It’s seems strange that when someone is accused of horrible crimes, these are made known. Yet, when the person is completely cleared and apparently there isn’t even recourse to an appeal via the DPP by the accuser we don’t get to learn what was missing or fictitious or particular about the false accusations that caused damage and was unfounded. What if an accuser had a screw loose? What if he or she was found to be convinced that things happened when they didn’t? Are such people a danger to society?
I think we need to uphold a standard where a grossly false and shameful accuser is scrutinised. They may well be calculating liars with psychological conditions. They are entitled to privacy but if they come out and accuse, the police should go into proper detail regarding why they consider the accusation a Booba Mayse. If not, then the accused is subject to a different level of privacy than the accuser. I would have thought both deserve the same?
There are some people out there who should be subjected to sanity tests before allowed to make gross claims. They should be noted as such in the press if so found by the police. How do people stay away from them lest they inadvertently fall into some baseless and stupid allegation?
Here is the article from the Age
By STEPHEN CAUCHI AND BARNEY SCHWARTZ
A respected rabbi who was stood down from Melbourne’s Yeshivah College over allegations that he raped a student in the 1970s has had charges against him dropped.
Rabbi Avrohom Glick, 67, was then deputy principal and later principal of the College. He was head of religious studies when he was stood down last December.
Rabbi Glick, of Balaclava, was arrested and interviewed in December and released pending further inquiries.
Yeshivah College principal Yehoshua Smukler said at the time that although “Rabbi Glick is a highly respected staff member and community figure”, he would be immediately stood down.
Rabbi Glick has not attended the campus or had contact with students since.
Chevi Levin, a niece of Rabbi Glick, said on her facebook page on Friday that “after conducting a thorough investigation, Victoria Police has decided NOT to press charges against Rabbi Avrohom Glick.
“This is NOT a case of no evidence or stale evidence. Rather, police have rejected the allegations, which were vexatious and wholly without substance. Police have further denied the accuser avenues of furthering his fictitious claim to the DPP.
“Unfortunately, there is little which can be done to prevent false accusers from making claims against ANYONE (a scary thought indeed!) Yet today, justice has triumphed. Today, Hashem’s help and guidance has set an innocent man free. Today, community support has warmed our hearts. And today- well, today is the day that Rabbi Glick gets his life back.
The victim told police he was lured to the worship centre when he was eight and raped “in front of the Sefer Torah”, the scroll of the Torah, Judaism’s sacred text.
He said he was raped several times and forced to perform oral sex, and that the man also abused another victim.
“After I was raped I was in shock and I went to the office and I was shivering and crying.
“I didn’t know what rape was because I was eight years old. I didn’t know what sex was, so I didn’t have the words to say what happened,” the man said.
The arrest was made by Task Force Sano, set up to work with the Victorian inquiry into how religious organisations responded to child sexual abuse.
pitputim 
The answer to your question is quite simple.
The accuser was “put up” by two members of the community
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We have no evidence of that! And if there IS evidence I’d hope the police would intimate such thereby opening up a civil case. I’m not prepared to entertain this possibility without evidence. Perhaps the accuser is a simply a sad loo loo in need of help?
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Although there is no proof I tend to agree with Chaim that this obviously unstable individual was encouraged to make the unfounded accusations. I hope that the Glick family persue this legally and that the vendetta by the unjust organisation against Yeshivah is forced to at least rethink who their targets should be.
The fact that Rabbi Glick was summarily dismissed as soon as official enquiries began shows that Yeshivah is putting the care of students at the forefront.
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You obviously know more than me. I’ve seen zero evidence this person was encouraged or coached
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True, their is no apparent evidence. It would be more correct to say that this person’s accusation was taken at face value despite his apparently unstable nature and used by unjust people to further their cause. The bottom line is that no victim was helped by this and the way it was handled may even discourage other victims from coming forward.
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It has to be taken seriously. The police do their job. It’s probably a good time for Tzedek to formally apologise for the tenor of their original announcement which showed all the hallmarks of a triumphalism which is misplaced
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A “loo loo” that was coached .
If you recall, the tremendous “drum roll” that this received prior to publication in the press.
Look back at the blogs and consider who was in the forefront of stating “we know something you don’t know….”.
People have short memories regarding the continuous statement regarding “there is a current investigation …..״
״…, community will be shocked….”.
Those who coached the accuser truly believed that they were in with a chance- hence all the lead up publicity.
At the end of the day, no amount of coaching helped.
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There is definitely a sense of triumphalism by some victims whenever there is an arrest. It’s probably psychologically understandable. That being said, I haven’t seen (happy to be proven incorrect) any EVIDENCE that this loo loo was coached or over cajoled. What’s said on blogs is lots of things. They can basically say anything but this doesn’t make what they or a commenter says ‘correct’
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If you have evidence someone was coached then go the police! The rest is hyperbole
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It’s seems strange that when someone is accused of horrible crimes, these are made known.
This is not correct. When a person has merely been accused by some random person, and the police are investigating to see whether there’s anything to it, nobody is meant to know about. it. Contrary to the Age, Rabbi Glick was not arrested; he was quietly invited to come in and speak to the police, and they said nothing to anybody. If things had proceeded normally, they would eventually have come to the conclusion they did come to, closed the investigation, and nobody not immediately involved would ever have known that it had existed, And that’s the way it should be. The problem here is that someone not from the police force made sure to notify the press. The obvious suspect is Waks, and that is why Rabbi Glick is suing him.
Note that even after the press knew about it, all the police would say was that a man of a certain age, from a certain suburb, gave them a statement. They did not confirm his identity, even though it was obvious by then that the cat was out of the bag.
There is a problem, that false accusers are very rarely charged. In general there’s no down side to making a false accusation. There is a myth out there that rape accusations are rarely false; the truth is that false accusations are common, but the accusers are rarely charged, so people can pretend that these didn’t happen. Of course to charge the accuser, the police must be able to prove that the accusation really was false. It’s not enough that they can’t prove it’s true, and so they can’t charge the accused; Once the accuser is charged they get the same benefit of the doubt that their victim got, and the same accusation that was previously assumed to be false must now be assumed to be true. So the usual resolution is not to charge anybody.
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Are you sure the police did not confirm that Rabbi G was being questioned? Either way, it would have been correct according to protocol for him to stand aside while the investigation was taking place. Unfortunately the statistics do show that most accusers tell the truth. There must always be a group of people who falsely accuse in any type of crime
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[edited by me]
Yes, I am sure the police did not name him. Go look at the press reports at the time. They all quoted the police as merely saying that a man of a certain age and suburb was questioned. If they had not already known who this was, they would not have been able to identify him from that information. But someone, perhaps told them who it was, so the police statement may have been interpreted accordingly.
Your claim that “the statistics do show that most accusers tell the truth” is without foundation. It is a classical case of question-begging; those promulgating it assume their conclusion, and then find it confirmed. They start with the assumption that every accuser who is not prosecuted must be telling the truth; they observe that few accusers are prosecuted, and conclude that few accusers lie, and therefore it’s bad policy to prosecute the ones who do. It should be obvious that since there is almost no risk in falsely accusing someone, it stands to reason that false accusations are common.
Just look at the rate of “rape” accusations on US uni campuses. The evidence is clear that most of these accusations are false. But students are often “convicted” in sham internal proceedings which start with a presumption of guilt rather than innocence, which in turn bolsters this false presumption.
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I don’t agree. Formal studies on pedophilia reporting show that in the vastly overwhelming number of cases, the accusations are TRUE. Those who have the guts to come forward and report abuse MUST be protected. That being said, if someone has a screw loose, or a vendetta, one can only hope and pray that justice prevails. I have faith in the justice system here, although, I am firmly opposed to the violence that occurs in prisons to those who are incarcerated. It is a blight on society that prisons are reported to be places where a criminal (no bad how they are) is beaten to a pulp or raped or similar. That was not part of the sentence, and it is that aspect which is against Torah values.
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The question of proof aside, prosecuting complainants is generally bad public policy. We want victims to come forward; when complainants are prosecuted it discourages people with true complaints as well as those with false ones. A certain amount of false accusations is the price we pay for an environment in which true complaints are heard.
In this case I suspect that the accuser believes his story. Surely someone consciously concocting a fake account would have made one that’s more plausible? He could have just copied the allegations made by genuine victims. If the complainant is actually delusional then pursuing him would be both cruel and pointless. The people to blame are the ones who used him for their own ends, i.e, the media and the ones who publicised the story.
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I completely agree. I actually changed the wording in my article to try and not give that impression, but failed! What I tried to say unsuccessfully, is that it should be just as illegal to name someone who is at the investigation stage, as it is to name someone who alleges they were abused. The former also needs protection. That the latter needs protection goes without saying. Certainly, I know that in other areas, such as employment, if person X alleges something about person Y, then the matter is kept confidential while an investigation is taking place! If person Y is found to have no case to answer, then they might still have the stigma of the allegation because of societies proclivity to condemn. As to this particular case, people are making allegations that someone put the alleger up to it. I have seen no evidence to support that comment and don’t see why people should assume that to be the case until such evidence sees the light of day. We maybe to quick to condemn on both sides of the ledger? Either way, identity needs to be sacrosanct until such time as an abuser is charged, or until someone who makes up a story is charged for that. If nobody is charged, then really none of us should know about it except the employer of the alleged abuser, who would find a subtle way to have the person take some long service or recreational leave until the matter is finalised.
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A criminal lawyer friend of mine was shocked when she found that Rabbi Glick had been named before charges were laid (and in the event, they weren’t). I think there’s been a barely-suppressed feeling of glee about these allegations in some sections of the media, more than can be explained by the usual muckraking urge to sell newspapers.
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Glee is an emotion that should not exist in the context. Ironically, Tzedek without Glee and pomposity are what’s required. These are serious matters involving people’s reputations on both sides
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