Rabbi told child sex abuse victim to ‘let it go’, royal commission told

‘A senior religious figure within the orthodox Jewish community, rabbi Baruch Lesches, told a child sex abuse victim that “the proper, clever thing to do” about the abuse “would be to let it go”.

The victim, identified only as AVB, told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sex abuse about that Lesches also told him that if he spoke up about the Yeshiva Centre Sydney and Melbourne staff who had abused him, he would ruin their lives.

Lesches said: “If you are going to do something to them at a certain stage in their life, you are destroying their whole life and their children and therefore, this is like something ridiculous.”’

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