On My Mind
Executive editor — issues and opinionsMolestation in the basement, a Torah upstairs
I have a friend who was sexually molested as a child by an adult in the man’s home, on his boat, and in the nearby synagogue.
The perp, a physician, decked out his basement with a wet bar, wood paneling, pool table, the whole nine yards. Cool eye candy to an adolescent boy.
When the perp, who is an “Orthodox” Jew, was hosting my friend’s family for Shabbat lunches, he’d have this 12-year-old in his basement and have his way with him. Think of that for a moment, a child is being molested in the basement while his parents are upstairs in the dining room singing the Birchat HaMazon (grace over meals).
So my friend is now a young man in his early 20s. He no longer lives in the same area as the perp. He and his parents have pressed charges against the perp. Yet, something keeps the perp from going through the justice system. That “something” is cancer. The man who molested my friend is sick with cancer. He’s lost his medical license, because of the molestation charges, and the last time I checked, he wasn’t even compliant on his state’s sexual registry.
This man may avoid going to jail. He’s the father of six children. Yes, he’s sick. But he also impacted the life of my friend in such a detrimental way that it led to years of substance abuse, recovery, clinics, and therapy. A few minutes of non-consensual fondling, the doctor gets satisfied, and my friend’s life is in ruins.
This same man used to send emails to my wife and to my oldest child when she was a teen. I never felt comfortable with this, and I asked him to stop, and I asked my wife and daughter to not answer him.
So I went recently online and surfed the net and found his photo in a split second. It sickened me to look at his face, knowing what I know.
There was something else upstairs in his comfortable suburban home. There was a full-sized Torah standing in a glass case in the man’s dining room. On the floor below, he was ruining souls. On the floor above, he displayed a Torah.
What a metaphor.
This man is still not in jail. There is always a loophole, there is always a reason, a note, a plea that keeps him out.
It’s been suggested that he could die in jail because of his cancer.
He could die in jail, and it wouldn’t be the cancer’s fault.
I wish I could get that Torah out of his house.
More importantly, I wish I could reclaim my friend’s soul. It’s still down there in that horrific basement.
Thanks Doc.
You might survive the cancer.
You’ll never, however, outlive the stain on your life and on the lives of your victims.
Death won’t save you.
The Torah in your dining room won’t save you.
You are the cancer in this young man’s life.
It makes me so sick.
