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Case of Rabbi Ephraim Bryks

This page is dedicated in the memory of Daniel Levin.




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Table of Contents:

Disclaimer: Inclusion in this website does not constitute a recommendation or endorsement. Individuals must decide for themselves whether the resources meet their own personal needs.


Queens Yeshiva Boss is a Molester: Boy's Mom 05/31/2001

More Allegations of Sexual Abuse Involving Rabbi: Police Probe Resumes At School - "Jews need to know that this can happen to us" (08/04/1994)

Shame! CBC Alleges Rabbi is Child Molester (03/1994)

Investigative documentary: "Unorthodox Conduct" (02/28/1994)

Legal Documentation


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Queens Yeshiva Boss is a Molester: Boy's Mom

New York Post - May 31, 2001

http://www.nypost.com/commentary/44731.htm


Sara Leven says son Daniel, who committed suicide, was molested by a rabbi.

SARA LEVEN found her 17-year-old son Daniel blue-faced, hanging from the shower curtain rod - a tie pinched around his neck. The vision gnaws at Leven's heart because the rabbi she claims molested her boy when he was 5 - which she believes drove her son to suicide - is free and teaching kids at a Queens yeshiva.

The 57-year-old Canadian has pursued Rabbi Ephraim B. Bryks, 49, since her son's death in 1993. Winnipeg. Montreal. Queens.

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More Allegations of Sexual Abuse Involving Rabbi: Police Probe Resumes At School: "Jews need to know that this can happen to us"
By: Marc Huber

Jewish Tribune – B'nai Brith Canada, Page 16

August 4, 1994

#1473 Re: Rabbi Boruch Bryks principal Yeshiva Berachel David Torah High School Queens

Toronto – Four years after leaving Winnipeg, Rabbi Ephraim Bryks remains haunted by students' child abuse allegations while he was principal of the Torah Academy, a school operated by Herzlia-Adas Yeshrun, an Orthodox congregation lead by Rabbi Bryks.


On a February 28, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) documentary Toronto's Martin and Sara Levin said their 17-year-old son Daniel, committed suicide last Yom Kippur after police asked their son to re-record a June, 1993, statement alleging sexual abuse in 1993 Rabbi Bryks.


Another girl's parents alleged on the documentary that their daughter, who is now in therapy and isn't ready to contact police, was also molested by Rabbi Bryks, currently principal of the Torah Academy, a 400-student Orthodox school in Queens (The Tribune has learned that Rabbi Bryks' contract for the coming school year has not been renewed. No reason for the decision was given by a spokesman at Torah Academy).


No charges have ever been laid against Rabbi Bryks but Sgt. Robin Parker of the Child Abuse Unit of the Winnipeg Police Service, Youth Division told The Tribune last week that "The case was never closed. The CBC documentary brought other people to come forward to members of the community and to us. Due to the new complainants, the case has been reassigned to a different team in the Child Abuse Unit and the investigation has resumed. We are now re-interviewing people. That's all I can say."


This is not the first time that Rabbi Bryks faced such accusations. A 1988 report by Winnipeg South Child and Family Services originating from a 14-year-old girl's allegations indicated that there was no evidence to support criminal wrongdoing; however, the report also characterized Rabbi Bryks' interactions with female students as inappropriate and unprofessional. The report also found that "if there is a child in the school that is currently being abused, the dynamics of the reaction of the staff, fellow students and other adults over the past couple of months might prevent any child from coming forth with the new disclosure."


And a year later, Winnipeg police investigated a complaint from a young boy alleging sex abuse, but the Crown Attorney's office did not believe that there was sufficient evidence against Bryks to lay criminal charges. Despite the passage of time, Herzlia-Adas Yeshrun continues to suffer the fallout surrounding their former spiritual leader's departure. Today, many people in the community question the process undertaken by the synagogue's leadership when these allegations originally surfaced in 1987. Instead of immediately contracting Child and Family Services, the synagogue conducted its own investigation by holding a series of vituperative board of directors meetings where the teenage girl's allegations about Rabbi Bryk's impropriety was first questioned.

"A pall hangs over the place. The issue of guilt is secondary. It's not what he did or didn't do - but what was said to each other," says Sherman Greenberg, the congregation's president between 1982 and 1986. "People who were formerly friends wouldn't talk to each other, or they would do things to each other. One person tried to get someone else fired. Some of these people now feel embarassed, ashamed, and kind of stupid." Greenberg and almost half of the board left the synagogue with approximately 30 other families and formed their own synagogue after the board voted to support Rabbi Bryks following Child and Family Service's finding of unprofessional conduct, in addition to the agency's observation of the creation of an environment preventing child abuse victims from coming forward, if child abuse was in fact occurring at the school. "Knowing what I know now, if I was ever in a similar situation, I would have a police investigation first."


Like the remainder of the congregants who supported and believed in Rabbi Bryks and wanted the shul to continue, Abe Borzykowski, the synagogue's vice president in 1987, remained as a member but now regrets not delegating the responsibility of investigating the allegations earlier.


"We should have let someone else handle it. We were people in good conscience wanting to solve problems, but we were in over our heads. The mistake we made destroyed friendships. The atmosphere was very uneasy and emotions ran very high. If we delegated it earlier, maybe this wouldn't have happened."


Board member Mel Craven was not one of Rabbi Bryks supporters after the Child and Family Services' report's release. "I was in shock that people would interpret it as completely exculpatory." During the board's deliberations about Rabbi Bryks, Craven suffered abuse from other congregants and was spat at in the shul. "We were shunned. If I was called up for an aliyah, some people walked out."


Craven acknowledges that some of the synagogue's problems might have been avoided if information hadn't been percolating among the synagogue's members following the board's meetings. "In hindsight, we should have reported to Child and Family Services first." After Rabbi Bryks left Herzlia-Adas Yeshrun in 1990, Craven, like most of the new synagogue's members, returned to the shul.


Immediate reporting of alleged child abuse by teachers and other caregivers became compulsory in Manitoba following a 1989 amendment to the province's Child and Family Services Act. But Keith Cooper, the executive Director of Winnipeg South Child and Family Services, says that this amendment was passed because "at that time a lot of organizations handled these issues in the same kind of way." However Cooper still had concerns about the way the synagogues's board responded to the allegations.


"The process the synagogue took, rightly or wrongly--and they thought they were doing things in everyone's best interest--created circumstances within the synagogue community and school staff to choose sides and to let kids know that parents were on one side or another. And that kind of thing is not helpful to pursuing that sort of investigation because all sorts of other factors intrude."


Cooper added that when his office investigates child abuse complaints, investigators talk to children without subjecting them to any kind of outside pressure from anyone else to get a first sense of the allegations. When questioned about the impact of his office's finding that a poisoned environment against disclosing child abuse was inadvertently in effect at the school as a result of the board's initial response, Cooper thought it was possible that during a professional investigation at the outset, "other children might have come forward if there was something to come forward about."


Barney Yellen, Winnipeg's Jewish Child and Family Service's Executive Director, is also quite critical of the board's decision to conduct its own investigation and the board's subsequent decision to support Rabbi Bryks. "Regardless of the child abuse issue, there was a questionable professional conduct in his role as a teacher. It surprised me that he wasn't terminated."


Yellen agreed with Cooper's observations about the school's poisoned atmosphere. "The supercharged environment keeping kids from coming forward (if there was something to come forward about) might have been avoided. When the synagogue's boards finally decided to contact an outside agency, Yellen's agency could not investigate the allegations because Rabbi Bryks was on the agency's board of directors.


Still grieving the loss of his son, Martin Levin believes that the synagogue's board "has a lot to answer-- there was vast communal denial. Jews need to know that this can happen to us too and the notion of keeping things quiet stems from the paranoia of anti-Semites crawling out of the woodwork."


Composed of approximately 15,000 people, Winnipeg has a vibrant, small and insular Jewish community with a small-town feeling where everyone knows everybody. In fact, this correspondent is distantly related by marriage to Levin and Borzykowski.


Like her former spouse, Sara Levin thinks that the synagogue's board made an error in judgement by conducting its own initial inquiry. "I think it's horrific. It was a grave mistake not to have an outside agency handle it from the onset. It was a blunder."


One of the ways Levin plans to honour her son's memory is through Daniel's Hope, an organization she is forming to put child abuse survivors in touch with each other. Both Mr. and Mrs. Levin are upset that the Toronto police botched their investigation because the recording equipment used during their son's statement was broken. Daniel Levin didn't live long enough to record another statement.


Rabbi Bryks started at Herzlia-Adas Yeshrun in 1978 at age 24 after graduating from rabbinical college. Many of his opponents even characterize Rabbi Bryks as a charismatic personality who built up the shul's membership started the school (operated independently of the city's Jewish Board of Education) and ran his own Beit Din.


Rabbi Bryks later became embroiled in disputes with other leaders in Winnipeg's Jewish community over the validity of the city's eruv and its kosher food. In 1987 the Winnipeg Council of Rabbis wrote a letter to the editor of the Winnipeg Jewish Post & News alleging that Rabbi Bryks twice plagiarized from a book by an Ottawa Rabbi in his (Bryks' weekly Torah commentaries for the paper).


The bitter fights about Rabbi Bryks devastated the shul, according to Craven. Membership fell from 300 families to its present 125 families. The Torah Academy closed a year after Rabbi Bryks left Winnipeg.


Greenberg doesn't see much of a legacy from Rabbi Bryks' tenure. "By any measure of organizational success the whole thing imploding onto itself".


Rabbi Bryks refused to be interviewed for this article.


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Shame!
CBC Alleges Rabbi is Child Molester
By Gil Kezwer

Jewish Life (March 1994), Cover page (continued page 14)

A shame and a disgrace. An embarrassment for the Jewish people. A desecration of God's holy name. Those were among the reactions in the Toronto Jewish community to the broadcast February 28 and March 1 on CBC Prime Time News of shocking allegations that Rabbi Ephraim Bryks, 39, formerly the principal of Winnipeg's Torah Academy, molested students in his charge.

Equally appalling was the report that Daniel Levin of Glengrove Avenue, one of the four children who have accused Rabbi Bryks of sexual abuse, committed suicide this past Yom Kippur after Metro Police asked the Oakwood Collegiete Grade 12 student to re-record a statement he had made in June 1993. The police tape machine had been faulty at the first recording. With the complainant dead and his testimony erroneously not recorded, Toronto Police were forced to drop the case.

Levin, 17 at the time of his tragic death, studied at the Orthodox Jewish school in the Manitoba capital from kindergarten through Grade Two, when his family moved to Montreal and later Toronto. For seven years the boy was in denial about the traumatic abuse he had suffered , CBC alleges, but then his life began to unravel. After his parents, Sara and Mortin Levin, separated, the tormented youth, then 14, became unable to concentrate at school. Prone to explosive fits of rage, he started treatment with psychotherapist Kristen Balmer.

In May 1993, after three years of counselling, Levin was able to recall long-suppressed memories. His mother told CBC: "He [Rabbi Bryks] was fondling his [Levin's] genitals first over his clothes, and then he opened his pants." The boy told his mother that afterwards the rabbi gave him an Elite peppermint and warned him God would punish him if he spoke about the sex abuse.

His mother added: "And then he [her son] had a memory and started coughing and spitting out mucous...and crying.

And he said that he was in the office, and Rabbi Bryks put his *BadWord* in Daniel's mouth.

Psychotherapist Balmer said "I watched him cry, and there's no question he was telling the truth." Levin had told her, "I don't want this to continue any more. I don't want any other person to have to go through what I went through."

One former student, who did not wish to be interviewed on camera told CBC that Rabbi Bryks fondled her breasts. Another girl, today 14 told her parents that when she was in Grade Two the rabbi would frequently remove her from her classroom and take her to his office where he would take off her underwear and fondle her genitalia. She also said that he cautioned her God would punish her if she told anyone.

The unidentified parent said: "The most painful recent event since her disclosure for me was going up to see how she was in her bedroom. It was just quiet, and I just wanted to see how she was. Going into her bedroom, she was sitting in her closet curled up in a fetal ball listening to Barney tapes with a little Barney book in her hand. I couldn't deal with that."

The girl is now in counselling, and her parents say she isn't ready to go to the police.

Rabbi Bryks is a native of Denver, Colorado. His father, Lejzor, also an Orthodox rabbi, hanged himself in 1971 amid rumours of financial scandal. That same year Ephraim began yeshiva studies leading to rabbinic smicha. Graduating in 1978, he came to Winnipeg where he transformed the small Herzlia Adas Yeshurun Synagogue into a major congregation.

A highly ambitious and charismatic personality, within two years he had set up a day school as well as his own kosher hasgacha (supervision) and beit din (rabbinical court). His critics accused him of megalomania and said he was obsessed with power. But his supporters said he was an idealist and a visionary unwilling to compromise on issues of halacha (Jewish law).

Questions about Rabbi Bryks began surfacing. CBC's Danielle Keefler stated that he boasted in a Winnipeg journal of a law degree from the State of Israel, and that he was a dayan (religious judge). In fact he was a mere Yeshiva student, and Israel doesn't give out law degrees.


CBC alleged Rabbi Bryks plagiarized his column in The Jewish Post and News from another rabbi's book. In November 1987, Winnipeg's Va'ad Rabbanim (Rabbinic Council wrote a scathing letter to the editor accusing Rabbi Bryks of "plagiarism" and "theft". But libel chill set in after Bryks' lawyer threatened a lawsuit. The letter was never published.

In December 1987 the synagogue board heard allegations of sexual improprieties from a 14-year- old student. Her story, as well as accounts of unwanted sexual advances by two women congregants, simply were not believed. Nine members of the congregation quit in protest. They were ridiculed and humiliated by Rabbi Bryks' supporters.

Though the synagogue board backed the rabbi, they asked Winnipeg Child and Family Services to investigate. For two months, social workers interviewed 45 students, teachers and parents. The CFS issued a report in March 1988 noting that while Rabbi Bryks hadn't broken any criminal law, his incessant tickling and touching of students was "neither appropriate nor professional".

The Jewish community tried to hush up the controversy, fearing it would either lead to anti- semitism or personal repercussions within the community. Specifically Rabbi Bryks.

The troubling questions of whether Rabbi Bryks was a child molester wouldn't go away. He finally left Winnipeg in 1990, and the Torah Academy closed down. The rabbi was offered a position as principal of an Orthodox Jewish day school in Montreal. But a group of irate parents informed the academy of the investigations of Bryks by Winnipeg Police and Family and Child Services. The job was withdrawn. He then was hired as principal of the Torah Academy in Queens, N.Y., a new school for immigrant youth from the former Soviet Union that was desperate to attract a qualified administrator.

CBC's Danielle Keefler went tp New York to interview the rabbi there. Stopped on the street, he would only say "no comment" and that "Winnipeg is a part of my life that is behind me" when asked about the allegations against him.

"People that are ill should not be put into positions where they can hurt others with illness," observed a psychologist and prominent member of the Lubavitch community here, his voice tinged with sorrow.

"There is sexual abuse within the community," said Gordon Wolfe, executive director of Toronto's Jewish Family and Child Service. In 1993, the JF&CS investigated 70 cases of alleged sexual abuse involving minors, of which 34 were intra-familial. Ten of the cases led to criminal charges. Wolfe was unaware of the number of convictions.

As well, Wolfe reported 120 incidents of physical abuse involving children, of which eight led to charges. "What you saw there [in the allegations against Bryks] is part of the pattern that often exists in this kind of behaviour. It doesn't surprise me that the children didn't say anything for a long time before coming forth. It doesn't surprise me that many people did not believe them. And it doesn't surprise me that enormous pressure was brought on the Winnipeg Child and Family Service to not pursue their investigation, particularly because he was a rabbi."

In an interview with Jewish Life after the broadcast, Sara Levin said that she remains optimistic that at least one of the students Rabbi Bryks is alleged to have abused — some of whom are in counselling and drug treatment today -- will one day be able to be strong enough to come forward and testify.


"I would like to see him brought to justice, to stand trial for the things he's done."


And with terrible sadness in her eyes, she added, "So many people knew little things but we never put them together. We never suspected."


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Rabbi Ephraim Boruch Bryks principal Yeshiva Berachel David Torah High School Queens

Investigative documentary: "Unorthodox Conduct"
Documentary Transcript - CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) documentary

Program Prime Time News, Network CBC

Date February 28 1994 - Time 21:00:00 ET - End 22:00:00 ET


Guest Sara and Mortin Leven, parents; Kristen Balmer, Pychotherapist; Dr.Adrian Fein, friend of Bryks; Judy Silver, fmr. synagogue board member; Ephraim Bryks, rabbi; Kovi Smolak, fmr.student; Patti Cohen, teacher; Nathan Kabrinski, synagogue board member; Keith Cooper, director, Child and Family Services; 5 unidentified persons.

Host Peter Mansbridge and Pamela Wallin

Mansbridge: This is the story of a powerful man, and the shocking accusations that he abused that power with children he was supposed to protect. For more than 10 years, Rabbi Ephraim Bryks was the spiritual leader of a small synagogue in Winnipeg and principal of its school.

But now, in a joint investigation, Prime Time News and CBC Winnipeg have uncovered some disturbing stories.

Four former students who accuse Rabbi Bryks of sexual abuse. A warning now, this documentary contains graphic language and its content may offend some viewers. You will also see some home video of school concerts, we want to stress that none of the children in those videos is the subject of our documentary.

Here's Danielle Keefler.

Judy Silver: We could not believe, it was hard to believe that this man would do anything wrong.

Mortin Leven: I think he's not just a fraud and -- not a charlatan, but really wicked. And I know how many people he's hurt.

Sara Leven: I was tremendously angry and so deeply hurt that someone should do that to a small child.

Danielle Keefler: The sounds of innocence that once filled the Torah Academy in Winnipeg are no more. The Orthodox Jewish day school closed its doors in 1991, more than 10 years after it was built from scratch by Rabbi Ephraim Bryks. But some former students say what happened to them at his hands has left haunting memories, and scarred lives.

Sara: He was a kid who always had a smile on his face.

Mortin: He was also very vivid and fun-loving.

Keefler: Innocent and trusting. Daniel Leven grew up in a close-kit Jewish Orthodox family; two brothers, two sister, parents Sara and Mortin, who wanted tradition, values instilled in their children.They enroled five-year-old Daniel in the Torah Academy.

Sara: Education is almost everything. It -- Jewish education teaches a person how to live for the rest of their life.

Keefler: Daniel went to the school from kindergarten to Grade 2. Then the Levens moved away to Montreal, later to Toronto. As a teenager, Daniel's smile masked his pain. His parents had separated. The boy was in distress, unable to concentrate in school, prone to explosive fits of rage. At 14, he started therapy. Three years later, he stunned his mother and father.

Sara: Last May, he started having -- May '93, he started having memories of being sexually abused by the rabbi and principal at Torah Academy. He was sitting on his lap, and the rabbi -- in his office in the rabbi's office, and the rabbi was -- it's so hard for me to say this --

Mortin: He was fondling.

Sara: He was fondling his genitals first over his clothes, and then he opened his pants. And afterwards, he gave him a candy. It was a peppermint one, with the blue wrapper, I think it says "Elite" on it. He even remembered the candy.

Mortin: The internal mechanism for a flash second said, "It's got to be a mistake here, I'm not hearing this." But instantly, I knew that he was telling me the truth.

Sara: And then he said he had a memory, and he started coughing and spitting out mucous, and he sat up, and we got tissues for him. And he was coughing and spitting up and spitting up, and he started crying. And he said that he was in the office, and Rabbi Bryks put his *BadWord* in Daniel's mouth. And he kept coughing, and I encouraged him to spit it up, spit everything up. That was another memory.

Mortin: He did say that Bryks said things. I wondered why he kept quiet. And then he said, "Well, Bryks said to me, God will punish you if you speak."

Keefler: After 10 years, Daniel's silence was broken. His childhood torment revealed. Last June, he went to the Toronto Police. He gave a statement on tape. His psychotherapist, Kristen Balmer was there.

Kristen Balmer: He said, "I don't want this to continue any more." He said, "I don't want any other person to have to go through what I went through," and I watched him cry, and there's no question he was telling the truth.

Keefler: Daniel tucked away his trauma, spoke of it rarely. But with paint, he let memories, images flow on to paper. In mid-September, Daniel's mother got an unexpected phone call, it was the Toronto Police, their tape machine was faulty, it hadn't recorded Daniel's statement.They wanted him to do it all over again.

Sara: The interview was supposed to take place, I guess, about a week later. A week -- I'm sorry, I can't say it. He never lived to make another interview.

Mortin: He took his own life on Yom Kippur in the afternoon.

Keefler: On the day of atonement, the holiest day of the Jewish year, Daniel hanged himself. Toronto Police had to drop the case, the complainant was dead. A month after Daniel's suicide, a memorial service in Winnipeg. A family friend delivered a message from Daniel's father, a message that hinted at what may have caused Daniel to take his own life.

Rabbi: Most of you here today didn't really know our son and brother Daniel, or at least not since he was very young. You're here to show concern for his family. Some of you may even be here because his death is a grim reminder of a bleakly sinister stain on the Jewish community.

Keefler: Ephraim Bryks grew up in Denver, Colorado. His father, Lejzor, was a respected Orthodox rabbi, a renowned scholar. In 1971, Lejzor Bryks hanged himself amid rumours of financial scandal. That same year, Ephraim began rabbinical studies. In 1978, he looked for work. The Herzalia Adas Yeshurun Synagogue in Winnipeg needed a rabbi --24-year-old Bryks got the job.

Dr. Adrian Fein: He's one of the most exceptional human beings I known.

Keefler: Dr. Adrian Fein became a close friend of the rabbi in Winnipeg.

Fein: An unbelievably hard worker, a person with tremendous interpersonal skills, and an ability to be quite exceptional with either young children or 90-year-old congregants.

Keefler: Bryks injected new life to the small orthodox congregation, new members flocked to synagogue, drawn in by his aura. Judy Silver was a synagogue board member.

Silver: I'd almost call it a cult, a cultish personality, where he was very charismatic.

Home videotape of Ephraim Bryks: and now for the final moment to see who graduates and goes on to Grade 1.

Keefler: Within two years, Bryks started a Jewish say school. To many, he became a hero.

Home videotape of child: Without further delay, our very own Rabbi Bryks.

Home videotape of Bryks: I would like to express my thanks.

Keefler: Bryks had more than charisma. He had his own rules. Local orthodox practice wasn't good enough. He alone set the standard for his own followers -- what was kosher, what wasn't. He even set up his own religious court.

Fein: He made a stance on issues that he felt there was no compromise that could be allowed. So his critics, of course, could say he was a megalomania, or this is him wanting to set himself up. I don't think that was his agenda.

Keefler: To some, a visionary, to others, a man obsessed with power. The clash polarized the community. Bryks questioned other rabbi's Jewishness. The questioned his credibility.

Keefler: In a community journal, Bryks boasted a degree there of law from the state of Israel, that he sat as a member of a religious court in Israel, and had a court room. The truth is, he was a rabbinical student, not a judge. And the state doesn't give out law degrees. In "The Jewish Post and News," Bryks plagiarized newspaper columns copied word for word from another rabbi's book. No permission, no credit. In November 1987, Winnipeg's council of Rabbis wrote a scathing letter to the editor. They accused Bryks of simple "plagiarism," "theft." Bryks' lawyer threatened the newspaper with a lawsuit if the letter were published. It was never printed.

videotape of Bryks: You should all have a program in front of you.

Keefler: That was just the first time lawyers would jump to Bryks' defence. Within weeks, the rabbi again faced serious accusations, his reputation on the line; spiritual leader, school principal, suspected of questionable behaviour with students.

Kovi Smolak: He would be sitting on the bench, and he'd be saying hello to kids, saying good morning, and he'd pick one kid out of the group coming in, and he would say hello and put them on his lap, and tickle them, and you know -- and he's laugh, and be very extra friendly towards them, including me sometimes. And he would tickle them along the whole-- along their bodies.

Keefler: Former student Kovi Smolak says Bryks also played games with boys in their bathing suits at the swimming pool.

Smolak: He would kind of like make a cracking noise, and then he would run his fingers like that, like along here, or shoulders or here, down -- sometimes he would stop here, or sometimes he would just continue going on just down the legs, like that. Like moving his fingers around.

Keefler: For the eight years Smolak was a Torah Academy student. He saw nothing wrong with Bryks' incessant touching. And many teachers and parents welcomed his warm, demonstrative style. When teacher Patti Cohen saw Bryks with a girl on his lap in the school hallway, she didn't like it.

Patti Cohen: I felt uncomfortable with it. I mentioned it to one or two people at the time. And they thought I was being too uptight about it.

Keefler: What people didn't see, many didn't believe. Bryks counselled women, studied with teenage girls, all behind his closed office door. Orthodox Jewish law forbids men from touching or even being alone with a female over the age of three who isn't family. A 14-year-old complained the rabbi often sat on her lap, touch her, tickled her, and talked about sex. Once, she says, he even licked her face. Synagogue board member Nathan Kabrinski heard the girl's story.

Nathan Kabrinski: This struck me as very inappropriate, and I felt that it should be dealt with.

Keefler: The board didn't go to the police. Didn't contact child welfare agencies. Instead, board members set up their own private inquiry.

Judy Silver.

Silver: We were trying to try him without it going public. We were trying to protect the synagogue.

Keefler: That December 1987, the board, Bryks and his lawyer heard the evidence. The teenager repeated her story. Two women also came forward, accused Bryks of making unwanted sexual advances. They weren't believed.

Kabrinski: The people who brought forth these concerns against the rabbi were publicly humiliated and insulted and called liars. It was at this point that I felt that the whole process that I was participating in was a sham.

Keefler: For three nights, accusations, legal threats, personal attacks.

Kabrinski: We were being threatened collectively for taking a position against the rabbi, that would result in a legal suit. And second of all, we were being threatened individually, because of information that the rabbi had about us and our personal lives, that would be used against us.

Silver: He said quite clearly, I have secrets on all of you.

Keefler: On New Years Day 1988, a final board meeting. Word got out, more than a hundred people rushed to the synagogue. They feared Bryks would be fired.

Kabrinski: The whole auditorium of the synagogue was filled with people shouting and screaming.

Keefler: Board members cast their ballots. The rabbi wasn't fired. Judy Silver and eight other members quit in protest. They paid a price.

Silver: The community at large was incensed. His supporters were even more incensed, and I and my children were shunned. My child was spat on in the synagogue.

Keefler: Dr. Adrian Fein says Bryks' opponents were on a witch hunt.

Fein: Rational, sane, friendly, good people, "God-fearing people" became rabid seekers of the destruction of the rabbi, thinking that he had done these terrible things.

Keefler: The board backed Bryks, but finally asked Winnipeg child and family services to investigate. For two months, social workers talked to 45 people, students, teachers and parents. When the agency issued its report in March 1988, the rabbi supporters called it an exoneration. The board considered the case closed. Bryks kept his job.

Kabrinski: He created the community and he could do no wrong. And so calling him into question was really calling the community into question. It was just not acceptable to do that.

Keefler: The report found Bryks hadn't broken any criminal law. But it did find his tickling and touching "neither appropriate nor professional." And it warned, "If there is a child in the school that is currently being abused, the dynamics of the reaction of staff, fellow students and other adults over the past couple of months might prevent any child from coming forth with disclosure." That's exactly what happened to one girl, who didn't want to be interviewed on camera. A former student told us what she didn't tell Child and Family Services, that Rabbi Bryks fondled her breasts, once laid completely on top of her, touched her, tickled her all the time. When a social worker asked questions, the girl kept quiet. She wasn't the only student who kept a secret. We found another child who claimed he was victimized. In 1989, a year after the Child and Family Services investigation, a seven-year-old boy went to the Winnipeg Police. His parents watched from the next room, listened, as the boy using a doll, alleged Rabbi Bryks molested him in Grade 1. The couple is disguised to protect their son's identity.

Unidentified Parent 1: He showed on the dolls that he had been basically -- I guess, fondled, *BadWord* --

Unidentified Parent 2: Rubbed.

Unidentified Parent 1: Rubbed, rubbed would be the word. He used the word "tickled."

Unidentified Parent 2: The rabbi would comment -- get him out of the classroom during a session of class, take him up to the office.

Unidentified Parent 1: And he threatened him.

Unidentified Parent 2: He threatened him that if he were to say this to anyone, the big boys would come and beat him up.

Keefler: Bryks was brought in for questioning by the police. Then let go. Police asked Manitoba's senior crown attorney for an opinion. The word came back, no charges.

Unidentified Parent 1: We were called one day and told that the crown wasn't going to

prosecute.

Father: Because they felt that it would be a child's word against the rabbi's word.

Keefler: We asked Child and Family Services why it didn't reopen its investigation into the Torah Academy after the boy went to the police.

CFS director Keith Cooper.

Keith Cooper: It was decided that it would not be productive to try and go in and talk to all the children in the school because of the highly charged atmosphere. That just sort of blocked off children's ability to respond and so on.

Keefler: That atmosphere took its toll on the school, children were pulled out. Bryks stayed on until 1990. Then left Winnipeg. The Torah Academy closed. But we found another child who can't close that chapter of her life. A fourth student, this couple's daughter claims she was molested.

Unidentified Parent 3: It's horrifying, and it's unbelievable.

Keefler: When we come back, we'll have that girl's story, and where Rabbi Bryksis today.


(Commercial Break)


Keefler: The name of the school has been wiped from the building, but memories are etched in the mind of a 14-year-old girl.

Unidentified Parent 3: I felt unbelievably numb.

Keefler: Last November, this couple's daughter told them she was molested by

Rabbi Bryks in Grade 2. They're disguised to protect the girl's identity.

Unidentified Parent 3: Rabbi Bryks would take her out of class and would take her into his office during school time, and he would make her take off her underwear and -- her stockings, and then he would fondle, her genitalia. She remembers it happening many times. She told me that he told her that if she ever told anybody, that God would punish her.

Unidentified Parent 4: The most painful recent event since her disclosure for me was going up to see how she was in her bedroom. It was just quiet, and I just wanted to see how she was. Going into her bedroom, she was sitting in her closet curled up in a fetal ball listening to Barney tapes with a little Barney book in her hand. I couldn't deal with that.

Keefler: The 14-year-old is in counselling. Her parents say she isn't ready to go to the police.

Unidentified Parent 3: I mean, she's so fragile that this has to be on her own time.

Unidentified Parent 4: She also knows about another boy who did go to the police and nothing happened. Rabbi Bryks is still out there, still teaching school.

Keefler: After Bryks left Winnipeg, an Orthodox Jewish day school in Montreal planned to hire him as principal. A group of parents protested. They'd learned of the investigations by police and Child and Family Services in Winnipeg. The Rabbi wasn't hired. Rabbi Bryks' job search took him across the border to New York City. In 1990, a new Jewish high school also called the Torah Academy opened in Queens. It offers Grade 7 to 12 for both young men and women, most of whom are recent immigrants. In spite of the controversy that followed Bryks from Winnipeg to Montreal, he was hired as the high school's principal. Today, Rabbi Bryks is a success story in Queens' Orthodox community. The school was desperate for a principal, desperate to give young Russian Jews a place to study. Bryks started with an empty building. He now has 400 students, a familiar story, a story we wanted to talk to him about. Over the phone, he said that "Winnipeg is a part of my life that's behind me" and refused to be interviewed. We went to see him in person. Rabbi Bryks, I'm Danielle Keefler with CBC Television. I just wanted to have a moment of your time, Sir, to give you some information on some very serious allegations that have come to our attention.

Bryks: Thank you, but as I mentioned to you yesterday, I really prefer not to discuss this.

Keefler: Daniel Levin, a boy who was at your school, Torah Academy --

Bryks: Thank you very much. I wish you a lot of success.

Keefler: He alleges that you sexually abused him, sir. Did you sexually abuse Daniel Levin?

Bryks: I do not wish to discuss this. Thank you.

Keefler: Did you sexually abuse any children at the Torah Academy?

Bryks: I really have no comment, thank you.

Keefler: Sir, we've spoken to a number of families. A number of their children have come forward and, in great detail, have alleged that you sexually abused them. How do you explain that?

Bryks: I really have no comment.

Keefler: These are very serious allegations, and they're coming forward in great detail. Are you saying these children are lying?

Bryks: I have no comment.

Keefler: Is there anything you'd like to say also?

Bryks: No. Thank you.

Keefler: Bryks' employers in New York say they checked out his past, and all they dug up was unsubstantiated rumour, but they knew Child and Family Services investigated the man in Winnipeg, knew he wasn't hired in Montreal. The national body that services all Jewish day schools in North America has no authority over who is hired. The schools are on their own. In Winnipeg, the school's ward, the community, stood by Rabbi Bryks. Many people still do. Joel Mislovski, the board's president at the time, and other board members refused to be interviewed. In a letter, the board defended its decision to keep Bryks on, saying "There were no further occurrences." Many in the Jewish community want the door on the Bryks' affair kept shut, but not the victims' parents.

Unidentified Parent 1: It's time for the community to stop covering it up. I think there's a -- great fear in the Jewish community because of anti-Semitism that we can't air our dirty laundry, and it's time --and the Jewish community really has a lot to answer for here.

Keefler: Former board member Judy Silver has many regrets.

Silver: We thought we could keep it among ourselves, keep it a secret, that no one ever has to know that this happened in our synagogue. Yes, we were ashamed. We were ashamed that we hired this man and let this happen.

Mortin: The irony is you send your child to a school where you think, this of all places, he will be safe.

Sara: We have lost a child through this and nothing, nothing that is ever done to Rabbi Bryks could ever bring him back. Daniel can never come back. His life was destroyed by this.

Keefler: Mortin Levin reaches out to his son every day, a prayer to help guide Daniel's departed soul. Sara Levin mourns through paint therapy.

After a year of mourning, a headstone will replace a simple marker in a Toronto cemetery, Daniel Levin's final resting place. For Prime Time News, I'm Danielle Keefler.

[mrbb]

I need information on this man for a newspaper article!!!please help!!!!!!!mrbb33@earthlink.net

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[mrbb]

I need information on this man for a newspaper article!!!please help!!!!!!!mrbb33@earthlink.net

Thank you!!!