
because we're seeing it much earlier.
Yes, there are many reasons why in the
Yeshivas like there's a lot of freedom.
There's a lot of bars.
Alcohol age is lower, the legal age, but
I don't think the legalities of it has
ever gotten into the way of somebody who
wants to get it.
So we don't know. So I have a hunch,
but I don't know what the truth is.
One of the ways to find out what the
truth is is to be able to follow and to
document and to see the cases and to see
what happens and to follow through with
them and then we'll actually know
where it starts from. What's the
cover-up?
Are they using alcohol
as a means to numb the pain
of abuse,
of a broken family?
Or are they addicted?
And the flip side of that is really good
research
in the from community, which today is
actually happening as Zev alluded to.
There's a phenomenal institute it's
called the Institute of Applied Research
and Community Collaboration, ARC.
It's actually run by Dr. Yitzchok
Schechter, somebody who I worked with
when I was working in Monsey as a
clinician.
And Dr. Schechter did an unbelievable
study. I think it was the first
study that was done
to understand was the divorce study
in the from world.
In the from world,
some of the numbers that he came out
with,
they interviewed 500 respondents to the
study.
There were 310 divorced respondents and
194 is actually 404 504 194 respondents
who were married.
And they asked a
slew of questions to find out what are
the contributing factors to divorce in
the from world.
There's a lot of data and he's still
mining the data and going through it.
But these are some of the early results
from his research.
First of all, divorce in the from world
in this study is holding at about 10%.
You think about it compared to the rest
of the world, that's amazing.
The marriage rate in the from world is
at about 80 to 85%.
It's most of the people in the from
world
it's part of our value system to get
married.
But the 10% that gets divorced,
what he uncovered
was that 57% of those divorces were
acrimonious, contentious,
and had tremendous issues going along
the way
through the divorce process.
Why that is,
everyone can have a guess.
But in terms of the contributing factors
to what actually
causes or potentially causes
divorce,
verbal and emotional abuse was one of
the highest metrics.
50% of women said it was one of the
highest.
28% for men.
Being put down and demeaned, 49% for
women, 37% for men.
Sexual issues, 42% for women, 32% for
men. Mental illness,
everyone knows that mental illness is
big. 40% for women and 29% for men.
Financial differences, almost no
discrepancy, 29 to 28%.
Different life goals,
also very low, 29% to 23%.
But what they found in the study
is that in 50
seven, I'm sorry,
is that is sexual abuse
after asking these respondents,
sexual abuse was seven times more likely
and more common among divorced
respondents than married individuals.
Let me repeat that. It's seven times
more common.
Not one, not two, seven times more
common they found it amongst the
divorced couples than amongst the
married individuals.
Physical abuse was only three times
more common
in the divorced couples.
Sexual abuse
is something that
destroys a person when they're young.
Destroys a person when they're an
adolescent.
Destroys a person when they're a young
married person.
It destroys families from the top down
or from the bottom up.
It doesn't differentiate
between
what type of Jew you are, what type of
person you are.
It has an ultimate destructive factor.
One of the ideas was that, you know,
there could be an implementation
of specific protocols for chosson kallah
teachers to notice, to figure out, to
see signs of abuse.
People who have been abused, been
sexually abused,
they can have wonderful marriages and
amazing lives.
But it has to be detected and it has to
be treated.
And it has to be speech.
Svie has broken down all the barriers.
But there's always more to do and
there's more to go.
You know, in Israel, one of the things
that we found
and one of the calls, very common calls
that we get
are from seminary and yeshiva students.
Discussing, finally disclosing for the
first time in their life to anybody
that they've been abused.
Why?
I've heard that Eretz Yisrael makes you
a maskim, but why are they disclosing
this?
I have a theory.
Other people have theories.
One theory is because when they come to
Israel, they're thousands and thousands
of miles away for the first time from
their abuser
or from the environment of their abuse.
From reliving that trauma over and over
and over again for the first time in
their life, they're actually
free.
And they're able to open and ask and
reach
and hopefully receive the treatment that
they need and it's better late than
never.
If we can reach them then,
we can reach all those divorced couples,
all those people, all those marriages,
all those children of divorced couples.
And hopefully be able to treat them and
help them through it.
My own theory
is that I think when you go to Eretz
Yisrael, for many of us that learned in
yeshiva in Israel, in the seminary
girls,
you you you go to many different places
for Shabbos.
You go to cousins, friends, uncles,
aunts, friends of cousins of uncles and
aunts and uncles and aunts of friends
and cousins and you end up in so many
different places in Eretz Yisrael from
top to bottom,
everywhere on the religious spectrum.
And you see, sometimes for the first
time, multiple types of normal, healthy
relationships that some of these people
have never seen. You're exposed
to what healthy life looks like in a
different prism.
And that is very jarring for a child
who's 18, 19 years old
and is used to their parents or their
family or their environment and that's
all they know and that's all they see.
So it's no wonder that they're able to
open and realize there's something else
here and I don't have it and I want
that.
And that call,
that hesitancy to call or to have a
place to call, that's the need for them
to be able to come out with it and be
able to get it because we are saving the
next generation.
I just want to close with a small idea.
I know the idea, the the slogan for the
conference
is that I'm not alone because
Where do we find the first place in the
Torah that it talks about friendship?
Where is the first place that it
actually talks about a type of
relationship
that is not a father, not a mother, not
a brother, not a sister, not a husband,
not a wife. Friends.
I think,
don't quote me,
but I think the first time we find the
idea of friendship in the Torah
is when Yehudah
was basically excommunicated from his
brothers.
And he finds himself in a foreign place
and he has a friend. The Torah calls him
Chira
who was Re'eihu Ha'Adullami. Was his
friend.
What What Who cares?
But listen to the type of friend that he
was.
We know the story with Yehudah, he goes
and there's he meets a prostitute and
it's
Tamar. He doesn't know who she is.
And what happens he comes back, he gives
his coat, he gives his staff, he gives
his ring as collateral. Eventually he's
going to send payments.
He gives the collateral to Chira and he
says, "Go pay her."
And he goes.
And he doesn't just pay her, he looks
for her, he tries to find her, he looks
here, he looks there, he comes back,
comes back, he says, "Yehudah,
L'einah lo matzasi osah. I didn't find
her.
She's not there." And Yehudah says,
"Okay,
it's meant to be."
What is the root of the word Re'eihu?
It doesn't call him chaver.
Re'eihu, the root of that word is rah.
Is bad.
A true friend,
this is the first time the Torah hits on
it, the true friend, the true
relationship is there when a person is
in a bad situation. That is a friend.
That is a person who will go no matter
what my friend needs, no matter what
he's
he Whatever it is, I have to go
for the zeinah? I will do it cuz that's
what he needs.
And right after that, we find that he
admits and everything is
amazing.
But that's the first place we find it.
When somebody is in crisis, when
somebody is in their deepest depths
of Gehenna and they have nowhere else to
go and nowhere else to turn.
It's easy to be friendly with somebody
and to be there for somebody when
everything's fine. But you're there for
them
and you are there, that is Re'eihu.
And we know the mitzvah of v'ahavta
l'rei'acha kamocha.
So I hope
we'll be able to continue to grow
and to continue to break down barriers
and not to take no for an answer and be
the friends for the people that need it.
Thank you.