Rahel Bayar: Developing Healthy Boundaries

David Bashevkin:
Hello. Welcome to 18Forty, where each month, we explore a different topic balancing modern sensibilities with traditional sensitivities to give you new approaches to timeless Jewish ideas. I’m your host, David Bashevkin, and this month, we’re exploring abuse in the Jewish community. This podcast is part of a larger exploration of those big, juicy Jewish ideas. So be sure to check out 18forty.org. That’s 1-8-F-O-R-T-Y.org, where you could also find videos, articles, and recommended readings.

And another warning to our listeners. As we’ve been saying throughout this series, there will be some mature language and discussion given the sensitivity of this topic. There is a story in the Talmud that I always think about when it comes to conversations about abuse and the importance of having these conversations, but it’s not actually about abuse itself. It’s about the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash, the Temple in Yerushalayim. The Talmud in tractate Gittin on 56B has the following story where when Titus is broke into the Beis HaMikdash and begins to defile the great Temple in Yerushalayim, he goes into the Kodesh HaKodashim, into the inner, inner sanctum of the temple, and he spreads out a Sefer Torah, and he does an immoral sexual act in the holiest place in the world.

It was always very strange the way that Talmud describes the reaction of what happened because afterwards, it says he took a sword, and he pierced the paroches, which was the curtain that separates the inner sanctum from the rest of the Temple. A miracle happened, and blood began to pour out from the curtain itself. Even though, obviously, a curtain is an inanimate object, that’s where the blood began to flow from, and Titus for a moment, the Talmud says, thought that he killed, so to speak, k’ilu Chas v’Shalom, God Himself, which is a wild passage in the Talmud.

It always bothered me in a way. Why is the miracle taking place, this symbolic act of this destruction of the Temple taking place on the curtain, the paroches that separates the different sections of the Beis HaMikdash? Shouldn’t have taken place… Shouldn’t have there been a miracle or the massively symbolic act take place in the inner sanctum itself in the Holy of Holies, where he spread out a Sefer Torah and did this terrible act of sexual immortality?

And the Maharal asked this question as well, and I think loosely interpreting his answer, what deep acts of immorality do and where we find it most profoundly is in the way that it actually… the corrosive effect it has on our boundaries, the corrosive effect that it has in the way we separate between holy and profane. I think about this passage in Talmud a great deal because I think in many ways, if our bodies and our lives are in some symbolic way, a Temple, a Beis HaMikdash unto themselves, then the symbol that preserves and embodies holiness more than anything are our boundaries and the way that we preserve boundaries in our own lives, in our own bodies, in our own community.

And in reaction to immorality, the exposure to immorality, being victim to an act of immorality, the most corrosive effect where we see it is in the erosion of our boundaries. I think boundaries both in our personal lives and in our community are both literal and symbolic representation of holiness itself. It’s why the miracle in the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash that symbolized what was happening was not blood flowing from the Kodesh HaKodashim. It’s not the fact that that act of immorality happened. It was the erosion of any sense of boundaries and distinction between right and wrong, holy and profane, the Kodesh HaKodashim, and the rest of the Beis HaMikdash.

I think as a community, what’s so important is developing and cultivating a healthy intuition, standards, and policies for those boundaries to figure out what the paroches is going to be in your own personal life, in the way that you interact with others, so you understand and realize when such boundaries, God forbid, have been violated. That’s on a personal level to know and to trust your intuition of boundaries, to trust your own proverbial paroches in your own life, to have a paroches in the way that you interact with others, clear boundaries, and institutionally and communally to have proper policies that represent that paroches and that separation because ultimately, in that great act of destruction, what symbolized it more than anything was the erosion of the boundary itself.

That is why I think it is so important and I am so excited to have a conversation with Rahel Bayar. Rahel Bayar has developed a reputation really internationally. She began working at the District Attorney’s Office in sex crimes and domestic abuse, and she now runs The Bayar Group, which serves as a consultant to organizations and institutions really throughout the country, throughout the world. She’s an incredibly articulate, passionate, and sophisticated spokesperson, and she understands and lives within our community as well, which is why I think it was so important to invite her on to have a discussion about boundaries, abuse in our community.

So I am so excited to speak today with Rahel Bayar. Now, I need to start right from the beginning. You spell your name, “Rahel” without a C.

Rahel Bayar:
I do.

David Bashevkin:
How do we pronounce your name during this interview? Guide me.

Rahel Bayar:
No, it’s pronounced “Rachel.” I thank my parents all the time for confusing everybody with the spelling, but I think they really wanted me to be called “Rahel” and not “Rachel” as I was growing up, and so they decided to spell it a little bit differently.

David Bashevkin:
A little bit differently, and we appreciate your perspective, your background. We’re so excited for this conversation today. Before we jump into the questions, like you gave the history of the very spelling of your first name, and I hope it’s okay if I call you Rahel.

Rahel Bayar:
Absolutely.

David Bashevkin:
Maybe you could tell us a little bit. What is your background? How did you get into this world of training, of providing resources, educational content to prevent sexual abuse particularly within faith-based organizations?

Rahel Bayar:
Sure. So I actually started as a prosecutor coming out of law school. I spent my first year at the DA’s Office in the Bronx as a domestic violence prosecutor, as an assistant district attorney in the Domestic Violence Bureau, and I knew that I wanted to transition into the Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Bureau. Although, at the time, you could not start there. You had to kind of work your way up. So I was able to transition into that bureau where I was for a number of years.

When I left the DA’s Office in 2016, I started working for a global investigative company that had a division called the Sexual Misconduct Consulting and Investigations Division, where I ended up as a managing director there by the time I left, where we really were a group of former prosecutors who were working in the private sector for schools, and camps, and faith-based organizations, and sports organizations, and a variety of other places on really conducting either historical abuse investigations or investigations into grooming behavior or boundary-crossing behavior. And a big piece of what I was doing was conducting trainings and what I like to call preventing the very crimes that we spent so many years prosecuting and investigating.

In November of 2020, right in the middle of the pandemic because why shouldn’t we make a good change in the middle of a pandemic, I decided to go off on my own and founded The Bayar Group to really focus on building up that training component, what it means to have effective and impactful abuse prevention of all different kinds, and also really focusing on what kind of policies and procedures do you have within your space. And so that’s really what I do, and that’s the background of what led me to this place and this conversation with you.

David Bashevkin:
So I’m just curious. You graduate from law school. There’s some, I’m sure… If you were able to secure a position in the DA’s Office, you must have done nicely in law school. Was it always the plan? Meaning, what drove you? Why not biglaw? Why not become a lawyer for an investment bank and, you know, a corporation? What drove you specifically to go into investigations of the most heinous, painful crimes? What led you to that?

Rahel Bayar:
Sure. So what I would say is when I really think back on my background and the reasons why I went to law school, I never went to law school to work in a firm or to work in biglaw. It was never my viewpoint. I really went to law school because all through high school and all through college, I had had a real focus on advocacy in one way or another. So it wasn’t specific to sex crimes. It wasn’t necessarily specific to child abuse, but I did a lot of work in my undergrad on navigating domestic violence and things of that sort where I wrote a curriculum, and I did a lot of studying in that. I focused on both women and gender studies as well as Judaic studies in my undergrad and psychology in my undergrad experience. And so I knew I wanted to add value in some way.

I am very much the daughter of both a rabbi as well as a lifelong educator, and so I was really raised in a home of really thinking about your value-add, whatever it is. Right? No matter what you bring to the table, that there is something that you should be able to add to this world. And so when I went to law school, it was with the notion of, “What kind of really good things could I do coming out of it?” I wasn’t specific about wanting to work with heinous or vicious crimes, or thinking about that. I was always the person that watched Law and Order SVU and was like, “I would never want to do that. That does not seem fun. Who wants to be called out at 3:00 in the morning to a crime scene? Not me.”

Yet, when I was in law school, one of the things that I gravitated towards was a lot of the extracurricular moments. Right? The classes that you take with a federal judge that just inspires you or the mock trial team that I was able to secure a place on. And I was lucky enough to really come into contact with some great mentors, my mock trial coach. There was one federal judge that really had an impact on me, and so more than the coursework was very much the, “How do I like live this experience of what it means to be a lawyer?” It happened to be that my mock trial coach at the time was a former ADA in the Bronx specifically.

David Bashevkin:
Which mock trial team were you on?

Rahel Bayar:
Sure. So I went to Seton Hall Law.

David Bashevkin:
Okay.

Rahel Bayar:
Actually, my mock trial coach was a wonderful woman named Jennifer DiTommaso, and she was just fabulous. And it became clear to me after going through that experience and also sitting in a wonderful federal judge’s advocacy classes, what it was called, Judge Katharine Hayden, that I just had a passion for this and being able to utilize my voice in a particular way. I had always loved public speaking. I had always loved being able to connect with people over things, and I really felt like the DA’s Office was a really good fit. And the truth is that going to the Bronx was my first choice, honestly, because the Bronx DA’s Office at the time had the reputation for really throwing you in, like you start, and you start trying cases, and you start getting a caseload, and you’re training by learning and by jumping in the fire.

And from where I sat, that’s really what I wanted, and that reputation was totally accurate. I think I had my first trial within a very short period of time, not knowing what I was doing, being guided by people who did know what they were doing, but really learning what it means to be a trial attorney, and to try cases, and to work with defense attorneys, and to work with traumatized victims. Right? You are not a mental health professional. You are not someone who can go out of your lane. And at the same time, empathy, and listening, and being able to hear what’s being said and not being said while thinking of the rules of evidence, and how to try a case, and your theme, and your theory, and all of those pieces. You really hone your skills very, very quickly. The truth is that even on the bad days, I loved every minute of being at the DA’s Office. Every minute.

David Bashevkin:
So it’s really interesting because I actually want to start talking not with the threshold for a crime, but almost before you reach the threshold for a crime, and I want to start with a very basic definition of a term that we have been hearing a lot of, particularly within the Jewish community. We, unfortunately, like so many communities, like really, any community, are no stranger to scandal, and there is a term that is constantly used. I was wondering if you could help enlighten us. So what is the definition of the word “grooming?” Meaning, is it a technical term? What is grooming? I hear it constantly.

Rahel Bayar:
Sure.

David Bashevkin:
And when you’re not precise, then anytime somebody is nice to you, that is like, “Ugh, they’re grooming.” What exactly is grooming?

Rahel Bayar:
So there isn’t really a legal definition across the board of what grooming is. Let me tell you what my definition is based on, obviously, the work that I’ve done as well as what the overall definition of it is. Grooming is, at its core, a very specific, steady seduction of a child by breaking down particular natural boundaries that are meant to exist in that type of relationship or interaction and for the purpose of connecting in a particular way so that when the abuser does something really bad to that child and abuses them, that child is so confused by the fact that they have this relationship or friendship with that abuser that they’re standing in that moment or after that moment thinking to themselves, “How could it be that this person that has gifted me things, or time, or kind words, or has just been someone that’s been there for me, how could they do something bad to me? Well, maybe it’s not bad.” Right? “Or maybe it’s my fault, or maybe I caused this.” At its core, when we really think about grooming, what is important to understand is the reason why people use that word a lot is because… and I liken this to my childhood. When I was a child, I grew up being taught stranger danger like, “Don’t take candy from a stranger. Don’t pet a puppy.”

David Bashevkin:
Sure. Don’t pet a puppy.

Rahel Bayar:
Like, “Don’t get into a van with a stranger.” Like, “Don’t do anything.” But when we think of sexual abuse specifically geared towards children, 91% of kids that are sexually abused are abused by someone that they or their family knows. The question that always comes out is, “Well, then how did we not see it?” And the reason why most people don’t see it is because that abuser is engaging in these grooming behaviors. I’m connecting with this child. I’m doing it in a way that may be seen or obvious to everyone. There may be something secretive about it. Maybe I’m friends with the parents, but there is a slow and steady breakdown of the boundaries that are meant to exist within that relationship, and it’s manipulative in nature.

David Bashevkin:
You mentioned specifically children in your definition of grooming. Can you have grooming between adults?

Rahel Bayar:
You know it’s a great question. I hear that a lot. I don’t know if I can answer that question because I think from a mental health professional’s perspective, I wonder if that terminology would apply. In what I do and my own expertise, we refer to grooming in terms of the way that people interact with children. So I don’t want to misspeak or kind of remove myself from my lane.

David Bashevkin:
100%. So what are the red flags for grooming? Meaning, it sometimes can be so hard to distinguish between somebody who is looking to take a sincere interest in a child. Like I knew, growing up, my parents would hire educators for me to learn with one-on-one. God forbid, nothing untoward happened. These were wonderful, wonderful people who helped foster and cultivate my love for Torah learning. They would take me out for pizza. They would get me prizes. But on the flip side, grooming can sometimes look almost imperceptibly similar to that sincere effort in cultivating a relationship that is sincere and healthy with a child. So what are the red flags to look out for when it is unhealthy?

Rahel Bayar:
Okay. So it’s a great question, and before I even answer that, let me actually reframe a bit to understand the answer. The whole reason why it’s necessary for anybody that actually works with kids, whether it’s in a school, or in a camp, or in a youth organization, or anything of that sort, to ensure that that organization or that that place that you are has boundaries, and has policies, and actually trains on that is because so much of what we navigate with grooming is in navigating what feels like this gray area. Right? You have the- Let’s imagine like everything on the left side of a room is all the things that you would do with a kid. You’d empower them and make them feel fantastic, and you would teach them, and educate them, and inspire them in a religious setting. You may act as like a mentor, right, and really be able to enhance certain things.

I want you to imagine all the way on the other side of whatever room we’re in is kind of like the the buckets of things that you would never do with a kid. Right? You’d never sexually abuse them. You would never engage in any type of really dangerous behavior. You would never harass them or degrade them. The problem is that we don’t live in extremes, and so what that means is that for many people that are working with kids, we’re constantly navigating this gray area. If I buy a birthday present for someone, what does that mean? Do I fall in the good? Do I fall in the bad? How do I make sure… Right? And I say this for people that are educators thinking about it, but also from the framework of how you’re posing the questions, like how do you know the difference between someone that’s engaging in the good and someone that’s engaging in the bad?

And so the best way for me to answer that is to say because people that are working with kids are constantly navigating the gray, it actually becomes really important that every place that they’re in delineates boundaries that are acceptable in that particular scenario, whether it’s school, or tutoring, or chavruta style, whatever it might be so that everyone is adhering to the exact same thing. That way, it allows people that are in a youth-oriented place to say, “Okay. If we’re all adhering to that same line and navigating the gray, we’ll be able to recognize if someone is pushing a boundary and engaging in something that actually is the bad.”

Now, to answer your question specifically because I do think that it is important, I think at its core, a lot of grooming can come down to… and I want to be clear in saying it doesn’t always come down to, but it can come down to this idea of secrets. Right? The idea that when someone is grooming a child, there is something that they are asking that child to keep a secret, and I want to differentiate between a secret and a surprise. A secret is something that has no ending, and a surprise is something that’s always going to have an ending. Right? You want to buy a birthday gift for your mom. When you give that gift to your mom, the surprise is over, and no healthy adult needs a child to keep a secret for them.

And if we just think about it at its core, it doesn’t mean that that encompasses all of grooming behavior because you could have somebody that’s engaging in that gift-giving, that time, those kind words in a very public way, but they may also be engaging in connecting to that kid and saying to that kid, “Let’s just keep this between us.” Right? “This is our secret,” or like, “We don’t need to share this with anyone. We don’t need to tell anybody this.”

A lot of grooming is also about somebody that has a focus on one, or two, or three particular kids. Right? Imagine someone in a huge educational setting, a school, a camp, a youth program. Right? The idea of having an adult there, and we’re talking right now about really adult-to-child interactions. Having an adult there, they’re there to serve a bigger purpose than just focusing on one particular kid, even if they connect with a particular kid more than others. Right? They’re not meant to just be working with one kid in a camp setting or one kid in a school setting. So someone that’s focusing the majority of their time really focused on that one, or two, or three particular kids could raise and should raise a red flag.

You know, somebody that ignores boundaries and limits with kids. Right? So somebody who says, “I know that if I’m working with a kid one-on-one, I’m supposed to be in an observable place where people can see me. Right? But this kid needs to talk about something more private, so these rules don’t apply to me. Like we’re okay. Let’s go somewhere and close the door.” Right? Or, “I know that I’m not supposed to do X, but it doesn’t apply to me.” Right? That person who kind of pushes those boundaries, the policies, or the rules, or the expectations of wherever they are, that’s something that should raise a red flag.

I think there are some more obvious ones. Right? Someone that talks about children in any inappropriate way or takes pictures, or images, or videos of kids, whether it’s in a compromising position or not. But also, when we really think about that grooming behavior, a lot of it can happen in full awareness of other adults around them, and so the question really comes down to, is there something that this grownup, this adult is engaging in that not only blurs those boundaries, that not only has this like secretive lens to it, but there can also be grooming of, let’s say, a child’s parents like, “Would you like me to take this child out? This child loves spending time with me.” And so that question may not be secretive, but then some of the conversations that that adult has with the child could be secretive in nature.

David Bashevkin:
I think that’s such a profound point that I just want to emphasize again about the role of policies in allowing individuals to highlight and notice those types of behaviors. When you have a uniform policy, then subversion or boundary-crossing becomes much more noticeable. If you don’t have uniform policies, then you never see a boundary cross. It’s like the tide coming in. There’s no clear demarcation where you ever see anybody stepping over anything, which I think is a really profound idea.

Rahel Bayar:
Totally.

David Bashevkin:
I usually think of policies as purely preventative in the sense that like this way, you know they’re not going to get too close. The policies also kind of like highlight the boundary-crossing even before anything untoward or actually criminal happen.

Rahel Bayar:
Yeah. No. People think of policies as something that sits in a binder on a shelf and collects dust. When people say policies, I think that’s what they think of, but policies are really alive. In child-facing organizations, policies are empowering. They give you an idea of exactly what should not be done. They give you an idea of what can be done, and they put everybody in the same space. They say, “This is our standard.” And you know, a lot of times, people will ask me like, “How do you know? How do you know if someone wants to do something bad to a child? How do we know?”

One of the things that I say, and I say this a lot is like, “Look, there is no magic serum. I can’t bottle it up for you, and you’ll automatically know, but chances are you’re not going to walk into a crime scene. What you’re going to walk into is boundary-crossing behavior. If you as an organization or you as a group do not have a set standard of what those proper boundaries are, and I don’t mean halachically. I don’t mean in terms of yichud and negiah, which is a whole other conversation. I mean, real, proper boundary guidelines. Then, you don’t have a roadmap towards identifying that grooming behavior or that boundary-crossing behavior, and so your policies become your roadmap.

They become your magic serum and your understanding of them as child-facing educators, or camp counselors, or youth workers, whatever you might be. I mean, you become the way of being able to keep those kids safe. So if someone walks into your community or your organization and starts blurring a boundary, you’re like, “Hold up. I get that. That’s blurring something, and that’s a red flag.” And that’s your roadmap towards keeping kids safe.

David Bashevkin:
So I have a question, and I think this really… of people that I’ve spoken to. I do know people who are victims of actual criminal abuse, but I know more people and even more instances of people who are victims, so to speak, of that gray area. And your background is in criminal investigations. Your background is about finding evidence and proper investigations to knowing was a crime committed. My question, and it’s not specifically to children, it’s to adults as well. If you have been subject to a relationship with a faith-based leader, with an educator, with a rabbi, and you feel like a line was crossed, and something inappropriate did take place, but it’s not criminal. You don’t have evidence. You don’t even have an incident that you think behaviorally was a crime. You feel that manipulation. You feel that boundary-crossing. What would you tell a person? What are they supposed to do?

Now, they know this educator. They know this rabbi. They feel that queasiness, that unhealthiness in the relationship. They’re going to call the cops because somebody made them uncomfortable? I mean, you, I’m sure, someone had… You’ve been involved in cases where we don’t have enough evidence. There wasn’t a criminal act committed. What advice, guidance more particularly would you give somebody who is not subject to a crime, but feels that they were subject to something that was inappropriate and unhealthy?

Rahel Bayar:
So I want to answer that question, but I also want to clarify one thing in your question, which is this notion of not enough evidence I think comes up a lot because we are a generation of people that grew up on CSI and like Law and Order, and we are this generation of, “If there’s no DNA evidence or if something is not recorded, we don’t have evidence.”

David Bashevkin:
Not me. I need to clarify. No, no, no.

Rahel Bayar:
Okay.

David Bashevkin:
With me, I’m only was raised with true crime, but my training…

Rahel Bayar:
I appreciate that.

David Bashevkin:
True crime documentaries, and books, and podcasts.

Rahel Bayar:
Perfect.

David Bashevkin:
So my training is much more sophisticated.

Rahel Bayar:
Understood. So, first of all, it’s important for everybody that’s listening to know that when something does happen to you, and we’ll use the word “crime.” Right? When some sort of criminal activity does happen to you, your testimony is evidence. Right? You are essentially the evidence. We call it testimonial evidence because, especially in sex crimes cases and especially in child abuse cases, most of the time, all we had was testimonial evidence, the person’s recitation of what happened to them.

I mean, I can’t even count the number of times that I put a witness into a grand jury in New York, which is that first step before getting to trial, where all I had was the survivor, the victim just speaking about what happened. So I want to make sure that when we use those, that language and that terminology, that we give power to the fact that the… something that you have experienced. It doesn’t mean that you don’t have evidence just because you don’t have DNA or you don’t have it recorded. That wasn’t really your question. I want to focus now on your question.

David Bashevkin:
No, that’s a really important clarification, and I’m so glad that you said that.

Rahel Bayar:
It’s huge. It’s huge because a lot of times, when people navigate the trauma of having experienced something, our brains… I’m not a scientist, but a lot of what we do when we understand the impact of trauma, especially on rape victims and sex victims in general or people that have survived sexual assaults or sexual crimes is that we know that the brain encodes trauma in particular ways, and it’s so interesting. This is a little bit of a digression, but we’ll go there.

David Bashevkin:
Please.

Rahel Bayar:
It is so interesting to me when I hear people talk about… saying to kids or even adults if something bad happens to you like, “Why didn’t you fight back?” or, “Why didn’t you say no?” or, “Why didn’t you run away?” That’s not actually how our brain encodes trauma. Right? That is actually not a typical trauma response for a 7-year-old, or a 16-year-old, or a 45-year-old to be in a situation where something really scary, or really dangerous, or really unsafe is happening. Even if it’s not scary in the moment, by the time you realize what’s actually occurring, you freeze. Right? You freeze, and you may say to yourself, “I can’t believe this is happening. What’s happening? I don’t even understand what’s happening.” You may not even process it until a long time later. Right?

Like when we think about being in a car accident, like how many times do you hear about people who are in car accidents who had a flash of something, but don’t remember what actually happened? Right? They don’t remember. They might remember the smell or a flash of color, but things come back to them later on. That is trauma. Right? So, a lot of times, people experience things, and they think to themselves, “If I don’t remember it properly or if I’m the only one that experienced it, then that’s not enough.” But really, part of this work is being able to say to people, “Know what you experienced and what was done to you is enough for you to be able to speak up.”

Your question though was in a situation that I would liken to either some sort of inappropriate boundary-crossing behavior, potentially grooming behavior. Right? Especially if it’s something with a teenager, or a child, or something of that sort, or harassment. Right? Like sexual harassment. Right? That unwelcome or unwanted conduct that’s either of a sexual nature or again, this is getting into the nitty-gritty, but depending on where you are, if you’re in the United States, sexual harassment can be defined in a variety of different ways. Generally speaking, we think of it as that unwelcome or unwanted conduct of a sexual nature. And that’s something that’s geared towards someone because of their sex, or their gender, or their identity.

David Bashevkin:
Can I give a specific example?

Rahel Bayar:
Sure, sure.

David Bashevkin:
Before you wind up your answer on this because I’ve really unfortunately… This is something that I do know people have struggled with. An example would be particularly via text where there is like… I don’t know if this is scientifically true. I know I feel it myself. There’s an intimacy towards texting even more in some ways than like a phone call. I can’t describe it.

Rahel Bayar:
For sure.

David Bashevkin:
There’s like intimacy, and imagine getting text messages, and you could be… I’m not talking about a child right now. I’m talking about cases of people who are adults, and they have a religious leader in their life, and they begin texting, let’s say, a relationship that is very formal. They’re like asking halachic questions. They’re asking religious questions, and then they see the text slowly escalate into maybe that’s something that’s a little bit more flirty, a little bit more relationship building, a little bit more cutesy. At that stage, there’s no crime.

Rahel Bayar:
Right.

David Bashevkin:
So what advice do you give to… Again, I loved your caveat. Make sure you know that there is not, in fact, a crime. Meaning, the fact that there’s no DNA does not mean there was not a crime.

Rahel Bayar:
Right, right.

David Bashevkin:
But when, in fact, there was not a crime, to my knowledge, it was uncomfortable. “Why is a rabbi talking to me this way? Why do I feel like I’m being flirted with in this way?”

Rahel Bayar:
Right, and chances are that rabbi doesn’t exist in a vacuum in the sense that a rabbi is usually connected to something. Right? Whether it’s a synagogue or shul, whether it’s a school, right, whether it’s an organization specifically, and every single school, camp, organization, workplace, honestly, is required by law to actually have policies with regard to sexual harassment, with regard to unwelcome or unwanted behavior if they are in the United States. I want to acknowledge that there are maybe people listening to this that are outside of the United States.

David Bashevkin:
Sure.

Rahel Bayar:
What that means is the minute that you have someone that crosses a boundary with you, whether you are able to define it as harassment or not, whatever terminology you use, that’s a report up. Right? When you talk about something that isn’t a crime… and I want to be clear in case there’s a soundbite that comes out of this. Anytime there’s a crime, it should be recorded to law enforcement. Period. End of story. Hard stop. But when you’re talking about boundaries being crossed between adults or potential sexual harassment between adults where one of them is in that power position. Right? They have that title of rabbi. They exist as part of a particular organization or workplace. There should be a report up. Right?

There should be a report. If it’s a shul, it should be a report to the… whether it’s the executive director, the executive committee. If it’s a school, it should be to the board. It should be to the administration. Right? There is a way that our institutions are structured, and there should be an immediate, from the perspective of the person experiencing it, knowledge that they should be reporting it. They should be able to report it. I think part of the fear is, “What if I report it and nobody takes this seriously? What if I report it and they ignore it?” Right?

If we look back at the Chaim Walder situation, somebody that… From everything that people know publicly about Chaim Walder, he was essentially an unlicensed therapist. Right? He was a children’s book author. He seemed to do and focus on kids a lot, but what really came out after he killed himself was how much people knew about the boundaries and the crimes that he had committed. And so when it comes to boundary-crossing behavior of someone in a power position especially, being able to empower everybody that’s listening here to report that up is an important piece of them knowing that there should be and in most cases, there is someone that can take that report. The question is, will they do anything with it?

David Bashevkin:
And do you have advice… Again, we’re talking just like what advice you would give somebody. Let’s say they gave in the report, and this person they come by is still teaching, still interacting, not with you per se, and you have no way of knowing. Did anything change? Did anything really was disciplined? You weren’t given a report on this. What advice would you give? Should they keep it in the back of their head, keep their eyes open? Should they try to mention this name to other people and see how they react? If other people have the same experience, create an informal network.

I’m curious if you have advice for how… When you don’t have a criminal action, how do you kind of ferret out and make sure that the people involved in our developing religious values, religious education are all healthy, good people and when you don’t have what to go to the police with? Let’s say you brought it to the attention of the organization or the institution this person is affiliated with. You don’t know how it was dealt with or if it was dealt with, but you see this person still involved. What do you do? Do you file a note in the back of your head? I’m coming from a real place, and it’s not just one incident.

Rahel Bayar:
Right.

David Bashevkin:
I get asked this question a lot, and in the secular world, in the media world, they have this thing where they had a Google Doc that I think women in media put together of like bad media people who are creepy or whatever it is. It ended up going public. It caused the whole stink and et cetera, et cetera. What role, if at all, does informal networks play in all of this? What do you think? What guidance would you give somebody who’s struggling with this?

Rahel Bayar:
So I actually would not give guidance or advice, definitely, to be totally honest, on a podcast because when it comes to understanding whether somebody can do something actionable, it’s not just about crime. Right? We have a whole civil system. When we think about workplaces, and harassment, and sexual harassment, they’re actually laws that protect people even if they are not employees, but an employee of that workplace is harassing them. And let’s say, they’re a member of that congregation or they are a parent of a student in that school.

So I would actually be very clear in saying, and I hope that people who are listening really hear this, every situation is different. Every situation is unique, which is one of the reasons why even when you feel stuck, being able to speak to an attorney who is licensed in your particular state, who understands the laws of your particular state and not just criminal laws, but also civil laws, and can advise you becomes really important. It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach. Right?

If we talk about what it means to just generally create safe spaces, I think there are a lot, and there’s definitely a lot that “word of mouth” does, but “word of mouth” also keeps things secretive. Right? And the idea would be to create transparency in a way that actually does not open you up to your own lawsuit, and so what I would say is there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. Right? It is important depending on where you are, what state you’re in, what the situation is that you get proper legal counsel, and don’t take the advice of somebody on a… Let’s say the equivalent of a nationally-syndicated podcast because you want to make sure that you have advice that is tailored to your situation, and that is something that sometimes gets lost.

People get nervous or scared. “Well, why would I hire a lawyer? I’m blowing something up.” Right? Or, “Why would I speak to a legal counsel? I don’t even work there.” Right? “I’m just a parent,” or, “I’m just a congregant,” or, “I’m just…” The phrase “I’m just.” No one is “I’m just.” You are. You are you. You had an experience if something was done to you, and there are people in every single state that can work to advise you and tell you what your options are, not just in a court of law, but actually what your real options are and can help get that information to a place and in a way that is actually protective of both you as well as the people around you.

David Bashevkin:
I really appreciate that answer. To me, it sounds like the right answer to me rather than… It hurts me because the answer was essentially, “Don’t listen to a podcast for your sexual abuse investigations,” but it does ring true. And the more education, the more informed people are on these issues, the better decisions they’re going to make on this. Aside from being a former associate district attorney… assistant district attorney?

Rahel Bayar:
Assistant district attorney. Yeah.

David Bashevkin:
Assistant district attorney. Aside from somebody who worked in an investigative group, aside from somebody who was a founder of an investigative group, you are also a parent.

Rahel Bayar:
I am.

David Bashevkin:
And I am curious. My father was… and I mentioned this too many times. My father is an oncologist, took care of cancer, and it was always interesting because when you’re growing up, especially in elementary school for some reason, I remember there were so many snacks and things that people would tell me, “Oh, that causes cancer. We don’t eat this.” I remember tradition soups, the MSG in tradition soups. People said like, “Oh, my parents won’t let me have that. It causes cancer.” I would go home and tell my father, and then he’d be like, “Nah, that’s fine. You can have that.” He was actually a little bit more relaxed because he knew what actually does and does not cause cancer.

Now, just to be clear, we’re not giving medical advice right now, but I’m curious how your experience as a prosecutor, how does that affect you as a parent? How do you talk to your own children about sexual abuse, if at all? How do you parent them going on overnights, on all of these things? Are you, do you have trackers on your kids? Do you have it in an investigation room when they come back from camp with a light, and you come in with a cigarette and a cold coffee, and start interrogating them?

Rahel Bayar:
Uh-huh.

David Bashevkin:
How do you operate? How do you take all of your experiences and then integrate them as a parent?

Rahel Bayar:
So it’s a great question because I think a lot of times, people will ask me… First of all, they’ll ask me questions like, “Where do your kids go to school?” or, “Where do they go to camp?” because that place must be the safest place, right, or alternatively, they’ll ask me something…

David Bashevkin:
I was going to ask you. Do your kids go?

Rahel Bayar:
Do your kids? Do my kids? It’s a great question, and I think that one of the most important pieces… and I share this a lot when I post on social media. I have a whole Instagram account that is really dedicated towards empowering parents to be able to not only speak to their kids, but to integrate what I call small moments of abuse prevention into their lives in a way that doesn’t feel overwhelming.

David Bashevkin:
What’s your Instagram handle?

Rahel Bayar:
Sure. It’s @rahel, R-A-H-E-L, .bayar, B-A-Y-A-R on Instagram. On Facebook, we’re under The Bayar Group, and so there’s a lot of information that we post there for parents. Everything that I post and everything that I talk about, I practice what I preach. I believe that abuse prevention is something that should be done by parents. I believe that from the time that your kids are really little, there are moments of being able to integrate abuse prevention that’s not overwhelming or scary where you never even have to use the words “sexual abuse,” or “grooming,” or “pedophile,” or any of those scary things.

I liken the way that we integrate abuse prevention to how we teach our kids how to cross the road. Right? When I taught my kids from a very early age once they were walking and toddler walking, right, and we would be walking to shul on Shabbat, we’d stop at the end of the street. I would be holding their little hand. I would look both ways, and I would verbalize, “I’m looking both ways to make sure that a car doesn’t come. We don’t cross the street if there’s a car coming. We listen. We look. Right? We use our senses. And then, if it’s safe, we cross the street.”

Week after week after week, every single Shabbat morning until they get to a point where I say, “Okay. Now, what do we do when we get to the end of the street? Right? What do we do?” And they would start to look, and listen, and verbalize it. That’s what abuse prevention is. It’s not saying to your kid, “If you don’t look both ways, a car is going to come and crush you, and your guts are going to be all over the ground.” There may be some parents that do that. That is not my style, and I think that that is really an example of how we impart really important things without scaring our kids.

And so I have had every awkward conversation you could imagine with my children. My oldest is now in high school, and my youngest is six. It starts from an early age. Honestly, it starts from identifying their body parts by the correct terminology. Right? Not assigning shame to their genitals. Right? and it’s hard, especially in a religious community, to think about not attaching some sort of shame or embarrassment.

I think that one of the things that we don’t realize is that when our kids can call their genitals by the proper names, a kid can say, “This is my penis,” right, or, “This is my vagina or vulva,” without any shame or embarrassment, when we as a community embrace that, then what that means is that if something bad does happen… Let me actually rephrase that. If something unsafe does happen because it’s not always about… “Bad” and “good” is not the right terminology. It’s really about something safe versus unsafe. Then, they are less likely to feel ashamed. They are more likely to speak up to you. Right? They’re more likely to say something because there isn’t this automatic embarrassment to the fact that this body part is called something different.

And the truth is I can’t tell you the number of times that I prosecuted cases where we couldn’t do something because a child could not identify the body part that something had happened to. And so even from an early age, being able to integrate that, being able to integrate things like the differences between secrets and surprises. I mean, I can’t tell you the number of times my own kids have told teachers that I was going to put them in jail because a teacher was using the word “secret,” and that’s something that unsafe people do is asking kids to keep secrets. I mean, literally I have emails and calls from teachers throughout the years, which is like, “Um, so your kid said that I was going to jail because I used the word ‘secret.’”

David Bashevkin:
There it is.

Rahel Bayar:
But those little bits of abuse prevention, teaching them that their body belongs to them, right, and understanding that they shouldn’t be forced to hug or kiss even Grandma, or Savta, or anyone, even if they hadn’t seen them in a long time, that they actually do have that control over their own body. Those are the very beginning bits and pieces of a foundation of abuse prevention. As they get older, the conversations are definitely going to shift. But for every parent here, the one thing I do want parents to understand is abuse prevention is not about a big sit down conversation. It’s really about the small moments. Right? It’s about the newspaper article. It’s about you know, something coming out, whether it’s in the news, or on TV, or in a movie, or hearing about something, and just bringing it up while you’re folding laundry, at the dinner table, at the Shabbat table, wherever it might be.

I think the other piece that parents need to be aware of is that when they send their kids to schools and to camps of which yes, my children do go to school. They do leave the house. They do go to summer camp, sleepover, and day camp. You have to know that the camp and the school that you are sending your child to adheres to that best practices. What policies and procedures do they have? What kinds of boundary guidelines do they have? How do they train on them? Is it like, “Check the box. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. It’s over in three minutes?” Do they invest in really being able to make this a part of their culture? If something unsafe happens, what have they done in the past? Right?

And so all of those questions are questions that parents should be asking of the places that they send their kids, and I think that the other piece is that we have to remember that we can give our kids a lot of tools when it comes to abuse prevention, but prevention rests on our shoulders. It is our responsibility. It is not our kids’ responsibility to keep themselves safe, and so what that means is we have to have those conversations with the places our children are at. We have to have those conversations with our family members that maybe cross boundaries, but we’re just too hesitant to say anything because I don’t want you to think I think you’re a pedophile, but I don’t want you to give my kid a lollipop and say, “Keep that a secret from Ima.” I don’t want you to do that, and I need to tell you why. Those pieces are integral in terms of parenting and abuse prevention.

David Bashevkin:
We have seen reckonings in so many different types of communities, whether it’s in politics, in Hollywood. So many different types of community, and each one has their own culture. I’m curious if you could speak a little bit about what role religious affiliation plays in a community in shaping the way a community responds or deals within instances of abuse within that community. Meaning, how is it any different, if at all, from Hollywood, from politics, from sports, where we’ve seen so many instances where those communities have kind of had these points of reckoning? Does the role of religious affiliation shape in any way the way communities deal with this?

Rahel Bayar:
Well, I think that the process of investigation is different from the process of having these things come to light, and kind of shifting and changing what is done within religious communities because any time it comes to something faith-based by the way of any religion, really of any religion, what ends up happening, and I want to be clear that this is not… I’m not basing this answer on particular scientific data. Right? I am basing this answer on just what I have seen throughout all the different faith-based communities that I have worked with and that my colleagues have worked with is that anytime you have something that’s based in faith, there is a particular ethos and a particular set of laws or a particular set of values, right, a value system that gets applied.

And because abuse prevention, specifically sexual abuse is not necessarily something that’s been talked about for hundreds of years, even though… I will tell you. Within the Jewish community and our faith-based community, it absolutely is something that’s been talked about from literally the stories that we have sitting in Bereishit up through Talmudic passages, et cetera. But I think with faith-based communities, what you’re navigating is a set of values that may not have encompassed the idea of speaking out or speaking broadly about something like this, and there has been a big shift, but at its core, you still have people that are scared, and you still have people that are worried. They’re worried about, “If I come forward and say something about someone, how are people going to perceive it if they are someone that’s well-known and appears to be a particular type of person?”

I think back in this day and age to the Chaim Walder situation, because the minute that those allegations of that news article went public in that way, there was this immediate tipping point. Right? And that tipping point was… All of a sudden, there was this pause, and you had people that were still in that arena of give the benefit of the doubt, and you had people in our faith-based communities who were like, “We need to pause, and stop selling his books, and not make an assumption that this is a false accusation.” And that happened broadly. As we saw the entire situation progress to his suicide and things of that sort, you saw huge shifts amongst our faith-based communities.

What I would like to see in answer to your question is the idea that we talk about this more because the more we talk about it, the more action there is. The more we create a space for survivors and people that have had these things happen to them, the less taboo it becomes. The more we talk about the idea of ensuring that kids and families are in these safe spaces, the more we create conversations like this as a means to be able to reach people and to say, “There’s nothing wrong with talking about sexual abuse. It happens everywhere.”

The statistics are that one in four girls and either one in seven, or one in eight, or one in 13 boys, or people who identify as male and people that identify as female will be sexually abused by the time they turn 18. That’s not particular to faith-based communities. That’s everywhere. So it is harder, I think, to get people to see sexual abuse as something that really happens everywhere, and it is harder for people in faith-based communities to move away from the taboo, but it’s hard no matter where you are because it’s overwhelming, and it is overwhelming to think that it is something where you won’t see a scar on someone’s body, and that doesn’t mean that scar isn’t there.

David Bashevkin:
Rahel, I cannot thank you enough just for your experience and the way you allow your experience to bear upon the guidance, and direction, and advice on such a sensitive issue. It is not an easy issue to talk about, but you do so, so eloquently, so passionately, and it’s really a message that our community so desperately needs to hear. I always wrap up my interview with a little bit more rapid fire questions. So I was wondering if you could recommend a book to have somebody better understand issues related to abuse, related to how we deal with these issues. What’s on your reading list? What are the books that you would recommend?

Rahel Bayar:
Yeah. There are so many different books that actually focus on different particular things. So, for example, there’s a book that just came out recently. It’s called Your Whole Body by Lizzie Charbonneau, and I may mispronounce the name. It’s spelled C-H-A-R-B-O-N-N-E-A-U. That actually is a great book for little kids, and that is something that I really think everybody should have in their library. There is a great graphic novel called Consent by Rachel Brian. By the way, these are all available on Amazon, which if you have a kid that’s in third and fourth through high school who really loves reading those like graphic novels, it’s a really wonderful book. There are a ton of resources for parents as well, and I’m happy to share with you a whole laundry list of things, but a lot of different books will focus on different particular things.

David Bashevkin:
I absolutely love that you recommended a graphic novel. If I understand you correctly, a graphic novel, it’s like a comic book.

Rahel Bayar:
Yeah.

David Bashevkin:
Which I absolutely love. Some of my favorite issues have been dealt with in graphic novel form. I’m not going to go ahead and mention them to our listeners. You know what? I’m going to go ahead and do it anyways. I absolutely love the DC graphic novel Kingdom Come, Maus, obviously, which deals with issues related to the Holocaust, but do I understand you correctly? The book Consent is a graphic novel like a comic book?

Rahel Bayar:
Yes, yes. It’s one of those like a cartoony… If you have a kid that’s in fourth and fifth grade, and they like absolutely love any type of book or graphic comics. Exactly. We call them graphic novels.

David Bashevkin:
My next question I always ask. If somebody gave you a great deal of money to go back to school and get a PhD, take a sabbatical, no responsibilities, and write a dissertation, what do you think the subject and title of that dissertation would be?

Rahel Bayar:
I’ve got to be honest. I went to law school and had a baby in law school. I’m just not sure I would go back to school at this point.

David Bashevkin:
That’s fair. You did your time.

Rahel Bayar:
I kind of think that I’d have to really think about it and really say… No. In all seriousness, it’s a great question. My first answer whenever anyone is like, “Would you ever go back to school?” is like, “Do you know what it’s like to take a bar exam with a two-year-old?” I just don’t know. I don’t know that I would.

David Bashevkin:
Let me just be clear. This would be all expense paid, childcare, anything you needed to go back.

Rahel Bayar:
I would say that if it was an opportunity to really explore further, I’m fascinated by how we shift. Really based on your question previously, how we shift the notion of really effective abuse prevention in faith-based communities. And what I’d love to be able to do is not only study, but think about it from a practical perspective. How do we change? Right? How do we look at everything that happened in the Catholic church, everything that’s happened within our Jewish community, and really move to a place where over the next hundred years, this is not something that’s taboo, and covered up, and hidden in any way, but that there is a real clear roadmap to ensure that no matter how much you adhere to your faith, that it’s not a barrier towards overcoming abuse prevention.

David Bashevkin:
For my final question, I’m always curious about people’s sleep schedules. What time do you go to sleep at night, and what time do you wake up in the morning?

Rahel Bayar:
I mean, you asked questions about my being a parent. So I’m surprised that there would be a question about what time you go to sleep. Don’t you know that the minute you plan to go to sleep, your kid wakes up? I actually try to get as much sleep as possible. I am actually a firm believer that the only reason why I’ve been able to do this work for so long is because I try to go to sleep at a normal hour. I drink a lot of water, and I exercise on a daily basis. And those are all things that I do for my mental health. I also drink a lot of coffee, but I am not a super late night person. I actually try to wake up very early in the morning, and I get a lot of really good work done in the morning.

David Bashevkin:
Well, we need a number. We need a time that you go to sleep at night and that you wake up in the morning.

Rahel Bayar:
I can’t. I can’t give it to you. I’ve got kids.

David Bashevkin:
Rahel Bayar, thank you so much for joining us today. It means so much to us. Thank you again so very much.

Rahel Bayar:
Thank you. It was great being here.

David Bashevkin:
What struck me so much in our conversation is that without boundaries, without a policy, you will not notice deviation. If you don’t have a clear standard, then you’ll never be able to discover and notice when standards are eroding or when standards are diminishing. With clear policies and boundaries both on an individual level and a communal level, it doesn’t just make us safer. It gives us more confidence. It gives us more confidence that we are equipped to identify risk and respond to risk properly, and that’s what I find so powerful, so informative, and so educational about her work.

It’s not alarmist. It is sensible and really gives you the tools and the confidence ultimately with those tools to say that I have an appropriate relationship with the risk in this world. You don’t have to go wringing your hands or getting nervous, but you have an understanding and a proper approach with boundaries and policies in your own life and the way you interact with others. It’s not one directional. It is bi-directional. Having policies in your own life and to be able to notice deviations in your own life is also a healthy and good thing. And that is what I find so powerful and so important about discussions about boundaries that take place whether it’s in institutions, whether it’s with your children, with your family, or ultimately, with yourself.

So thank you so much for listening. This episode like so many of our episodes was edited by our dear friend, Denah Emerson, and it wouldn’t be a Jewish podcast without a little bit of Jewish guilt. So if you enjoyed this episode or any episode, please subscribe, rate, review. Tell your friends about it. You can also donate at 18forty.org/donate. It really helps us reach new listeners and continue putting out great content. You can also leave us a voicemail with feedback or questions that we may plan a future episode. That number is 917-720-5629. Once again, that’s 917-720-5629. If you’d like to learn more about this topic or some of the other great ones we’ve covered in the past, be sure to check out 18forty.org. That’s again, the number one, eight followed by the word “forty,” F-O-R-T-Y.org, where you can also find videos, articles, recommended readings, and weekly emails. Thank you so much for listening, and stay curious, my friends.