10/05/2012 - Myclipp

advisers to Mr. Hynes. “He would listen, and if there
were merit, he might rethink something, but Joe’s his
own man.” Brooklyn’s highly cloistered ultra-Orthodox
Jewish community — by some estimates, more than
200,000 people, the largest outside of Israel — would
present challenges for any prosecutor. Informing on a
fellow Jew to a secular authority is traditionally seen as
a grave sin, and victims who do come forward can face
intense communal intimidation to drop their cases. In
part for this reason, of the roughly 1,200 cases Mr.
Hynes’s sex crimes unit handles each year, few until
recently involved ultra-Orthodox Jews, though experts
said the rate of sexual abuse in these communities
was believed to occur at the same rate as in society
over all. But even when Mr. Hynes’s office did bring
cases, they often ended in plea bargains that victims
and their families believed were lenient. The Jewish
Week, in a 2008 editorial, described Mr. Hynes’s
attitude toward these cases as “ranging from passive
to weak-willed.” Rabbi Zwiebel of Agudath Israel
defended Mr. Hynes’s record. “The D.A. has made a
conscious effort to be sensitive to the cultural nuances
of the different communities that he works with,” said
Rabbi Zwiebel, though even he believes the names of
those convicted should be publicized for the safety of
the community. Outreach Program Formed Mr. Hynes
seemed to turn a page in 2009 when he announced
the creation of Kol Tzedek. The announcement came
in the wake of criticism after a 2008 plea deal he made
with Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, a grade school teacher at a
Flatbush yeshiva who had been the subject of sexual
abuse complaints to rabbinical authorities for more
than 30 years.Jo Craven McGinty, Griff Palmer and
Tom Torok contributed reporting. This article has been
revised to reflect the following correction:Correction:
May 11, 2012
A previous version of this article misspelled the
surname of the executive vice president of Agudath
Israel of America as Zweibel. In the plea deal, which at
least one victim’s father opposed, Mr. Hynes reduced
two felony counts of sexual abuse to a single
misdemeanor charge of endangering the welfare of a
child. The rabbi received three years’ probation and
was not required to register as a sex offender.“That
case really got the advocacy movement rolling,” said
Mark Appel, founder of Voice of Justice, an advocacy
group unrelated to the district attorney’s program of the
same name. “People were so angry.” Mr. Hynes’s
aides said they had made more than 40 presentations
to community members promoting Kol Tzedek. And of
the few cases that yielded convictions that The Times
was able to identify, the outcomes were roughly similar
to cases involving offenders who were not
ultra-Orthodox. Still, the new effort has not quieted the
criticism. Marci A. Hamilton, a professor of
constitutional law at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of
Law at Yeshiva University, blamed Mr. Hynes for not
The New York Times/ - Politics, Sex, 11 de Maio de 2012
CLIPPING INTERNACIONAL (Constitutional Law)
speaking out against the ultra-Orthodox position that
mandates that allegations must be first reported to
rabbis. The position potentially flouts a state law that
requires teachers, social workers and others to report
allegations of sexual abuse immediately to the
authorities. She said Mr. Hynes was essentially
allowing rabbis to act as gatekeepers. “That’s exactly
what the Catholic Church did, what the Latter-day
Saints did, what the Jehovah’s Witnesses did,” said
Ms. Hamilton, author of “Justice Denied: What America
Must Do to Protect Its Children.” Victims’ rights groups
say Mr. Hynes has also failed to take a strong stand
against rabbis and institutions that have covered up
abuse, and has not brought charges recently against
community members who have sometimes pressed
victims’ families not to testify. Ms. White, his liaison to
the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, said the district
attorney had few options, in part because some victims
declined to implicate those who threatened them,
fearful that if they did, they would face even more
pressure. “I always feel so bad for those parents,
because you watch the shock on their face when they
find out that their child has been abused, and then they
get all of the pressure,” Ms. White said. Mr. Hynes’s
refusal to publicize the names of people arrested
through Kol Tzedek has deepened suspicions among
victims’ rights groups, while winning praise from some
rabbis. “I think that’s where the rabbis put a little
pressure on him,” said Rabbi Shea Hecht, an informal
adviser to Mr. Hynes. “I know I went to speak to him
about that. I said ‘Listen, you got to do the arrest, you
go to do the investigation, but please don’t give out the
names before we know if the man is guilty.’ ” In
response to a Freedom of Information request by The
Times, Mr. Hynes’s office acknowledged that in the
“vast majority of cases, the disclosure of a defendant’s
name would not tend to reveal the identity of the
sex-crime victim.” But, the office said, because the
ultra-Orthodox community is “very tight-knit and
insular,” there is “significant danger” that disclosure
would cause victims to withdraw cooperation, making
prosecutions “extremely difficult, if not impossible.”
Several former prosecutors interviewed for this article
said the policy seemed to make little sense. “The idea
is that the more information you give out, the more
likely it is that victims might come forward with
complaints,” said Bennett L. Gershman, a former
Manhattan prosecutor who specializes in prosecutorial
conduct at Pace University Law School. “So the idea
that a prosecutor would conceal this kind of
information strikes me as illogical, and almost
perverse.”
Jo Craven McGinty, Griff Palmer and Tom Torok
contributed reporting. This article has been revised to
reflect the following correction:Correction: May 11,
2012
A previous version of this article misspelled the
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