Mrs. Bluth,
I was greatly disturbed by your response to the mother who wrote in two weeks ago. She described witnessing her husband sexually abusing their two-year-old son. From her letter it is clear that she had known he had done this before to at least two other children. Your telling her to leave him was not enough. She needed to know that not only should she leave in order to protect her child, she must also call the police and report him to child welfare. By not telling her this, and assuming her “rav” will give her good advice, you are culpable if anything further happens to this child or any others this man abuses. If you have this woman’s contact information you have a duty to report this abuse yourself. Not reporting the abuse condones it. Please take my advice and reach out to the proper authorities to handle this matter appropriately.
Mrs. Bluth,
I was very dismayed by your column of June 16. As a social worker I feel strongly that not only should she leave, her husband should have been identified as a child molester. Legal action should be brought to protect other children from this man. How many other children may be traumatized if action is not taken? Let’s make sure our children have protection from this child predator. It is the law to identify this man.
Thanks,
Madalyn Frydman, LCSW-C
Dear Mrs. Bluth,
I was shocked to read the letter from the mother whose husband was a child molester; it brought back so many horrible memories. Over twenty years ago I also caught my husband abusing one of our sons and called into a Jewish help hotline. I didn’t know what else to do and was too ashamed to tell my family. They immediately set about reporting the incident to the authorities and the ACS came and took all the children out of my home. My husband managed to convince the authorities that I was the one who was abusive and that I was mentally unstable. To make a long story short, because even the telling of it rips old scars over wounds that will never heal, the community and rabbis rallied around my husband and it took many legal battles and years of lost time before I was allowed to see my children. All I can say is that sometimes good intentions don’t work and the best advice was what you gave this woman, to get out with her child as fast as she can, go as far away as she can and not look back. I wish I had never made that call because in the end, I lost my children anyway.
Dear Mrs. Bluth,
I belong to a group that mentors abused woman and we meet bi-monthly to discuss related issues and ideas to help our members in their struggle to reclaim some quality of life after suffering the horrors of a violent or abusive situation. Very often, your column comes up for debate by some of our members and your observations often prove to be sound and constructive. The most heated debate took place over your recent column. Two of our members broke down in tears stating that had they just run off with their children instead of involving Children’s Services, they would not be going through the bitter court battles and being separated from their children. While others said that these men needed to be reported, the greater consensus was that woman who report their spouses for sexually abusing their children often suffer the loss of their children when they are taken from the home. Most seem to feel that reporting these incidences often incriminated the women as being negligent parents for allowing the abuse by virtue of living with the abuser! We live in a sick and twisted world, do we not?
Dear Friends,
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this controversial issue. I have received quite a few letters telling me that I neglected to advise all involved to report this fiend to the authorities. By law, that is the expected protocol and I fell short. If the young mother reads this week’s column, she, hopefully, will do exactly that. As her letter offered no definitive information or identification of any kind, there is little I can do except to encourage her to report him.
Although I do my best to try to address the most vital steps one need take to extricate themselves from imminent danger, sometimes doing the right thing backfires and brings about the wrong outcome, sadly proven by the last two letters above. Justice is not always just and, in some rare instances (as shown above), when reporting any crime innocents will suffer just by their affiliation with the guilty. I am often hard-pressed to supply an answer that will satisfy everyone so I try to deal with the direct need of the letter-writer without going outside of that perimeter.
So, let me be clear and say that any sexual predator, husband, brother, father, son, relative, friend, rebbe or stranger, male or female, must be reported to the authorities for the greater good and safety of all our children. But first, pack up as quickly as possible and leave, removing the victims from further harm. This should be the first course of action followed directly by reporting the abuse to the authorities.