Beit Ruth Convenes Global Experts, Explores Solutions to End Gender-Based Violence 

Beit Ruth convened an international panel of experts to explore solutions to ending gender-based violence during “This Doesn’t Happen in My Community: Understanding Violence Against Girls & Young Women Locally & Globally.”  

“We know that it’s a natural human response to deny problems in our own communities and to think about issues as happening ‘out there’ or ‘over there’ or to ‘those people,’ “but not here, not to us,” said Beit Ruth’s Executive Director, Danielle Burenstein, who moderated the webinar. “Our vision is to confront the challenge of gender-based violence – what the United Nations calls a human rights violation with ‘immediate and long-term physical, sexual, and mental consequences for women and girls that can be devastating.’  We can do this by looking into all of our communities, and to realize that violence afflicts everyone regardless of background, education, religion, or wealth.”

The event was developed in partnership with the Jewish Council of North Central Florida, and leadership from the Golda Meir MASHAV Carmel International Training Center, an arm of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Following a special welcome by Ambassador Irit Savion, Director of the MASHAV Training and Capacity-Building Department, the event featured experts in the field of domestic violence and trauma treatment, including therapist and keynote speaker Randee Kogan. Kogan was featured in “Ghislaine Maxwell: Filthy Rich,” the Netflix documentary about Ms. Maxwell, the partner of Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender who was found dead in prison while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, treated some of Epstein’s teenage victims, helping them work through the trauma. 

Through case studies, Kogan defined critical issues, including coercive control and sexual exploitation, and shared the stages, signs, and long-term effects of grooming, as well as trauma reactions.  

“Ninety percent of child victims know their abuser – we are no longer speaking about stranger danger,” Kogan explained, adding, “These are individuals that are in our children’s trust circle, our trust circle.” This includes babysitters, youth group leaders, and people in the helping professionals who are harming our children. 

Protecting children from grooming includes teaching children proper names of body parts, allowing children to say “no” to being hugged, and talking to children about the importance of not keeping secrets. 

Cognitive, physical, and emotional trauma reactions can begin immediately or until later in life. Because the pain is suppressed, symptoms or emotions may appear that they’re not ready to deal with. In response to their trauma, victims may become aggressive, confused, distrust people, overeat, feel dirty, depressed, afraid, have poor impulse control, and other reactions. 

Mor Ben Simchon Lipin, a Social Worker and expert in treating complex post-trauma, presented Beit Ruth’s pioneering methodology and treatment of teenage girls who are provided protection and care, as well as an education, therapy, and programs and services that change the course of their lives.  

 Speaking about the lack of attention abused and neglected girls receive, Lipin explained that girls become desperate to escape abuse – they may begin to live on the streets, engage in unsafe sexual behavior, attempt suicide, and abuse drugs and alcohol.  

 “These behaviors,” she said, “produce deeper and deeper trauma, and this is key – a person who doesn’t understand that these behaviors are responses to abuse and are cries for help – blame and accuse girls of acting out in inappropriate ways.” 

 Dr. Shachar Re’em, Director of Golda Meir MASHAV Carmel International Training Center, shared the Center’s prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation content and methodology for combating gender-based violence, domestic violence, and human trafficking. MASHAV has provided training to more than 600 government officials, NGOs, psychologists, psychotherapists, lawyers, judges, police officers, activities, social workers, health care professionals, and activists from 147 countries. 

 Also joining the panel was Rabbi Menachem Creditor, the Pearl & Ira Meyer Scholar in Residence with UJA-Federation New York. While acknowledging that as a man he cannot truly understand what girls and women experience solely on the basis of their gender, Creditor stressed the imperative for a communal response within and outside of the Jewish community, and that men have an essential responsibility to be allies in the fight against gender-based violence. 

“Judaism demands the absolute rejection of all forms of abuse and demands that we do everything in our power to protect our children from abuse,” Creditor said. “Abuse does happen in Jewish families – physical and verbal and emotional abuse happens in Jewish families and way too often, the Jewish community colludes to continue the abuse.” 

 The Jewish community’s responsibility to end gender-based violence, he noted, includes believing women and children; place information about safety resources in safe spaces and public view; and to fund and make mandatory, training about abuse to Jewish communal professionals. 

“Wherever we are in the world,” Burenstein added, “we can all be part of the fight and the solution to end violence against girls and young women.”