In Torrent of Rapes in Britain, an Uncomfortable Focus on Race and Ethnicity

NY Times ROCHDALE, England — Shabir Ahmed, a delivery driver for two takeout places, did not have to go looking for young girls. Runaways and rebelious teenagers would show up at the restaurants, often hungry and cold. He slipped them free drinks and chicken tikka masala. “Call me Daddy,” he would say.

But soon, Mr. Ahmed, a father of four, would demand payback. In a room above one of the restaurants, according to testimony and evidence in later legal proceedings against him, he would play a pornographic DVD and pass around shots of vodka. Then, on a floor mattress with crumpled blue sheets and kitchen smells wafting from below, he raped them, and later forced them into sex with co-workers and friends, too.

The girls were too scared of him to talk. And when they did, no one believed them. Once, a 15-year-old got so drunk and upset that she smashed a glass counter. Mr. Ahmed and his colleagues did not hesitate to call the police. After she was released, she was coerced into sex four or five times a week, sometimes with half a dozen men at a time, in apartments and taxis around Rochdale, a town in northwest England near Manchester. [...]

The recent revelations that at least 1,400 teenage and preteenage girls had been sexually exploited over 16 years by so-called grooming gangs in another northern English city, Rotherham, stunned the nation because of the sheer scale of the abuse. And it put an uncomfortable spotlight on issues of race, religion and ethnicity in an increasingly multicultural nation: Nearly all of the rape suspects are Pakistani men, and nearly all of the victims are white. [...]

In a country already fiercely debating issues of immigration and national identity, the cases have prompted anti-Muslim demonstrations by far-right groups and some soul-searching generally. Why do British-Pakistani men figure so prominently? Were they deliberately targeting white girls and staying away from their own community? Did police and local officials turn a blind eye for fear of being accused of racism, losing votes among immigrant groups or stoking the kinds of tensions that have unleashed periodic rioting in other British towns? [...]

A powerful culture of shame and honor surrounding premarital sex, including rape, among some Asian Muslims, may also have skewed the victim statistics. Honor and shame certainly proved an effective tool when Mr. Shabir blackmailed his Asian victim into silence during a decade of regular abuse. “You are damaged goods,” he would tell her, threatening to force her into marriage if she spoke up, Mr. Afzal recalled. Asian victims of sexual abuse are three times less likely to come forward than white victims, he said, citing Home Office data.

“They fear not just their rapists,” said Shaista Gohir, chairwoman of the Muslim Women’s Network U.K. “They fear their own community and their own family: They fear honor crime, forced marriage and being shunned and ostracized for bringing shame to their family.” [...]

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A natural fix for ADHD

NY Times    ATTENTION deficit hyperactivity disorder is now the most prevalent psychiatric illness of young people in America, affecting 11 percent of them at some point between the ages of 4 and 17. The rates of both diagnosis and treatment have increased so much in the past decade that you may wonder whether something that affects so many people can really be a disease.

And for a good reason. Recent neuroscience research shows that people with A.D.H.D. are actually hard-wired for novelty-seeking — a trait that had, until relatively recently, a distinct evolutionary advantage. Compared with the rest of us, they have sluggish and underfed brain reward circuits, so much of everyday life feels routine and understimulating.

To compensate, they are drawn to new and exciting experiences and get famously impatient and restless with the regimented structure that characterizes our modern world. In short, people with A.D.H.D. may not have a disease, so much as a set of behavioral traits that don’t match the expectations of our contemporary culture.

From the standpoint of teachers, parents and the world at large, the problem with people with A.D.H.D. looks like a lack of focus and attention and impulsive behavior. But if you have the “illness,” the real problem is that, to your brain, the world that you live in essentially feels not very interesting.[...]

I think another social factor that, in part, may be driving the “epidemic” of A.D.H.D. has gone unnoticed: the increasingly stark contrast between the regimented and demanding school environment and the highly stimulating digital world, where young people spend their time outside school. Digital life, with its vivid gaming and exciting social media, is a world of immediate gratification where practically any desire or fantasy can be realized in the blink of an eye. By comparison, school would seem even duller to a novelty-seeking kid living in the early 21st century than in previous decades, and the comparatively boring school environment might accentuate students’ inattentive behavior, making their teachers more likely to see it and driving up the number of diagnoses. [...] 

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Circle, Arrow, Spiral - Orthodoxy and Feminism - Reflections on an excellent book regarding

Guest post by Mrs. Rachel Eidensohn (my daughter-in-law) 

Book available at Amazon

Review sent to the author  Miriam Kosman

As a 12^th – 14^th grade teacher, I was grateful to receive a methodical work which organizes together various ideas we tend to talk about randomly on a "need to respond" basis. I am a teacher, supervisor and adviser specializing in learning disabled teens from high school years through adulthood – Including marriage.

In the course of my job, I meet "women rights" issues in various circumstances: Parental conflicts in the student's families, pre-marriage courses, haskafa lessons, Tanach lessons and last but not least – Married students contacting me for consultation.

In my view, one of the most important things I do is instilling in the students the knowledge and feeling, that being a "Doormat" is NOT one of the characteristics of a Jewish woman. You will not find me teaching students "לוותר למען השלום". It is important for me to note that I have taught techniques to do this to Mechanchos of seminary ages in mainstream frum schools – such as the סמינר החדש. With the growing divorce rate in the background, my approach is highly accepted and appreciated.

The circle, arrow and spiral paradigm are a beautiful way to present the זכר/נקבהforces, which was new to me.

The idea brought in Devorah Heshlis's "The moons lost light", is a "must" for the frum intellectually minded women in this generation. Knowing that the changing status of women is an ideal happening towards the Geula, and not a perversion in Yiddishkiet enables the Jewish women of modern times to feel "whole" and not "perverse". I first came across it in Rachel Arbos's book "מאישה לאשה·", and was looking for more sources about it ever since. B"h I will get the book. I fell deeply indebted to you for introducing it to me.

The practical ramifications of understanding the nature of man/woman relationships are one of the most notable resources in the book. For example: Understanding the problematic results of taking away the natural responsibilities of the "man of the family" – unmotivated and irresponsible "grown ups".

I found book two an artful and refreshing harmony, explaining the Mitsvos in a logically satisfying way, without the apologetic tone which is so common in explanations of this nature. It is a pleasure reading an explanation which is not based on "The women is really better then the man" paradigm.

I realize your book is intended to be a מלכתחילהviewpoint of healthy Hashkafa, and not an apology to sins of (the frum) society. Nevertheless, as an observer of various unhealthy women relevant situations, I feel the lack of a few points of interest:

1.     In page 272 it is stated that "as a community, we have the obligation to use all of our resources to alleviate their pain, within the context of halacha". This is the only place in the book which mentions the need of changes in society, within the right context of hashkafa, of course . It is important that the reader should know that in a lot of areas, the treatment of women is not a ramification of Jewish hashkafa but ramifications of shortcomings in the application of Jewish law.

2.     Presenting the changes in practical Jewish law (הלכה) in accordance to the shift towards the woman's position before חטא אדם הראשוןwould enrich the book.

3.     Last but not least: As a life and marriage skills teacher, I keenly feel the absence of stressing that just as any other person, it is a woman's job to make sure her needs are respected, regardless of the "other side". Of course, a smart women "presents her case" in a womanly, haskkafa accommodating way. Nevertheless, after reading your book, a reader might get the (wrong) impression that if a female is misused in any way, she should realize it is not the way of Torah to treat her like that, but aside of asking society for support she can't do anything about it. This is a harmful message.

In other words, while you do provides tools for clarifying what a Jewish woman is - nonetheless at the same time you are unfortunately conveying the negative message that women can at most change the way they understand their roles - but that they have no right to ask for changes when Jewish society fails to deal with woman in the correct Torah manner. A counter message would give the book a balance towards perfection.

Thank you for giving us a beautiful, well based foundation in Jewish thought.

==========================

DT's response to the book  Disclaimer I received a review copy

My reaction to the book is twofold.  My response to the book is the reaction I have to Maharal/Rav Moshe Shapiro's views in general - which form the source of most of the author's ideas. Brilliant intellectual exercises but largely irrelevant to the real world. So while I would strongly recommend the book as a source for articulating a Jewish understanding of gender roles I was very disappointed for what it didn't contain. In other words it is good for teachers and kiruv workers but is largely useless for people like myself who want an understanding - not just an explanation. For example I was hoping to see some discussion of the change in the divorce laws through the last 2000 years - with an explanation of female role vs male role. She just says that Aguna is a difficult issue.

In short while I did see the beauty behind her male/female concept, I was primarily concerned by the latter 3 points that my daughter-in-law raised. I didn't see any evidence of her ideas pushing to a goal or ideal nor the use of them to explain women in real life. The focus was "these are principles but not people." It comes across as apologetics rather than a means of adjustment of the role of women as society changes. The principles are best used to justify the status quo rather than self-actualization or creating environments for spiritual and psychological growth.

p.s. I didn't read the whole thing. I sampled the material and kept coming up with the same impression so I stopped.

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Yale's poor handling of faculty sexual harrassment case

NY Times     A sexual harassment case that has been unfolding without public notice for nearly five years within the Yale School of Medicine has roiled the institution and led to new allegations that the university is insensitive to instances of harassment against women.

The case involves a former head of cardiology who professed his love to a young Italian researcher at the school and sought to intervene in her relationship with a fellow cardiologist under his supervision.

A university committee recommended that he be permanently removed from his position, but the provost reduced that penalty to an 18-month suspension.

After that decision, The New York Times obtained extensive documents related to the case and interviewed 18 faculty members who expressed anger at how it had been handled, with no public acknowledgment of wrongdoing. After The Times contacted Yale last week, the university announced that the former cardiology chief, Dr. Michael Simons, “had decided” not to return to his post.

The case involving faculty at one of the nation’s leading medical schools comes as dozens of colleges are under scrutiny by the federal government for their handling of sexual misconduct allegations against students.

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Schlesinger Twins: "Justice" in Vienna

Times of Israel   [see also NY Times for background] An Austrian official’s letter is threatening to undermine the central pillar of a controversial court decision that found a Jewish journalist guilty of defrauding the government

On Sept. 9, senior state attorney Martin Windisch wrote that the government “makes no claims” against Stephan Templ, who was sentenced in April to three years in jail for cheating Austria out of half the value of a sanatorium confiscated by the Nazis from one of Templ’s relatives. In May, the Austrian Supreme Court upheld the ruling but reduced Templ’s sentence to one year.

The court found that Templ had defrauded Austria by failing in his 2006 restitution application to mention his mother’s estranged sister, who would have been entitled to half the $1.4 million his mother received when she sold the property.

Templ rejected the allegation, but when he asked government officials where he should return the money, Windisch wrote to Templ’s attorney, “The republic makes no claims against your client in connection with the conduct of your client.”

Templ’s attorney, the renowned human rights lawyer Robert Amsterdam, has petitioned prosecutors to have the case declared a mistrial.

“This statement basically voids the ruling,” Amsterdam told JTA. [...]

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Does ‘Village of Secrets’ Falsify French Rescue During the Holocaust?

Tablet Magazine    The dust jacket of the upcoming American edition of Village of Secrets, a new book by British author Caroline Moorehead—recently short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize, the richest and most prestigious award for nonfiction in the United Kingdom—claims that the book “sets the record straight” about what happened in and around the French village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon during the Nazi occupation. Village of Secrets was recently published in the U.K. and in Canada, receiving rave reviews and making appearances on best-seller lists. (It was published in the United States by HarperCollins this week.) Publishers Weekly hailed it as “deeply researched” and “the definitive account” of the rescue effort, while Kirkus Reviews has praised the author’s “knowledge of the people, the area and the history,” saying that it made the book “one of the most engrossing survival stories of World War II.” [...]

The key question has always been why. What, then, is the central truth that Moorehead claims to have uncovered? The author ends her introduction by stating that what “actually took place … is also about [sic] the fallibility of memory.” In a British radio interview recently, Moorehead boiled down her great discovery most succinctly: “The Protestants [of the Plateau] had always taken the line that they had done the saving. But in fact, so had the Catholics, so had people who weren’t religious at all.” (The notion that these Protestants trumpeted their deeds is absurd.)

Moorehead concedes, as part of her concluding statement, that the pastor of Le Chambon and his family deserve “much honor” for the rescue effort. But, she quickly adds, no more than “all the modest Catholics, Protestants, atheists and agnostics” who joined in. [...]

That there are indeed tensions on the plateau becomes obvious to anybody who visits there and discusses local history. It is certainly true that many Jews did indeed find shelter here and there throughout the small Protestant enclave. (My parents themselves rented a room in a hamlet on the outskirts of Le Chambon.) There may well have been a few atheists and agnostics too on what was then known as the Protestant mountain, and it is possible that some of them may have joined in the rescue effort—though they have not been identified as yet by Moorehead or anybody else. And yes, some Catholics in the area were also admirably active in rescue; Moorehead specifically cites just one such rescuer, Marguerite Roussel—whose existence the author happens to have learned about from the very film she attacks.

But to equate Catholic, atheist, and agnostic efforts with the role of pastor André Trocmé and the role of the other Protestant pastors of the area and the role of the French Protestant population as a whole is to deny what virtually every single Jew who went through there then would tell you: That this was fundamentally a Huguenot undertaking, centered in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, and deriving much of its initial momentum and energy from the pastors of Le Chambon, André Trocmé and Édouard Theis—and their historic call to resist through the “weapons of the spirit. [,,,]

Of course, Moorehead is entitled to disagree with me as well as with virtually all the people who experienced that time in Le Chambon. Unfortunately, she does so in a book that is riddled with mistakes and distortions ranging from the relatively trivial to the major for a book with claims to historical scholarship by an author who allegedly drew on “unprecedented access” to unspecified “newly opened archives in France, Britain, and Germany.” Even the photograph on the cover of the book, under the title Village of Secrets, is not of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon! The stand-in is the tiny village of Borée, miles away. [...]

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Off the Derech - Tough approach makes things worse

Scientific American     Psychologists have long struggled with how to treat adolescents with conduct disorder, or juvenile delinquency, as the condition is sometimes called when it comes to the attention of the courts. Given that the annual number of juvenile court cases is about 1.2 million, these efforts are of great societal importance. One set of approaches involves “getting tough” with delinquents by exposing them to strict discipline and attempting to shock them out of future crime. These efforts are popular, in part because they quench the public's understandable thirst for law and order. Yet scientific studies indicate that these interventions are ineffective and can even backfire. Better ways to turn around troubled teens involve teaching them how to engage in positive behaviors rather than punishing them for negative ones.

One get-tough technique is boot camp, or “shock incarceration,” a solution for troubled teens introduced in the 1980s. Modeled after military boot camps, these programs are typically supervised by a drill instructor and last from three to six months. They emphasize strict rules and swift punishments (such as repeated push-ups) for disobedience, along with a regimen of physical work and demanding exercise. According to the National Institute of Justice, 11 states operated such programs in 2009. Indeed, Mike S. was sent to a boot camp program following his discharge from the hospital.

Even so, research has yielded at best mixed support for boot camps. In a 2010 review of 69 controlled studies, criminologists Benjamin Meade and Benjamin Steiner, both then at the University of South Carolina, revealed that such programs produced little or no overall improvement in offender recidivism. For reasons that are unclear, some of them reduced rates of delinquency, but others led to higher rates. Boot camps that incorporated psychological treatments, such as substance abuse counseling or psychotherapy, seemed somewhat more effective than those that did not offer such therapies, although the number of studies was too small to draw firm conclusions.

Another method is “Scared Straight,” which became popular following an Academy Award–winning documentary (Scared Straight!), which was filmed in a New Jersey state prison in 1978. Typically these programs bring delinquents and other high-risk teens into prisons to interact with adult inmates, who talk bluntly about the harsh realities of life behind bars. Making adolescents keenly aware of prison life is supposed to deter them from criminal careers. Yet the research on these interventions is not encouraging. In a 2003 meta-analysis (quantitative review) of nine controlled studies of Scared Straight programs, criminal justice researcher Anthony Petrosino, now at the research agency WestEd, and his colleagues showed that these treatments backfired, boosting the odds of offending by 60 to 70 percent.

The verdict for other get-tough interventions, such as juvenile transfer laws, which allow teens who commit especially heinous offenses to be tried as adults, is no more promising. In a 2010 summary, psychologist Richard Redding of Chapman University found higher recidivism rates among transferred adolescent offenders than among nontransferred ones.

Perils of Punishment

Psychologists do not know for sure why get-tough treatments are ineffective and potentially harmful, but the psychological literature holds several clues. First, researchers have long found that punishment-based strategies tend to be less effective than reward-based strategies for lasting behavioral change, in part because they teach people what not to do but not what to do. Second, studies indicate that highly confrontational therapeutic approaches are rarely effective in the long term. For example, in a 1993 controlled trial psychologist William Miller of the University of New Mexico and his colleagues found that counselors who used confrontational styles with problem drinkers—for example, by taking them to task for minimizing the extent of their drinking problem—had significantly less success in helping their clients overcome their addictions than did counselors who used supportive styles that relied on empathy. Similarly, a 2010 review by criminal justice researcher Paul Klenowski of Clarion University and his collaborators found that delinquency programs that involved confrontational tactics, such as berating children for misbehavior, were less effective than programs that did not use them. [...]

These results show that merely imposing harsh discipline on young offenders or frightening them is unlikely to help them refrain from problematic behavior. Instead teens must learn enduring tools—including better social skills, ways to communicate with parents and peers, and anger management techniques—that help them avoid future aggression. Several effective interventions do just that, including cognitive-behavior therapy, a method intended to change maladaptive thinking patterns and behaviors, and multisystemic therapy, in which parents, schools and communities develop programs to reinforce positive behaviors. Another well-supported method, aimed at improving behavior in at-risk children younger than eight years, is parent-child interaction therapy. Parents are coached by therapists in real time to respond to a child's behavior in ways that strengthen the parent-child bond and provide incentives for cooperation [see “Behave!” by Ingrid Wickelgren; Scientific American Mind, March/April 2014]. 

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