Failed Messiah has interviewed Shannon Orand, the woman at the centre of the Tropper scandal, who converted to Judaism last week.

She explains that she approached Tropper to cover her legal costs in a custody battle with her ex-husband, and that is why she felt beholden to him.

As one of his commentators notes, this is clearly not the whole story - she does not really confirm how much of the sexual allegations on the tapes were true. However. That aside, there is one particularly interesting paragraph:

I knew someone who was well-connected in Israel with the rabbis. The tapes were supposed to go to leading rabbis and everything was supposed to be handled internally. And it was working. Rabbi Amar broke with EJF and the European rabbis publicly condemned EJF.

But someone leaked the tapes.

This implies that rabbis in Israel and in Europe knew, some time ago, that Tropper was involved in a sexual scandal - and yet he was still in place. It implies they never intended to remove him, merely to sideline the organisation.

We need a timeframe here.