Former Israel Police Rabbi Asher Melamed has decided to no longer sit idly by as the religious sector and especially the ultra-Orthodox community struggles with one of its greatest taboos: Sexual assault.
Melamed, 55, is undeterred in dealing with this very complex issue, and his efforts to combat the phenomenon have so far proved successful. All the cases he has dealt with have ended in reports to the authorities and have been fully exhausted – either by indictments or convictions of the perpetrators or by processes of healing justice.
As a former law enforcement official, Melamed, who a year ago founded the Israeli Protection Center, is in a unique position to warn of the failures in handling this issue, and believes he has found the way to somewhat mitigate this plight.
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"As a society, we have yet to internalize the meaning of rape and sexual assault," he says. "As someone who is guided by the Torah, the sentence I use every day is 'for just as a man rises up against his fellow and murders him, so is this case.' Rape, and in essence any sexual assault, are the murder of the soul. This is not a slogan. As opposed to someone who is murdered and dead and no longer suffers, the victims of sexual assault wake up every day to the murder of their soul. The Halacha [Jewish law] recognizes rape as murder, and from it we can learn all about the severity of punishment and the social responsibility we need in order to eradicate the phenomenon."
The headlines about the gang rape in Eilat, alongside the return of the lockdown, which has seen a spike in reports about domestic and sexual abuse and the phone lines at the Israeli Protection Center, which Melamed founded a year ago, have been very busy.
This is a unique center for multi-system support in cases of sexual assault, which include assistance and support for the victims and their families, locating attackers, and mediating between various elements in the communities and authorities.
"Unfortunately, our social ignoring of sexual assault is severe. All of us, with no exception, are responsible for this horrible phenomenon," Melamed says. "It's outrageous because it's not just that not everyone condemns the phenomenon, in some cases we see those who search for these horrible videos from the cases and want to spread them all over the place. We've lost direction."
As the lockdown now tightens, the center's staff is witnessing another spike in calls for assistance.
"During the pandemic, we've seen a rise of 40% in distress calls. Children and youth are more susceptible to sexual violence in the family. With time, the lockdown makes the trauma of the attack among past victims, and takes them back to a place where they once again need treatment."
Breaking the barriers
The holistic method that Melamed strives for in the treatment of sexual assault, originated in an issue that made him deal with the phenomenon during his role as police rabbi, especially during his long time activity on the issue inside the Hardi sector.
"There's this helplessness between the authorities and the communities because of the cultural gaps. I understood that we must break the barrier not only when it comes to the connection to the victims, but also a deep process of breaking all the barriers in the community so we can move towards a criminal trial."
For years, Melamed has been mediating between the ultra-Orthodox community and the authorities. That's why, for example, he pushed for dozens of Hardi women to be trained as police investigators in order to support victims with a culturally-appropriate language; it's why he held conferences between rabbis in various cities to encourage discussions over how Halacha addresses sexual assault, and why he facilitated meetings between Hardi figures and the police and state prosecution.
"The difficulty is first of all the attitude towards defamation and blasphemy," said Melamed. "The Halachic discussion about sexual assault demands in-depth work and bringing up the sources that deal with the issue in order to increase the significance of the act. We're talking about the fact that it is a mitzvah to publicize harmful acts done by someone. We make clear that it's actually blasphemy not to report them. There is a ruling by Rabbi Elyashiv, who says that if there is reasonable doubt that a person with authority harmed a child, it is a mitzvah to hand him over to the authorities, and beyond that, in his words – there is tikkun olam [repairing the world] in this. It must be brought up."
Q: Are there other considerations, too?
"Since this is a sector of a large community where many know each other, the difficulty is the lack of tools to find a balance between treating someone who hurt and murdered a soul and the cost the community will have to pay no matter what. People make calculations that if it comes out, many people will be hurt by the case, for example, the family of the perpetrator, and the fear that it may hurt the prospect of matchmaking."
Q: So, what can be done?
"In the Hardi sector I managed to reduce the phenomenon over time because we did in-depth work over many years, because I am someone who knows how to work with the authorities and mediate between them and people in the community, and no less important, I am looking at what happens the day after. The rabbis of the community cooperate with me because they know that I will fight for a gag order as long as it's not a public figure.
"In the same manner, I will make sure the perpetrator is arrested. I will arrest him at night and not in daylight in front of his wife and children. When they see that I fight for that, they know that they will remove the evil from within and will simultaneously reduce the harm for other community members, they feel protected and then they cooperate."
Breaking the cycle of violence
When a case comes to the Israeli Protection Center, the first step is mapping the environment of the victim, including mapping the family and community. "I try to understand who's with them, who's against them, who is enabling this event, how I counsel the parents, the victim is never in a vacuum, they have brothers and sisters, they have parents. When a girl tells me that she opens her eyes in the morning and wants to die – imagine what it is for her when the parents fall apart when they find out.
"Sometimes you need to teach those involved to understand, not even to speak, so the victim can move towards rehabilitation without feeling overwhelmed and frightened. Our sensitivity to the meaning of supporting the victim and her surroundings needs to be much higher, to break all the barriers and pressures that may be working against her, way before we even speak of a criminal procedure."
Rabbi Asher Yechiel Castle, a mentor at the Zoharim and Afikei Or villages for at-risk Haredi youth, shocked the community a year ago when he revealed an ongoing sexual assault from a well-known figure in the community.
"The number of people who called me after the story came out was amazing, every story like this is a trigger for others to open up and come out about their assault, a critical step towards healing, and therefore I see it as a great mission," he says.
Castle kept the horrible secret for 22 years, and for three more years he deliberated and came to the decision to reveal the story, in order to help others reveal theirs.
"I heard about dozens of people that he assaulted. There are still some who can file a complaint, but many of them are scared. It's unfortunate and painful. Since he was a very respectable figure and came from a strong family, I understood that if I don't find the person willing to complain legally, the story will end with my word against his. If that's all that comes out of this – I didn't bring any use to any one and there was no point in it."
Castle's assailant was not arrested but is under supervision. "Rabbis called him and held the truth up to his face and told his wife and children. He is being guarded, and he can't see or teach children without the presence of his wife, according to what I understand and know."
A 'swiss cheese' solution
"The community is looking for 'magic solutions' so people who haven't sinned won't be hurt by the situation, only when things are closed quietly sometimes it goes under the radar. I know of a Hardi community in Israel where they caught someone who was sexually abusive. He was ostracized from the community, thrown out and warned that that they had their fingers on the pulse. Three years passed and he was 'caught red handed' in the place he moved to. There's no other option than to deal with the perpetrator and stop the cycle of violence once and for all."
According to Rabbi Melamed, the issue won't be solved as long as the meaning of sexual assault as murdering the soul is not internalized by all the professionals in public institutions. "A decade ago, I exposed a case of a pedophile who assaulted 130 children in about 130 families, all of them from one community. There was no response from social services to help the hundreds of families that completely collapsed. It's outrageous, because in the Defense Ministry, for example, when a soldier dies, the whole family gets support and help, it doesn't happen in cases of sexual assault, and this is the ignorance."
The vision of the Israeli Protection Center is to expand their call center and take care of all those involved in sexual assault, leaving no one out. The problem is, according to Melamed, that it doesn't happen on the state level.
"Our center trains teachers and professionals in yeshivas and schools, and also parents to identify attacks and assaults, but as long as there is no national government program on the issue, and a single language isn't created, we will be lost and continue with the statistics where one in five children is assaulted – it's a crime," says Melamed.
For a few months he pushed the legislation in parliament of the "training law" which was aimed at training all the professionals in the community and authorities, including teachers, social workers, rabbis, doctors, police, judges and lawyers in identifying assault, locating victims and using language that during the criminal trial will not make the victim experience a "second rape".
"There's no policy, no doctrine and we continue to fumble in eradicating the phenomenon, which is widespread. It's absurd that the Education Ministry invests in programs to prevent drug use and road safety – but not enough when it comes to sexual assaults. How does this happen? How can parents be trained to identify sexual assault among their children?
"In the schools it's not enough that a counselor knows how to identify assault, the people who see the kids day in and day out are the teachers, we need to give them the tools. A child will not have the strength to scream about his assault if he doesn't have an address.
"It's true. This type of identification will reduce the phenomenon. When the professionals have the tools to know how to speak with a child, a boy, they can understand them. When they show them that they are the address, they can locate the attacker and rehabilitate him. The location and identification in early stages is dramatic. A significant percentage of the perpetrators are boys who have been assaulted and turn into attackers. When things are hidden and you can't speak, there's no protection."
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Melamed guiding principle is the commandment of deterrence in Masekhet Avot, the ethics teachings. "When most of the cases are closed, there is no deterrence, when there is no protective discourse then there is no address for the victims. One of the travelling shows that the Center performs for parents and the education system is the solo act 'Chess' that was written by Pnina Levin. Her son kept a secret of sexual assault perpetrated by his uncle for 20 years. At the age of 32 he got cancer and died. He left her a dying wish: 'Do everything you can to stop the next case.'
"Dealing with sexual assault is much harder than dealing with cancer. That's what he is saying and like him, thousands of other victims. There is no other way but to bring about tikkun olam and shift the focus on the issue."
