by Deborah Walike Special to the Jewish Times
Baltimore Jewish Times - December 6, 2002
Victoria Polin says she wishes there was some kind of award she could bestow upon Beth Tfiloh Community School.
An alleged sexual predator was stopped Nov.
21 when the Jewish day school in Pikesville alerted authorities about
Adam Theodore Rubin, a former teacher and coach who was arrested and
charged with soliciting sex on the Internet from a 13-year-old female
Beth Tfiloh student.
Ms. Polin says she wants local Jews to study and discuss the case over and over again.
"Right now, because Beth Tfiloh had an
incident, it's an ideal time to get in," said Ms. Polin, who is
developing an international Jewish organization to combat childhood
sexual abuse and support survivors. "It is the time to teach kids about
'good touch, bad touch,' and we should honor those girls who came
forward to tell the authorities. Now, what you should do is grow with
it. It happened and the community should say, 'We won't let it happen
ever again.'"
An Upper Park Heights resident, Ms. Polin
has professional experiences with such cases as rape, incest, sexual
abuse and domestic violence. Besides being an art therapist, she is a
licensed clinical professional counselor recognized by the state of
Illinois who is working on her Maryland licensure. Ms. Polin said that
attention to reports of possible sexual improprieties is a rare
occurrence. In the alleged sex abuse by Mr. Rubin, Ms. Polin said Beth
Tfiloh's staff did all of the right things. They believed the child's
story, listened to her parents and called the police.
But normally, Ms. Polin said, possible child sexual abuse goes unnoticed for a variety of reasons.
Schools, agencies and child care facilities
are reluctant to report their suspicions because of liability in
possibly falsely accusing an innocent individual. Many administrators,
she said, are more concerned with the reputation of their facility and
will "hush-up" a problem. Most importantly, Ms. Polin feels that almost
all organizations suffer from a lack of basic education on the signs of
sexual abuse and how to deal with it.
Since Ms. Polin has only been in Baltimore
for a year, she said she does not know if any local Jewish facilities
have training for recognizing, reporting and providing therapy for
sexual abuse survivors. For this article, the Baltimore Jewish Times
interviewed administrators from Beth Tfiloh Community School, the Jewish
Community Center of Greater Baltimore, Hillel of Greater Baltimore, the
Beth El Pauline Mash Early Childhood Education Center and Bais Yaakov
School for Girls.
Among them, only Beth Tfiloh had a "crisis
team" prepared in what Ms. Polin said is a very specialized sort of
training for sexual abuse.
"[Child care providers, educators and
facilitators] need ongoing training, and it has to be by someone with
training in sexual abuse," said Ms. Polin. "It can't be just any
therapist because most are not trained in this area and most, without
knowing it, could put blame on the victim, the parent, or the teacher.
Once [teachers] recognize all these symptoms, the school has to make a
system for reporting to someone who is highly trained in sexual abuse,
beyond the administration, who may want to keep it hush-hush for the
school's reputation."
Zipora Schorr, director of education at Beth
Tfiloh, said her school has "a network of support" and the crisis team,
and they openly discuss and train staff in sexual abuse awareness.
"Five years ago, I would say there was a
huge amount of denial," said Mrs. Schorr. "But with all we've learned
and all that has happened in the Jewish and non-Jewish communities, we
have a heightened degree of acceptance and awareness. These are the ills
of society, and the Jewish community is not immune."
Buddy Sapolsky, executive director of the
JCC of Greater Baltimore, said the center checks all references and
conducts a criminal background check for every employee. He said the
preschool and Camp Milldale work closely with Jewish Family Services'
social workers, who train the staff to recognize physical and sexual
abuse and are regular consultants.
"Our preschool staff talks to the kids about
'good touch, bad touch,' and the camp people talk to the kids," said
Mr. Sapolsky. "But those discussions happen based on the relationship
with the kids by the staff. They are not required, but they are
encouraged."
But Ms. Polin warns that criminal background
checks and references are also not enough. Although she admits there is
no foolproof way to catch a potential sex abuser, Ms. Polin maintains
that specific training and aggressive reference-checking practices —
including utilizing the disclosure of information available since the
recent passage of Megan's law opening up access to names and addresses
of convicted sex offenders — could minimize the number of predators
hired.
Psychological testing, she said, would
probably not work since "sociopaths usually pass a lie detector test."
And criminal background checks are not a tell-all, since Ms. Polin cites
the statistic that pedophiles will act out an average of 118 times
before ever being reported.
"Pedophiles often go into service — Girl
Scout leaders, rabbis, teachers," said Ms. Polin. "So people who hire
need to be trained. They have to listen to words that aren't being said
when they're interviewing, and when they check references they have to
push for the truth."
Rabbi Naftoli Hexter, middle school
principal at Bais Yaakov School for Girls in Owings Mills, admitted that
his school does "not often" conduct criminal background checks on staff
members. In particular, he said that when a teacher comes from within
the local Jewish community, he feels it is "not necessary."
Rabbi Hexter said every potential staff member goes through a series of interviews, and the candidate's references are checked.
"Nowadays, we have to listen because of this
new phenomenon," he said. "We don't in any way teach 'good touch, bad
touch,' but we constantly meet to discuss, 'Are we preparing the girls
properly for whatever they need to be ready for?'"
While sexual abuse is widely unreported and
ignored in the general society, Ms. Polin feels the Jewish community is
especially inadequately prepared to handle the problem. She said the
idea for her organization, the Awareness Center, stemmed from counseling
survivors of sexual abuse and the realization that there were no Jewish
outlets for victims.
Although there has been little research done
within any Jewish community to determine how prevalent this issue is,
Ms. Polin said that the number of e-mails she is receiving since opening
her Jewish survivors of sexual abuse Web site makes her believe there
is "a serious problem."
"[In previous counseling work] people called
looking for a rabbi they could go to," said Ms. Polin. "When they
called a rabbi, they were told their stories were loshon horah [gossip
forbidden by Jewish law] and no one would believe them. They were angry.
They were abused, and they were abused again trying to find help. One
of the main things they want to know is where was God during this time,
and they could only find some missionary who was loving and kind to
them."
Even before last month's Beth Tfiloh case,
Ellen Marks, director of both Beth El Pauline Mash Early Childhood
Education Centers, said she felt that sexual abuse was not "indigenous
to any one community." But Mr. Rubin's arrest, she said, still shocked
her.
"It's just unconscionable that anybody could violate a child," Ms. Marks said. n
Deborah Walike is a former Baltimore Jewish Times staff writer who now lives in Cooperstown, N.Y.
