Israel Rabbi Jailed for Molesting Boys in Yeshiva
(JTA) — An Ashdod rabbi was sentenced to three years in jail for molesting three boys he taught at a religious elementary school.
On Tuesday, the Beersheba District Court also gave Avraham Shemesh, 51, a one-year suspended sentence and ordered him to pay approximately $4,000 to each of the victims he molested on school grounds in 2015, Ashdod News reported Wednesday. Under a plea agreement, Shemesh admitted to the crimes, which included groping clothed boys and having them strip to verify a halachic standard that did not exist.
In one case, Shemesh caressed and kissed the penis of a student.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO