CCAR RESPONSA
5765.4
A Sex Offender in the Synagogue*
She’elah
A young man was sexually molested at a synagogue day camp program by a junior counselor. The perpetrator was convicted, spent about a year in juvenile detention, and was recently released. The victim.s family has gotten a restraining order that prevents the perpetrator from being near the victim.s home, school and synagogue.
- If the judge had not allowed the synagogue to be included in the restraining order, should we have allowed him to attend services or religious school and under what conditions?
- During the hearings, it came out that the perpetrator’s mother was aware that her son had previously molested other children and she had not informed the Director of Education, who was in charge of the camp program. Given this circumstance, is there any reason to deny the mother access to the synagogue? (The victim’s mother, due to her anger, cannot tolerate being in the same place as the perpetrator’s mother.)
Teshuvah
This she’elah presents us with two separate cases. The first is a hypothetical one: should the synagogue have denied access to the perpetrator had the court not done so?
1. Readmitting the Offender? The Mitzvah of Repentance. The perpetrator, who seeks access to the synagogue and to its programs, might argue that he has met the terms of the punishment administered for his crime. For the synagogue to deny him entry would be to add to his punishment, to make it more severe than required by law, and such a course, he might say, does him an injustice. The wrong, he might further argue, is compounded by the fact that he is a minor, whom the law does not hold totally responsible for his actions, and by the fact that he can claim that his tendency towards sexual abuse is the product of social and psychological factors that lie largely beyond his control. Expulsion from the synagogue, therefore, might cause him real psychological harm and be counterproductive to his successful reintegration into the community. It would run counter to a fundamental goal and norm of Judaism: the encouragement of repentance (teshuvah), the process by which the sinner turns away from evil. Our sources, as we all know, speak at length of the overriding importance of teshuvah.[1] We read, in particular, that “great is repentance, because it annuls the verdict (gezar din) rendered against a person.”[2] Teshuvah, in other words, expunges the record of our sins,[3] so that “even one who is wicked throughout his lifetime may do teshuvah at the very end, and not a single fact of all his evil will be remembered against him.”[4] God therefore does not desire the punishment of the sinner but rather that he or she turn away from wickedness.[5] And do the Rabbis not tell us, with deep insight into human character, that the repentant sinner is more to be admired than a purely righteous person, because the former, unlike the latter, has experienced and overcome the temptation to do evil?[6]
In ancient times, the Temple and the sacrifices were the means by which Israel achieved atonement for sin. Today, when repentance is the only avenue remaining for atonement,[7] it is the task of the synagogue – the “Temple in miniature”[8] – to provide a locus for the work of teshuvah. The perpetrator thus might argue that to exclude any Jew from the synagogue on the grounds that he or she is a sinner is to frustrate the performance of this task. To exclude this Jew, a young man for whom rehabilitation is surely not yet an impossible dream, would send the message that we do not truly believe in the possibility of teshuvah and that the synagogue is no longer a place in which those who truly seek to repent can work toward personal redemption.
2. Readmitting the Offender? The Mitzvah to Protect Ourselves from Danger. Responding to all this, those who would deny access to the perpetrator would argue that no individual possesses an unlimited right of membership in the community and of access to its institutions. Jewish tradition, indeed, permits the community to exclude an individual from membership and participation for sufficient cause.[9] The ban or excommunication (cherem or nidu’i) served in medieval times as a principal means by which the community enforced its decrees on taxation and other rules. To be sure, such expulsion is difficult to square with our modern temperament. We should, in general, avoid taking such a drastic step to express our displeasure with any member of a congregation. As Rabbi Solomon B. Freehof puts it: “Much more, it would seem, could be accomplished by bringing the Jew of ill repute under the influence of the synagogue and its teachings.”[10] Nonetheless, the halakhah does recognize that cherem can be a legitimate expression of communal power, and as the institutional embodiment of our community, the synagogue is entitled to determine just who shall be a member and who shall cease to be a member of the congregation.
Moreover, while there is no denying the centrality of teshuvah to our Judaic value system, it can be argued that “repentance” is an inappropriate category with which to approach this question. As Maimonides puts it: “What is true repentance? When a person has the opportunity and capacity to repeat that particular transgression but refrains from doing so, not on account of fear or weakness but because s/he has repented of that sin.”[11] In our case, this is a standard that cannot be met. This “sinner,” we must remember, is a sex offender, one who has committed an act of sexual abuse against another young person. It is, to say the least, far from obvious that an individual who displays tendencies to this sort of behavior can ever be rid of them or bring them under full control. All that we know about the etiology of sexual abuse suggests that this perpetrator, should he be permitted to take part in the life of the synagogue, may well pose a continued danger to the safety and well-being of its children.[12] And our tradition also teaches that we are obligated to remove from our property any factor that poses danger to the life, health, or property of others.[13] Hence, we might say that it is our duty to deny this young perpetrator access to our synagogue and that, should we allow him entry and should he repeat his abusive behavior, it is we who must do teshuvah.
3. The Committee’s Opinion. It is never an easy thing to decide between two moral or religious values that seem to pull us in opposite directions. In this case, however, it is clear to us that our first duty, the obligation that takes precedence over all others, is to ensure that our synagogues and schools are places of safety for those who enter them. While the convicted sex offender is right to look upon the synagogue as a place of spiritual healing, that right pertains to all of its members, its families and their children. Their sense of security and well-being can be threatened by the presence of a sex offender in the midst of the congregation. In the case that prompted this inquiry, the court agreed that the danger was real and issued its restraining order. In the hypothetical case posed by our she’elah, the danger might be no less real, and it is reasonable to presume that the offender’s presence would be deeply disturbing to his victim as well as to others. It is their synagogue, too, and the congregation’s leadership bears the overriding duty to reassure all its members that the synagogue is a safe place and that this safety extends to all congregational functions. The congregation is therefore under no Judaic religious obligation to admit this young person, a convicted and (hopefully) recovering sex offender, onto its grounds or into its programmatic activities.
4. The Offender’s Mother. The second part of this she’elah is not hypothetical: should the mother of the perpetrator, who did not inform the congregation of her son’s history of sexual abuse, be denied access to the synagogue? We sympathize with those who say yes. The mother’s failure to notify the synagogue, however she attempts to explain or to justify it, is inexcusable. Unlike her son, she is an adult, and we hold her fully culpable for this shocking lapse of moral responsibility. Yet we think that it would be inappropriate for the congregation to deny her access, for two reasons. First, she poses no threat to the safety of congregants. Second, she, too, must do teshuvah, and she must do it in the synagogue, the very place where she committed her transgression. She must ask the forgiveness of those against whom she has sinned: her son’s victim, the victim’s family, and, for that matter, the entire congregation.[14] We recognize, as our she’elah emphasizes, that to allow her to return to the congregation will lead to tension and to personal distress, particularly to the victim’s mother. Yet this is no argument in favor of banishment. On the contrary: the victim’s mother bears her own responsibility in this process of teshuvah. It is her duty – and the duty of the congregation as a whole – to accept the repentance of the perpetrator’s mother, if and when she offers it fully and sincerely.[15] That task will be difficult, but it is what our tradition requires.
5. A Partial Dissent. One member of this Committee, though agreeing with the broad trend of the decision, believes that the congregation should be encouraged to find appropriate means of allowing those who have committed sexual offenses to participate in synagogue life. To this end, we could benefit from the experience of a number of Christian churches that have developed protocols stipulating the precise conditions under which a sex offender might be allowed entry and participation in the community.[16] These may include restricted access to the synagogue building(s) and grounds; a requirement that while on synagogue grounds the offender be accompanied at all times by a family member or by an individual designated by the synagogue; a prohibition of access to the school and nursery areas of the synagogue facility; and so forth. The synagogue might require that the offender and (if he/she is a minor) the offender’s family sign an agreement expressly accepting these restrictions, and it might require them to report from time to time to an appropriate committee concerning their adherence to these guidelines. In addition, the synagogue might require the perpetrator to make a statement acknowledging the pain he or she has caused the victim. Such an open acknowledgment of responsibility, called a vidu’i, is perfectly consistent with our tradition’s conception of repentance.[17] Taking these or similar measures will allow us to reach out in love and concern to one of the most marginalized and, frankly, one of the most despised segments of our Jewish population. This member agrees, however, that should these protocols prove impractical to administer and enforce, or should they fail to reassure the congregants that they and their children are truly safe while at the synagogue, the congregation is entitled to deny access to the perpetrator, on the grounds that its overriding duty is to make the synagogue a safe place for all who make up its community.
NOTES
* The Responsa Committee gratefully acknowledges the assistance provided by Rabbi Ruth Alpers, the Jay Stein Director of Human Relations at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, in the preparation of this teshuvah.
1. See, for example, the praises to repentance (“gedolah teshuvah”) in B. Yoma 86a-b: “Great is teshuvah” because it brings healing to the world, lengthens the span of our days, hastens the final redemption, and because “when one person repents of sin, the entire world finds forgiveness.”
2. B. Rosh Hashanah 17b.
3. Cf. Isaiah 1:18: “though your sins be red as crimson, they shall become white as snow.”
4. B. Kidushin 40b; Yad, Teshuvah 1:3.
5. Ezekiel 18:23 and 32 and 33:11. See as well B. Berakhot 10a, where Beruriah, the wife of R. Meir, subjects Psalms 104:35 (“may sinners perish from the earth”) to a creative re-reading. By deftly altering the vocalization (nikud) of the word chata’im, she changes the meaning of the verse: God desires the death of sin, not the death of sinners. Reform and repentance must take precedence over punishment.
6. B. Berakhot 34b: bemakom sheba`alei teshuvah `omdin, tzadikim gemurim einam `omdin. See Yad, Teshuvah 7:4.
7. Yad, Teshuvah 1:3.
8. B. Megilah29a, on Ezekiel 11:16.
9. B. Berakhot 19a; Yad, Talmud Torah 6:14; Shulchan Arukh Yoreh De`ah 334:43.
10. American Reform Responsa (ARR), no. 16 (http://data.ccarnet.org/cgi-bin/respdisp.pl?file=16&year=arr) .
11. Yad, Teshuvah 2:1.
12. This does not mean that we believe that a sexual offender cannot be successfully treated. As the American Psychiatric Association puts it, “Few perpetrators are ‘untreatable’”; see Dangerous Sex Offenders: A Task Force Report (Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association, 1999, 164), which raises questions as to the reliability of recidivism statistics for sex offenders. It means, rather, that such treatment can be an involved and difficult process and that its success can hinge on a number of factors. One such factor, for example, is the offender’s desire to effect a change in his life. “No evidence supports the notion that persons with paraphilias can be treated successfully without their cooperation” (ibid., 175). Moreover, the sponsoring organization of that task force report concedes that “unlike the successful treatment outcomes for most other mental illnesses, the outlook for successful treatment and rehabilitation of individuals with pedophilia is guarded. Even after intensive treatment, the course of the disorder usually is chronic and lifelong in most patients”; American Psychiatric Association, Fact Sheet: Pedophilia (http://www.medem.com/medlb/article_detaillb.cfm?article_ID=ZZZUZRUZGLC&sub_cat=355; accessed April 29, 2007). It also means that the definition of “success” must be a realistic one. In the words of one group of therapists, a sex offender is comparable to an alcoholic in that he should never consider himself cured. “He has a behavioral and thinking handicap that he can keep within acceptable limits only by continuing to practice a series of controls. As he demonstrates increasing internal controls, external controls can be cautiously relaxed”; Michael A. O’Connell et al., Working with Sex Offenders: Guidelines for Therapist Selection (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1990, 105. Treatment, in other words, is hard, slow work that takes a long time, and in the meantime, we do not know that the offender will not repeat his offense when he has the opportunity to do so.
13. The halakhah derives this rule by extending the Torah’s requirement that the homeowner construct a parapet or guardrail for his roof (Deuteronomy 22:8). Thus, one is forbidden to keep a vicious dog or an non-sturdy ladder on one’s property (B. Ketubot 41b and Bava Kama 15b; Yad, Rotzeach 11:4; Shulchan Arukh Choshen Mishpat 427:7-10.
14. “Yom Kippur effects atonement for sins one has committed against God. For sins one has committed against another person, however, Yom Kippur does not effect atonement until the sinner has conciliated the offended party”; M. Yoma 8:9, Yad, Teshuvah 2:9.
15. (The offended party) should not act cruelly and refuse to be reconciled… but rather, when the sinner requests pardon, the offended party should pardon him with sincerity and with a willing spirit”; Yad, Teshuvah 2:10, based on M. Bava Kama 8:7.
16. Some of the suggestions found in the text can be found in Carol J. Adams, When the Abuser is Among Us: One Church’s Response to a Perpetrator (Seattle: Center for the Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence, 1994) and in Peggy Halsey, “When the Abuser is One of Us,” The Interpreter (a publication of the United Methodist Church), September, 2001, 24-25. On the need to set “clear rules and boundaries” for a sex offender seeking admission to the community, see Kathy MacDonald et al., Counselling for Sexual Abuse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 279.
17. B. Yoma 86b; Yad, Teshuvah 2:2.
If needed, please consult Abbreviations used in CCAR Responsa.