No More Excuses

The Abuse Scandal in Nachlaot has become fully exposed in the the past day or two thanks to A Mother in Israel's translation of the Israel HaYom article. I warn you in advance, it's terrible. It will leave you reeling, and if you can't handle it, you shouldn't read it. 


I can't (won't) post a link here because my kids are my biggest blog fans and I don't want them reading details or anything about it. A and J, you are young. There is much time to hear horrible things. And there are plenty of horrible things to hear. You will thank me later, I promise. The rest of you are savvy enough to do your own internet search and find the article that A Mother in Israel has posted on her blog. A and J, don't even think about it. 


That said, and you now having read it, take a deep breath. Cry a little and have some tea. That's what I did. I heard about it over a week ago, so I may be ahead of some of you and behind a lot of you. Now, after your cry, come and get angry with me. Get angry for those kids, and their parents and the fact that they can't even promise their babies that these monsters are in jail. 


We all have a lot of questions: How could this have gone on for over a year and no one noticed? How could these same monsters have been one and the same people who the parents welcomed into their homes week after week. How could such things have happened right under the parents' noses? How could such a thing have gone on, period?


I don't have time or the heart to get into it again. Like I said, every time I dwell on it, it only saddens and depresses me. I think simply that we are a trusting people. We trust our neighbors and our fellow Jews. It's a lesson that Leiby Kletzky a'h helped us learn the hard way. Maybe we need to stop being so trusting. Maybe we need to talk to our kids more about the realities of our sad, sad world and tell them not to be too trusting either. 


The hardest thing to stomach is that most of these "people" (if we can call them that) are still roaming the streets. Due to the parents "tampering" with evidence (by questioning the children themselves before they were brought to the police, or even showing them pictures of the suspects), most of the testimony of the children has been thrown out and is inadmissible in court. In the article it says the testimony of one 3 year old victim was thrown out because the parents gave her candy so she would speak to the police. Bribery? Coercion? Who the H knows. But it's maddening. 


So here we are again. There are lunatics down the block from me burning trash, slashing tires of buses as they go by, harassing young girls, and generally abusing passersby. The police have to be begged to interfere, and do so only after they received some really bad PR on several news channels. And  once again, in this horrible story the law actually stands in the way of true justice. I wonder how these detectives or interrogators can sleep at night. Maybe I've watched one too many a cop show late at night, but I always understood justice to be something that the police WANT. Something that in this case they will stand up for and get these losers off the streets. 


Honestly, Israeli police, I've had it. Find a way. Get past whatever legalese or fear of "wrongdoing" that's holding you back. Risk losing your job. Show some moral conviction and some strength of character. Get this scum off  of the streets, period. Case closed. No more excuses.