The former director of an Orthodox Jewish school “didn’t have a clue” that one of his staff members massaging the genitals of a young student might be a criminal matter, the royal commission has heard.
Rabbi Yosef Feldman said when he found out a teacher’s aide at the Sydney Yeshivah’s Gedolah college had been accused of sexually abusing a child in 2002, his ignorance of secular law meant he didn’t view it as a criminal offence.
Feldman said he was not aware of laws around mandatory reporting of child abuse, and he did not feel he needed training because “sex abuse is not common”.
“My role in general is to look at things from a Jewish law perspective,” Feldman told the royal commision into institutional responses into child sex abuse on Friday. “I’m not in the business of thinking of how society would deal with issues.”
Feldman said it meant he never thought of telling police that AVL – his cousin – had told him he intended to leave the country hours after finding out he would be reported to police.
Feldman was challenged by commissioner Robert Fitzgerald, who said as the director of a school, Feldman had a responsibility to be aware of what constituted child abuse and of mandatory reporting laws.
“By 2002 all schools were well aware of sexual abuse within schools, in NSW there were mandatory reporting requirements, and you as a director would have been aware of that,” Fitzgerald said.
Feldman responded: “At the time I may not have been aware.”
Feldman had been director of the college for about a decade in 2002, the commission heard.
Feldman told the commission later on Friday afternoon that he now believed all cases of child sex abuse should be reported to police.
AVL left the country hours after speaking to Feldman about the abuse allegations and his thoughts about leaving for the US, the commission heard.
AVL now lives in New York and has never faced charges.
Counsel assisting the commission, Maria Gerace, asked Feldman whether being unaware of key legislation made him unfit to be the director of a school in 2002.
She said Feldman should have taken steps as director to familiarise himself with the law around working with students, including reporting sex abuse.
“There are many issues of life and child sex abuse isn’t something I believed was very common at all and even now I don’t think it’s common,” Feldman responded.
“Since it’s very very uncommon, to say [I’m] unfit because [I] didn’t know about it, I’m not sure whether I would go to that extent.”
Gerace asked what constituted uncommon, and how he could know this since he had received no formal training in the area.
Feldman said there was “commonsense involved” in sex abuse claims and that he had yet to receive formal training on dealing with it because he was “an extremely busy person”.
He did not consider grooming a child for sexual abuse to be a crime, if it had not escalated to “actually doing an act of sexual abuse”, he told the commission.
A teacher lying down with a student and massaging them was not necessarily a problem, he said, because sometimes adults tried to make children feel “warm” or “comfortable”.
He told the commission he had considered the former security guard at the Yeshivah College Melbourne, David Cyprys, to be a friend, and he felt in 2011 that Cyprys was being vilified as allegations against him emerged. Cyprys, who the commission has heard was a serial abuser over many years, was convicted in 2013 after victims came forward to police.
“When I heard of allegations I must say I didn’t really believe them,” Feldman said.
“According to Jewish law you are not allowed to believe something about somebody else unless it has been proven.”
He sent an email to senior rabbis saying he did not see why the Yeshivah Centre should report allegations of child sex abuse to outside authorities, and that he was concerned Cyprys could become a “statistic” if wrongfully convicted.
On Thursday Feldman’s father, Rabbi Pinchus Feldman, also told the commission he had no obligation to tell police an alleged child abuser was planning to leave the country.
The hearing continues.
