Zelda feels strongly that religious beliefs must not overrule child protection
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Zelda was raised in a devoutly religious family. She was sexually abused in faith instruction classes.
She reported this to her mother, but was told to ‘put up with it’.
Zelda is Jewish, and from the age of eight, she attended religious instruction classes at the weekend.
The teacher, Mr Cohen, put Zelda on his knee at the front of the class and touched her inside her underpants. She says the rest of the class would not have been able to see what he was doing.
When she got home she told her mother what the teacher had done. Her mother said ‘He’s not doing any harm … just put up with it’. Zelda’s father heard about the abuse, but he didn’t do anything either.
Mr Cohen continued sexually abusing Zelda for a further two years until she moved into another class. She believes he selected her for abuse because she was ‘quite a shy little thing’.
She explains that Mr Cohen also taught at a primary school and was ‘a respected member of the community … so why would anyone suspect him?’
Zelda feels that her parents trivialised what she told them, and that there was also an element of shame. She adds that it wouldn’t have occurred to her to have talked to a teacher or anyone else about the abuse, partly because she was a Jewish girl in a mainstream school and wouldn’t have talked about her religious life. She says ‘It wasn’t the done thing’.
Later, Zelda went to university, and established a career as a senior medical professional. She got married and had children. It was 30 years after the abuse ended that it resurfaced for her, when a teacher friend asked Zelda about Mr Cohen because he had applied for a job at her school.
Zelda advised her friend that he should not be working with small children. She believes he wasn't appointed.
About 10 years ago, Zelda saw an obituary for Mr Cohen. Reading how esteemed he was made her angry.
She has told her husband about the abuse and he couldn’t understand her parents’ reaction. She feels anger towards her mum for not taking any action, but her mother now claims not to remember the event.
Zelda feels her parents had a responsibility to other children as well as their own, and they should have done something to prevent Mr Cohen harming anyone else. But, she says, they were middle-class and at that time the attitude was of ‘nice ladies who didn’t complain’.
However, she does remember her mother complaining about a teacher at Zelda’s mainstream school who was anti-Semitic. Zelda reflects ‘this was clearly a higher priority’.
Zelda says that she has many questions in her head that are unresolved. She believes that children in religious communities are particularly vulnerable to abuse, as many devout people are sure that senior religious figures ‘couldn’t possibly be abusers’.
She believes that too often communities try to deal with issues internally because ‘they don’t want the outside world to know’.
Zelda would like to see parents being supported to know what to do if their child says they are being abused, and children being empowered to speak out if parents or others don’t act on their disclosure. She says that children need a safe environment where they can talk about their concerns.
Zelda made a lot of friends at university and she doesn’t believe that the abuse she suffered has affected her relationships. She adds that she is ‘a fully functioning adult’ and feels ‘there is no lasting damage’.