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In Reply to: Re: TF in Uganda posted by Farmer on February 27, 2008 at 15:15:47:
Simon Peterson's (aka Christopher Carruthers) statements are not original but simply based on regurgitated Family propaganda written by their loyal lackey Gordon Melton.
See the following links:
In the first link, no references are cited. In the second one, the only reference cited for Melton's statements about the Kibbutzim is a book from 1956:
Melford E. Spiro, Kibbutz: Venture in Utopia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956).
However, as the two articles below demonstrate, it does seem there were some similarities between The Family and some kibbutzes in Israel.
Uproar over kibbutz sex crime claims.
By Sam Kiley.
575 words
23 January 2001
Australian
Claims of rape and child abuse have shattered the utopian image of Israel's kibbutzim, writes Sam Kiley in Jerusalem ISRAEL'S kibbutzim, once championed as among the few socialist successes, has been exposed as a hotbed of rape and child sexual abuse after a young academic sued the collective system in which he grew up.
The revelations of sex crimes in Israel's 260 secular and 15 religious kibbutzim, with parents allegedly covering up abuse of their own children, have sparked outrage in Israel.
The uproar was triggered by Nahshon Golatz, 31, who grew up in Kibbutz Ruhama. He has filed a suit against the state of Israel and the Kibbutz Movement, which was started by early Zionists - many of them refugees from Eastern European pogroms who wanted to live up to the ideals of Marx and Engels.
He alleges he was the victim of a grotesque socialist human experiment in which, with thousands of other children, he was an unwilling guinea pig. The idea "to create a new human being while injecting new, imaginary content into basic concepts such as parents, home, money, work, land" has left him incapable of love and bereft of any abilities as a father, he told Israel's Haaretz daily newspaper, prompting a national debate.
Until the 1980s, most kibbutz children were taken from their parents soon after weaning and raised in dormitories. They spent a compulsory few hours a day with their immediate families and were told to see all kibbutz members as step-parents or near-siblings.
As a result, says Mr Golatz: "Inside I'm a cripple." His complaints have been compared by the movement's defenders as the equivalent of "suing your parents because they were poor".
The Kibbutz Movement has stopped collectivised child rearing, but Mr Golatz's attack has led to far nastier revelations.
The latest statistics from the Haifa area's rape crisis centre show 71 complaints were received from kibbutz women and girls.
They included allegations of gang rape, incest and other forms of abuse affecting females aged three to 30. No incident was reported to police.
Women's advocacy groups say the problem is nationwide, with one in three women being sexually abused, and trafficking in women commonplace. The difference, they insist, is that those abused on a kibbutz are living in an environment close to a religious cult, which prefers to cover up the ugly realities of life.
Kibbutz Movement executive director Gavri Bar Gil said he was horrified by the revelations, but insisted at the weekend that the incidence of abuse was probably lower than in society as a whole.
He added: "We have to reform ourselves ... we have to recognise that we have been closed societies for many years and that anything could be covered up."
Mr Golatz also says his only contact with a babysitter at night, when he had bad dreams, was through an intercom. Now scores of people have said they still shudder at the sight of an intercom - a form of contact that has left them psychologically scarred.
Yehudit Winkler from Tel Aviv wrote to Haaretz to support Mr Golatz. A Holocaust survivor, she was part of Kibbutz Gan Shmuel from 1949 to 1953.
"The nightmare started the first day," she said, describing ritual abuse at the hands of sabra (Israeli-born) children and an attempt by the system to crush their identities."
Kibbutzim tackling sexual violence on home ground and away
By Ruth Sinai
Haaretz - June 30, 2005
In recent weeks, the Kibbutz Movement sent 530 postcards to members who are soon to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces. The postcards explain how to cope with sexual violence in the army, and define sexual harassment, indecent acts and humiliating behavior toward women. The cards also provide several phone numbers that female soldiers can call for assistance, inside and outside the IDF, should the need arise.
The postcards are part of a series of actions taken by the Kibbutz Movement in recent years to increase awareness of sexual violence inside and outside kibbutzim. As part of this effort, the movement and the Centers for Victims of Sexual Assault are jointly sponsoring a conference tomorrow on the unique difficulties of coping with sexual violence on kibbutzim.
The conference, to be held at the Tzavta auditorium in Tel Aviv, is the first of its kind and will feature testimonies of victims and those who assist them.
"Sexual assault on a kibbutz is a bit like incest, because the social circle on a kibbutz resembles an extended family, to a certain extent," says Betty Ofer, a psychiatrist at the Counseling Center for Women. Ofer treats kibbutz residents who were sexually assaulted in their youth.
Ofer explains that in such a case, the victim continues to live on the kibbutz, revisits the locations where she was assaulted and meets the perpetrator on a daily basis. Then, when she chooses to expose the assault, she does so in front of hundreds of kibbutz residents, because it is difficult to keep a secret in a closed society. In the city, on the other hand, the victim can more easily escape the perpetrator, and must only report the act to a minimal group of people, she says. Victims on kibbutzim are often forced to expose their secret to the community when they seek funds for therapeutic support, she adds.
Smadar Sinai, director of the Kibbutz Movement's Unit to Advance the Status of Women, says that there is no reason to believe that the phenomenon is more common on kibbutzim than in other closed societies and sectors of the population, but that there is no data that measures the prevalence of sexual assault on kibbutzim. She admits that communal sleeping arrangements for children were "a house begging to be robbed, and there apparently were some robbers."
According to Sinai, the Kibbutz Movement has engaged in increasing activity to raise awareness and treat cases in its midst in recent years. In addition to other efforts, a hotline was created on a kibbutz in the north to respond to sexual assault complaints. The hotline has received several dozen complaints in its two years of operation. In addition, a nonprofit organization was created in recent months to address the unique problems that kibbutz sexual assault victims face.
According to Hila Karner-Suleiman, the general manager of the Centers for Victims of Sexual Assault, in 2005 the centers have received 87 new calls for assistance from people who were sexually assaulted on kibbutzim, typically during childhood. Staff members are not certain that this represents an increase in the number of such calls, as this is the first year that the association has separated calls according to location in the country.
Karner-Suleiman says that the treatment of male victims of sexual assault is also different on kibbutzim than it is in the city. "The sanctification of the ethos of the classic kibbutz male makes it even more difficult for men on kibbutzim, who were assaulted in childhood, to expose themselves. Yet, these numbers are similar to those of girls who were assaulted," she says.
A man who was the victim of sexual assault on a religious kibbutz will be one of the speakers at the conference.
Moriah Shlomot, director of the Counseling Center for Women, initiated the conference in response to the first buds of openness to grappling with this subject in the Kibbutz Movement. "Sexual violence was a repressed and denied topic on kibbutzim. Therefore, it was never examined, processed or treated," says Shlomot, a native of Kibbutz Bar'am. She hopes that the conference will give rise to an initiative to measure the prevalence of the problem. Shlomot is convinced that victims of sexual assault on kibbutzim, like victims of sexual assault in the family, are only prepared to expose the assault after many years. Moreover, there is a unique element to exposure in a community that takes pride in an image of a society based on values - this is a society that finds it difficult to admit that such an ugly phenomenon is taking place in its midst.
"I see the importance of the therapeutic process and the exposure of the secret, even if it is confined to the treatment room, as part of the journey of rehabilitation and empowerment of the victim, the family and the environment in which the victim lives," she says.
