|
|
June 18, 2004/Sivan 29 5764, Vol. 56, No.39
Reform movement considers sex abuse case
JOE BERKOFSKY
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
NEW YORK - A lengthy battle over how the Reform movement should handle a charge of sexual misconduct against a California rabbi is coming to a head.
On June 20, the board of trustees of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the movement's rabbinical arm, is expected to decide whether to uphold its earlier reprimand of Rabbi Michael Mayersohn. He could also be censured, a more serious step, which the conference's Committee on Ethics and Appeals initially had recommended.
The issue stems from a May 2002 complaint by Chavah Hogue of Huntington Beach, Calif., who alleged that Mayersohn tried to seduce her during a closed-door marital counseling session while he was the rabbi at Temple Beth David in Westminster, Calif.
Mayersohn, who has since left his congregation and now is a full-time pastoral counselor, vehemently denies the charge.
The California case returns the spotlight to rabbinic ethics policies in the wake of several high-profile cases of sexual abuse in the Jewish community, as well as the well-publicized scandals of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy.
Hogue, 44, who was raised in an Anglo-Catholic home, said she discovered Jewish roots in her family and joined the Reform congregation in 1999, changing her name to Chavah from Lori and converting along with her daughter in a Conservative ceremony a year after joining the Reform temple. Her husband did not convert.
In a telephone interview with JTA, Hogue alleged that Mayersohn began "hitting on me" some eight months after she joined the temple, trying to kiss her, hug her or touch her inappropriately.
Hogue was experiencing marital problems involving interfaith issues, and at the rabbi's suggestion began attending pastoral coun-seling sessions alone with him, she said. After asking about her sex life in their first session, the rabbi "groped me and kissed me and tried to convince me to have sex with him" in a second meeting, she said.
Hogue said that she refused.
In May 2002, Hogue filed a formal sexual misconduct complaint to the CCAR's Committee on Ethics and Appeals, which handles such charges. Her com-plaint against Mayersohn alleged "sexual boundary violations."
Mayersohn, 52, has flatly denied all of the allegations to Reform movement officials.
"There was absolutely nothing inappropriate about our relationship and there was nothing, from my end, that was sexual about it," he said. "Nothing that she alleges happened in those meetings happened. Unfortunately, like all rabbis who meet with people behind closed doors, I am vulnerable to people's fabrications."
Rabbi Arthur Gross Schaefer, a professor of law at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles who advocated for tougher Reform ethics rules and who helped shape the current guidelines in the mid-1990s, said the movement was among the first streams to get tough on rabbinic sexual misbehavior.
Now Schaefer hopes the movement will mandate more classes on sexual misconduct issues for rabbis and seminary students to prevent further abuse.
|
|
