Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
News

Sex Abuse Prevention Program Targets Orthodox Camps

This summer, as parents pack their children’s things for Orthodox Jewish sleep away camps, their soon-to-be counselors are preparing in a different way: By taking a sex abuse prevention course.

The course, created two years ago by an Israel-based nonprofit called ASAP, will be in use this year at over a hundred summer camps, mostly in the U.S.

“Camps are very vulnerable,” said Ora Kalfa, ASAP’s program director. “Very unsupervised, in many ways, and there’s a lot of access to children by adults and other children.”

Sleep away camps are a nearly ubiquitous part of Orthodox Jewish life in the U.S. The counselors, like at non-Orthodox camps, are young men and women not much older than the campers themselves. The Forward reported last week on a woman’s allegations that a counselor at her Orthodox Jewish summer camp for girls sexually abused her.

ASAP created its program, Kalfa said, after encountering many survivors of summer camp sex abuse through a program it runs funding therapy for abuse survivors in the Orthodox community in the U.S.

“We have seen countless cases of victims who were abused in camp,” Kalfa wrote in an email.

Thought it was first published in 2016, the program has drawn increased interest this year, amid the #metoo movement and growing attention to issues of sexual abuse. It’s now in use by over one hundred Jewish overnight camps in the U.S. and Israel, Kalfa said. The materials are designed primarily for Orthodox audiences, and eschew the use of words like “sexual” that may not be acceptable in certain Orthodox settings.

The course, which is free for camps to use, aims to train counselors to identify abuse, and to be aware of boundaries.

“We’re training people to be careful, to follow certain boundaries, and also to be able to identify and react,” Kalfa said.

The program includes a series of four videos intended to be viewed by counselors before camp begins. In them, cartoons of male counselors and campers in yalmukes demonstrate appropriate and inappropriate behaviors. The videos show only male cartoon figures, presumably for modesty reasons.

“You can teach prevention and you can bring awareness without exposing counselors or campers to words or concepts that are not taught in this community,” Kalfa said.

In one video, titled “Boundaries,” instructs: “Touching a camper anywhere below the shoulder is forbidden.”

“Even though you mean well, someone else might not,” the video concludes. “So, let’s keep each other in check, and make sure no one puts themselves in a situation where they could hurt a camper, or be falsely accused of hurting one.”

Another coaches counselors on how to respond to reports of sexual abuse. “Say things like: ‘I believe you.’ ‘I’m sorry.’ ‘I am proud of you for coming to me.’”

At the end of the sequence of videos, the counselors fill out a quiz about what they’ve learned.

The director of one Orthodox Jewish sleep away camp, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue, said that his camp had been using ASAP’s program for three years. “We require that every staff member not only watch the video, take a test, and provide us with the ASAP certification before working in the camp,” the director said. “It builds an awareness of appropriate touch, and space between staff members and campers.”

Kalfa said that the program is intended to be completed before counselors arrive at camps, but at ultra-Orthodox camps where counselors may be barred by religious observance from using the internet, it’s completed on the premises once they arrive.

ASAP also provides guides for parents and for camp directors. Among other things, the guide for parents instructs them to tell their children that “speaking is not lashon hara,” or forbidden gossip.

Now, Kalfa said, secular Jewish camps have also begun to use the program, including JCC camps, even though it was not designed specifically for them.

“Our program was created to prevent such devastating tragedies from happening again,” Kalfa said.

Contact Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected] or on Twitter, @joshnathankazis

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.