Australian Sex Abuse Suspect Freed on $1M Bail
An Australian-born man accused of sexually molesting boys while associated with the Chabad headquarters in Sydney is free to return to his family in America after posting $1 million bail.
Daniel (Gug) Hayman faced a local court in Sydney on Wednesday, but Magistrate Clare Farnan allowed him to return to Los Angeles after his father offered a $500,000 bond on top of the $500,000 Hayman had already put up, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
Hayman, 49, who flew to Sydney earlier this month for the funeral of his mother, was arrested after police were tipped off by Tzedek, an advocacy group for Jewish victims of child sex abuse.
Hayman was charged on Nov. 4 for allegedly assaulting two boys, then aged 14 and 16, between 1985 and 1986.
He is alleged to have preyed upon them while he was working as a volunteer at a camp associated with the Yeshiva Center in Bondi, which houses the headquarters of Chabad in Sydney.
He was charged with an additional offense this week, with police alleging one count of indecent assault on a 12-year-old, also in the 1980s, according to the Herald.
Manny Waks, a spokesperson for the victims, said he was disappointed Hayman was allowed to leave the country. “He can now easily travel to a destination that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with Australia, such as Israel,” he told JTA.
Hayman is the first alleged child sex offender to be arrested from the Sydney Jewish community. In Melbourne, two former employees of the Yeshivah Center, which houses the headquarters of Chabad, are behind bars, with David Kramer jailed in July for crimes against four students in the 1990s and David Cyprys, who has pleaded guilty to multiple offenses in the 1980s and 1990s, awaiting sentencing. A non-Jewish former coach of a junior Maccabi basketball team also is behind bars.
Although Hayman was involved in the Yeshiva Center, he was never an employee or teacher with responsibilities for children, according to Chabad.
Media reports have suggested that Hayman’s alleged assaults had been brought to the attention of Pinchus Feldman, the chief rabbi of Chabad in Sydney, but he said he had no recollection of that.
Rabbi Moshe Gutnick, president of the Organization of Rabbis of Australasia, admitted earlier this year that he failed to report an anonymous compliant about Hayman to the police in the 1980s, before mandatory reporting was enforced.
The next hearing in the case is scheduled for December 10, but the magistrate excused Hayman from attending unless a plea is entered.
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