Does the Jewish Community cover up sex scandals?

There exists in the Melbourne Jewish Community plenty of organisations, but lets face it, it’s a pretty small community1.

The arrest and charging of one David Samuel Cyprys, 43, a security guard at Melbourne’s Jewish boy school, Yeshivah College, is no doubt sending shock waves through the small community.  I’ve blogged about it already today.

The Jewish organisation, the Anti-Defamation Commission has been quick to point the finger at the media, and say that they haven’t covered anything up at all.  The ADC, according to their facebook page:

 fights antisemitism and racism and promotes respect and justice.

For the Jewish population of Melbourne, I believe this is an important aspect to ensure that antisemitism is challenged wherever it occurs.

The ADC on their website say this:

ADC has acted to defend the Jewish community over implications that it covered up sexual abuse. Media coverage of the trial of David Cyprys on indecent assault charges has unfairly implicated the entire Jewish community after a court was told sections of the community had protected the alleged sex offender.

The article that I quoted from The Age said this:

PROMINENT members of the Melbourne Jewish community lied to the police, covered up an alleged sex scandal and protected a man accused of repeatedly molesting children from a school in St Kilda East, a court has been told.

But, just quickly, keeping in mind the size of the Melbourne Jewish Community, lets look at this.  The chairman of the ADC is Anton Block, who was also a previous president of the JCCV.  The president of the JCCV is John Searle, who is a previous chairman of the ADC.

The ADC, according to this blog from Mikeybear, is an arm of the JCCV.  There also exists a community group called the CSG, the Community Security Group, that is controlled by the JCCV.

The CSG is voluntary, the webpage says:

The Community Security Group (CSG) is a team of skilled and dedicated volunteers who are carefully selected and appropriately trained.

My understanding is that Cyprys was involved in many ways within the community.  He was a security guard, on the board at the Elwood Talmud Torah Congregation and taught karate.

While the ADC is quick to distance itself, they seem to be suggesting it’s the media that’s got it wrong.  In fact, it seems to me that the media has reported information presented in court by the Police.

There’s some other questions here that should be asked and answered by these interconnected organistations that come under the stewardship of John Searle, who recently has been appointed to the role of  chairperson of the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission2.  In the interest of not covering things up, let’s understand how far entrenched Cyprys was in this community.  Did he have any involvement with the CSG?  Did he collaborate with the JCCV?  What other relationships did he have with members of the Executive of the JCCV?  And where does his unnamed partner fit in?

With Searle going into such a high profile position, surely these questions need answers.  The last thing VEOHRC needs is the scandal of a cover up.

Finally, without fully understanding how someone who has a known history of indecent assault managed to get involved in so much community action, why not hold the whole of the jewish community as responsible.  Surely someone from the school or one of the other organisations knew and should have shared this information.

In The Age in July this year:

In 2000, Mr Waks said, he was horrified to see Mr Cyprys was still providing security for Yeshivah Centre.

Come on, how can this happen?  Here’s someone asking the question and yet Cyprys continues for another 11 years.  It’s really appalling and needs a full and proper investigation with the Melbourne Jewish community.

  1. The Anti-defamation Commission website list it as 45,000 ↩
  2. Interesting the Victorian Liberal Party posts the media release on their site ↩

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3 Responses to Does the Jewish Community cover up sex scandals?

  2. Yeshiva boy says:
    September 9, 2011 at 5:19 pm

    jccv gotta stop covering for cyprys.

    maybe if he wasn’t shtooping their new executive director….

    they gotta fire her !! and put someone in there whos actually gonna defend kids, not shtoop a child molester.

    where the hell is john searl? off with the fairies?

    jccv have really buggered it up now. they are done for

  3. Mannie De Saxe says:
    September 9, 2011 at 11:02 pm

    Yeshiva boy’s choice of words above is very appropriate considering the subject matter:
    “covering”, “shtooping”, “fairies”, “buggered”.
    It is interesting that the JCCV is supposed to have set up a “GLBTI Reference Group” about which no details are available, and in the mean time an alleged child molester and the Jewish community are looking more and more like the Australian Catholic church and all its cover-ups.
    A plague on all their houses!