FR
EE
A new hope
Can Lebanon free itself from Hezbollah’s malign influence? Page 14
PROUD TO BE SUPPORTING
Telephone 020 8381 1717 www.allaboardshops.com
VOICE OF THE COMMUNITY 13 August 2020
•
23 Av 5780
•
Issue No.1171
•
@JewishNewsUK
It’s all about the charities we support
Yeshiva safeguarding is ‘like whack-a-mole’ Strictly-Orthodox schools have ‘disruptive influence’ on child safety, inquiry hears The commissioner charged with engaging yeshivas on child safeguarding said this week it is “like playing whack-a-mole” because once detected they up sticks and move, writes Adam Decker. Jim Gamble, independent child safeguarding commissioner of City and Hackney Safeguarding Children Partnership and a former senior policeman from Northern Ireland, made the comments under oath to public prosecutor Fiona Scolding. Gamble, who has spent seven years trying to engage yeshivas, was giving evidence on Tuesday via Zoom at the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, with strictly-Orthodox Jewish leaders responding yesterday. The commissioner said engagement from the Charedi community had been the most problematic of all the faith groups he had worked with. “No tradition, no culture can be allowed to prevent us from delivering the same level of safeguarding of children in one location as we do in another. That is the frustration that we feel. “We have it with other organisations – Christian churches where deacons and other have been very legalistic – but nowhere does it mani-
Jim Gamble giving evidence this week
fest itself on this scale, and with the disruptive influence that it does within this particular sect.” The public inquiry is considering the issue of child protection in religious organisations and settings, including child protection policies and safeguarding cultures in religious organisations in England and Wales. Further to his 20-page witness statement, Gamble said there were a “suspected 40 yeshivas”, which authorities call ‘unregulated education settings’, but it was “virtually impossible” to map them. He had asked strictly-Orthodox leaders for yeshivas’ locations but had had no response. Parents of Charedi boys aged 12-17 typically choose to send their sons to yeshivas to learn the Talmud, at which point Gamble said they “disappear from the system”, but while he said that 11 different religious organisations had engaged with his Commission, including its training, yeshivas had not. He told Scolding that trying to engage yeshivas was “like playing whack-a-mole… with locations that will move simply to avoid engagement”. He said his Commission had “at times made progress with Charedi leaders, at times that’s been driven backwards,” citing a “lack of trust with central government”. He said he would find he gains initial agreement, only to see that “dissipate”. Yeshivas have “a very narrow curriculum… those that support and deliver within that environment do not want to expand it in the way the Department for Education (DfE) or indeed Ofsted expect them to do and that creates a problem,” he said. “Even when we’re paying those in the community to deliver training, they can’t tell us – nor will those with a significant level of authority within the Charedi community tell us – where those yeshivas are. We’re left with Continued on page 4
LILY SEES HERSELF LIBERATED ON FILM FOR THE FIRST TIME A 96-year-old Holocaust survivor said this week she was “shocked and amazed” after viewing footage for the first time of her 20-year-old self (main picture, centre) being liberated from Buchenwald. Lily Ebert was shown the video recorded by US troops in June 1945. Full story on page 4