News of the conviction of Baruch Michael Lebovitz for child sexual molestation and the maximum of 32 years came to me via email under the heading, “Thank God for sunlight.”
Michael Orbach reports in the Jewish Star that a daughter of Mr. Lebovitz asked the question, “Don’t you think we’re victims too?”
Of course the daughter was quoted as saying that she believed her dad to be 100 percent innocent.
Of course, of course, of course.
It’s all such a shame.
I agree with the daughter. She is a victim of her father as well.
When the issue of the late Rabbi Ephraim Shapiro’s molestation transgressions surfaced, two major questions were asked of me. One, why report on a deceased person who can’t defend himself? The other, “don’t you understand the impact this will have on his children and grandchildren.”
In an Orthodox world of shidduchim where a person’s choice of wearing apparel and Shabbat table cloth sometimes comes into play, it’s not surprising that this THE issue of issues.
Many years ago while living in Detroit, my wife and I employed a babysitter, a frum high school student. She was and probably still is a remarkable young woman. Indeed, we trusted the care of our children to her.
She had a brother, however, who was suspended from his yeshiva allegedly, because he got caught smoking marijuana. His travails were almost common knowledge in the community. When I picked up the babysitter to bring her to our house one Saturday night, she told me that her biggest worry was that she’d not be able to get a good shidduch because of her brother’s drug use.
She was 16. She didn’t say a word of concern about her brother’s well being. Nothing came up about where her brother would be going to school in the future, or how his drug issues could be helped. It was all about the wedding.
Fast forward several years, and after the stories were written on Rabbi Shapiro, the issue of shidduchim for his future generations was thrown my way.
I do feel that his future generations are victims. I only wish that knowledge of the impact on their own family would be enough for a perp to keep his hands off of us. But Ephraim Shapiro didn’t respect nor love his future generations enough to keep from impacting their lives and hampering the lives of his victims.
The same can be said for Baruch Michael Lebovitz.
I think his daughter is a victim of her own father’s actions as well.
I wish for her “sunlight.”
Sunlight brings truth.