Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of sexual violence, including harassment, rape, abuse, and other forms.
Sexual Violence
The Latest
-
News Hynes Is Late To Push for Mandate Law
Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes says he is pushing for passage of a new state law to force rabbis to report child sex allegations to authorities. But lawmakers say Hynes has joined the legislative fray late in the state capital of Albany, and time is running out for any measure to pass this year. “If…
-
Israel News Israeli Anger Over ‘African’ Crime Wave
A crime wave blamed on Africans, including two recent rapes, has stoked long-standing hostility toward the country’s estimated 60,000 illegal African immigrants and sparked an ugly wave of retaliatory violence against them. Tel Aviv police say that on May 15, several African men sexually assaulted a woman. Two days later, authorities announced the arrests of…
-
News Reporting Abuse, Are Hasidic Women Liberated?
In this week’s podcast, host Josh Nathan-Kazis talks with staff writer Paul Berger about the controversial position held by the Orthodox umbrella group Agudath Israel on reporting child sex abuse. Then, Josh talks with Forward contributor Dvora Meyers about a series of blog posts debating whether Hasidic women can be considered ‘liberated.’ Finally, we say…
-
News Agudath Israel: Abuse Claims Go to Rabbis
An Orthodox parent whose child tells him he’s been sexually abused may not take that child’s claim to the police without first getting religious sanction from a specially trained rabbi, the head of America’s leading ultra-Orthodox umbrella group has told the Forward. But one year after acknowledging that no such registry of trained rabbis exists,…
-
Life Tel Aviv Rape, Blanket Indictment
It never ceases to amaze me how some so-called leaders will use women’s issues to advance their own agendas that have nothing to do with women. The overtly racist statements coming from the Shas government minister Eli Yishai last week in light of a Tel Aviv rape case were particularly troubling. When the police arrested…
-
Breaking News Accused Rabbi’s Supporters Clash With Protesters
Two ultra-Orthodox Jews were reportedly arrested after a confrontation between supporters of a Brooklyn rabbi accused of sex abuse and protesters. The Daily News reported that scores of demonstrators faced off against a much larger crowd of supporters of Rabbi Nechemya Weberman, who is accused of abusing a teenage girl, in Williamsburg. Police were called…
-
Opinion Failure of Leadership on Child Sex Abuse
On a recent Sunday morning, I glanced at my newspaper and had another “cringe” moment. The story on the front page of The New York Times, like the Sholom Rubashkin, Bernie Madoff and Baruch Goldstein stories before it, exposed an underworld of evil with Jews at the center. This time, the papers focused on child…
-
Life In Tel Aviv Case, Why Did We Assume Rape?
When the woman at the center of a very public and highly publicized Tel Aviv orgy, which The Sisterhood’s Allison Kaplan Sommer wrote about here, confirmed to police that she had not been coerced or raped, I was relieved. Why had we assumed she was a victim in the first place? According to reports, the…
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion The group behind Project 2025 has a plan to protect Jews. It will do the opposite.
- 2
Film & TV Bonhoeffer biopic tells of a pastor turned would-be Hitler assassin — but is the story true?
- 3
News Texas schools want to add Queen Esther to the curriculum. Here’s why Jews (and many Christians) are opposed.
- 4
News What Mike Huckabee’s ‘Kids Guide to Israel’ says about his views
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion Netanyahu was right to end the war in Lebanon — now Gaza must follow
-
Culture 10 wicked ways to avoid talking about Gaza and Trump this Thanksgiving
-
Fast Forward Israeli security cabinet approves ceasefire with Hezbollah, paving way for end of yearlong conflict in Israel’s north
-
Culture Who are the most (and least) Jewish Peanuts characters?
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism