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Safeguarding in the Jewish Community / The Reshet Community Safeguarding Commitments

Author(s): Reshet: The Network for Jewish Youth Provision

Date: 2018

Topics: Jewish Youth, Jewish Youth Work, Main Topic: Other, Jewish Community, Children, Jewish Organisations, Youth, Abuse, Policy

Everyone’s Accountable? Peer Sexual Abuse in Religious Schools, Digital Revelations, and Denominational Contests over Protection

Author(s): Kasstan, Ben

Date: 2022

Topics: Main Topic: Education, Jewish Schools, Sex Education, Abuse, Mental Health, Jewish Pupils, Youth

Abstract: Since the emergence of the #MeToo and #ChurchToo movements, online tracts have been
employed to publicly reveal experiences of sexual abuse and assault among women and men in
religious institutions and to shame abusers, which tend to be examined as an issue of women’s
rights or child protection from adult predators. Drawing on the use of digital reporting platforms to
testify against peer offences within religious schools, this paper asks how do such testimonies reveal
adolescent agency and provoke policy re/actions about the accountability of religious institutions?
Digital revelations submitted anonymously to Everyone’s Invited are analysed alongside interviews
conducted with educators, parents, and youths in Jewish schools in Britain. Findings indicate how
adolescent digital revelations of peer sexual abuse call for accountability by implicating the faith
schools in question, which in turn triggers pedagogical and policy debates from educators. Public
responses reflect diverging denominational positions on how to balance the protection of young
people and safeguard religious self-protectionism. The paper spotlights the agency of youth in
shaming peer abusers as much as faith schools and structures of religious authority, and in turn, how
online shaming reveals frictions over accountability