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(JTA) — Fourteen months after the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance was riven by allegations of sexual harassment in opposition to one in every of its co-founders, an impartial investigation into the group has cleared it of wrongdoing.
The investigation by attorneys at a third-party regulation agency marks a turning level in a painful chapter for the Orthodox feminist group. The group was upended final yr when Bat Sheva Marcus, a distinguished intercourse therapist and one in every of its founders, revealed in an essay that she had been investigated and compelled to resign as board chair on account of allegations of office harassment. Marcus claimed the allegations mirrored “lighthearted remarks” that have been blown out of proportion, however these making the allegations stated her feedback harmed them and hindered their capacity to do their jobs.
Though JOFA had already responded to the allegations internally, it commissioned an exterior evaluate of its previous and practices amid questions on whether or not a bunch based to disrupt oppressive gender dynamics ended up reinforcing them. The regulation agency, Cozen O’Connor, has a unit dedicated to serving to organizations stop and higher reply to sexual abuse,
Launched Wednesday, the evaluate concludes that all the allegations aired publicly final yr have been true. However after interviews with 31 folks and unfettered entry to paperwork and communications associated to JOFA, the report’s authors stated they discovered no different proof of wrongdoing.
Nonetheless, the report says, the group didn’t reside as much as its values throughout the interval ending in 2018 throughout which two government administrators stated they have been subjected to sexual harassment and insufficient responses to their issues. Enhancements have been made subsequently, the report says.
“Cozen O’Connor discovered that Jofa’s responses to their experiences have been aligned with authorized necessities and efficient practices in place on the time, however that there was extra Jofa may have accomplished in every occasion to speak care and concern for the impacted people,” states the report, written by two attorneys who’re former intercourse and baby abuse prosecutors.
The report features a sequence of suggestions, together with that the group conduct annual sexual harassment prevention coaching for each staff and board members, and that it contemplate extra frequent modifications to the board’s composition so as “to encourage the infusion of recent voices, views, and concepts.”
The disaster has unfolded at a second when JOFA’s position is unsure. Its first convention, in 1997, was a landmark second for Orthodox feminists at a time when ladies had few alternatives for management in Orthodox congregations and communities. However in recent times, the group’s significance has waned because the house it initially carved out has each expanded and grown extra crowded.
The investigators didn’t converse to the 2 former government administrators whose accusations triggered modifications at JOFA and distancing by a few of its allies final yr. In keeping with the report, the ladies had declined repeated invites, “citing their issues in regards to the impartiality and neutrality provided that Cozen O’Connor had been employed by Jofa, and that people whose actions they believed to be the topic of the evaluate have been nonetheless energetic Board members.”
The 2 government administrators made their identities and allegations public after Marcus’ essay. Elana Sztokman, who ran the group from 2012 to 2014, stated she had been fired the identical day she wrote a letter to JOFA’s board saying that Marcus “had been emotionally abusive for over a yr.”
The evaluate didn’t search to reply whether or not one in every of Sztokman’s complaints, that Marcus had given her an unsolicited vibrator, constituted sexual harassment. It discovered that JOFA’s board didn’t have a obligation to answer the allegation when she made it publicly, as a result of she was now not working there. However the report added that the board had missed a chance to enhance its tradition by not reaching out to her.
Sztokman’s successor, Sharon Weiss-Greenberg, led the group from 2014 to 2018. She stated that she, too, had been subjected to what she stated was office harassment and that her efforts to press the group’s board to reply had not yielded passable responses.
“I used to be attempting to assist them do the correct factor the entire time,” Weiss-Greenberg informed the Jewish Telegraphic Company final yr.
“There’s a #MeToo journal that JOFA did,” she stated in that interview, referring to the motion to counter sexual misconduct that started in 2017. “A part of me thought that if we have been writing about behaviors that have been occurring in our own residence, we’d get up to it. I used to be incorrect.”
Each ladies stated that they had not gone public earlier than Marcus’ essay due to non-disclosure agreements that JOFA required them to signal. The agreements have change into controversial in recent times amid rising dialogue of the prevalence and prices of office harassment and abuse. Amid the flurry of public scrutiny final yr, JOFA launched all previous and current staff from NDAs.
A number of board members stated they regretted not apologizing to Sztokman, the Cozen O’Connor report says, and on Wednesday, the group’s present leaders once more apologized for JOFA’s dealing with of the ladies’s criticism previously.
“We acknowledge that our consideration to our former government administrators’ well-being didn’t comport with the tradition that we search for our employees and group, and for that we’re sorry,” the group’s present board president, Mindy Feldman Hecht, and government director, Daphne Lazar Value, stated in a letter despatched to the JOFA neighborhood on Wednesday.
After the uproar final yr, the group was suspended from the Security Respect Fairness Community, a Jewish advocacy group centered on office issues of safety that counts about 150 organizations in its fold. In keeping with JOFA’s letter to its neighborhood on Wednesday, it’s now being readmitted to the community.
The letter additionally says JOFA’s board has endorsed the report and its suggestions.
Hecht and Value wrote, “We’re dedicated to remaining a optimistic and formidable drive for feminism and to persevering with to companion with you to create a extra vibrant and equitable Orthodox neighborhood.”
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