ByDan Goldberg, Dan Goldberg
The Chabad-Lubavitch movement in Melbourne and Sydney was thrown under the spotlight this week as a Royal Commission into the child sexual abuse scandal inside the fervently Orthodox Jewish community got under way.
The government-sponsored inquiry into institutional responses to child sexual abuse, which began in 2013, has two weeks to interrogate victims and officials of the Yeshivah Centre in Melbourne and its counterpart in Sydney, as well as senior Orthodox rabbis.
In particular, the commissioners will probe the response by Chabad officials to allegations of sexual abuse by two Orthodox men at the Yeshivah Centre in Melbourne and one at the Yeshiva Centre in Sydney.
David Kramer and Davis Cyprys, who were both employed by the Yeshivah Centre in the 1980s and 1990s, were jailed in 2013 for multiple offences against boys at the Chabad-run school. In Sydney, the response of rabbis to offences committed by Daniel "Gug" Hayman in the 1980s is also being investigated. Hayman was convicted but received a suspended sentence in 2014.
Victims and family members testified at the County Court of Victoria this week. The wife of one victim fought back tears as she said: "As a spouse of a victim and whistleblower, I feel hated and isolated in my community.
"I have lost faith in the leadership of the Jewish community."
Her husband had been abused by Mr Cyprys, a former security guard at Melbourne's Yeshivah Centre, and Mr Hayman, a former director of the Yeshiva Centre in Sydney.
"Well beyond the horrible acts of the perpetrators against my husband that had ripped the rug of security, certainty and innocence out from his childhood, we are being screwed once more by the adolescent, self-serving and callous response of the community," she said. "At a time when support and love are needed, we are facing hate and vitriol. No one cares what is right."
The hearing, which is being streamed live on the internet, continues next week, with senior rabbis expected to be called to testify.