Case of Brad Hames
(AKA: Bradley S. Hames)
Baltimore, MD
Columbia, MD
Far Rockaway, NY
Brooklyn, NY
Accused of showing a porographic movie to a minor.
Also accused of child sexual abuse.
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May 3, 2006
When I was approximately 15 1/2 years -old I had just left The Rabbi Naftali Riff Yeshiva in Southbend, Indiana due to sexual abuse by the school administrater, Yosef Meystel. I was very depressed and would sleep for most of the day. At that time Brad Hames was a friend of friend. He seemed as a funny outgoing man. He befriended me and we started going out a few times a week to have pizza, ice cream or just to talk. He seemed like a cool guy. At this time my father saw that he was spending time with me and told him to look after me because I was not in the best mental health (due to being sexually abused by Meystel).
One day Brad and I went to get a movie from the video store, while I was in line, he said he had to get something. He went to the back of the store and returned with another movie. I really didn't pay much attention to it. We ended up renting the movie "Fargo".
We then went to his "sister" 's apartment in Columbia. Brad claimed it was his sister's place and she was away. He said he was checking up on it and we could watch the movie there because she had a nice TV. After this incident I found out out this was his apartment. He had a "religious" apartment in the religious community of Baltimore, and a "non-religious" apartment in Columbia.
The apartment and the video was pretty cool, he was sitting on the same couch not far from me, but not too close either. After the movie he said oh lets watch another movie, so I innocently said OK.
He popped the movie in and pressed play and to my disgust and disappointment it was a pornographic film. I freaked out and started yelling that I wasn't going to stop screaming until he agreed to take me home immediately. Indeed he took me home right away and was continuously apologizing that he didn't realize that our friendship wasn't like that and that I got offended. As soon as I got home I told my father who subsequently told Brad if he cares for his personal safety that he should stay far away from me. A few weeks went by and I was hanging out with a friend of mine when we saw Brad in a distance, and my friend said to me oh there is that child molester Brad-- I was shocked and asked him how he knew. he told me that he had an incident with him. I returned home and told my father who suggested that we go talk to Rabbi Moshe Heinemann. We both went and spoke to him for about an hour and a half. Rabbi Heinemann said that he would look into the situation.
I saw Rabbi Heinemann in shul about a week later and asked him what happened. He said that when he confronted Brad that he denied any such stories. I looked at this "Rabbi" in shock and said what do you expect him to say.
As young teens we decided to take matters into our own hands and created a situation that ensured that Brad had weekly visits to a car mechanic either to replace his tires or windows. After each event which occurred late at night he would call Rabbi Gottesman--his mentor.
I had explained my situation to him when it first occurred and told him how much I hated my life and wanted to die and he told me, "There is a special place under the Kiseh Hakavod (throne of God) for people like you that commit suicide") Well after about a year or year and a half of Brad dealing with our actions supporting the mechanic, rabbi Gottesman told Brad that he will file a police report against us teenagers, but only after Brad took a lie detector test that proves he did no wrong to us. After this Brad confessed to his "wrong doings."
Shortly after I received several phone calls from various Rabbis on the Baltimore Bet Din asking that I would be present before the Bet Din while Brad asks for our apology publicly. We refused saying --now after all that they finally believe us.
Brad was subsequently sent out of Baltimore and now to the best of my knowledge resides in Far Rockaway, NY.
By Phil Jacobs
Baltimore Jewish Times - February 23, 2007
Editor's Note: It would be very difficult to write one definitive story on the issue of sexual molestation. With the clear understanding that there are many different, unique stories, we decided to tell the story of abuse through the experiences of one particular victim. This toxic problem is not exclusive to any one denomination of Judaism. It is, unfortunately, pervasive.
But we also understand that there is yet more to tell in the future, so this will be the first of an occasional series.
The teacher's son. Steve was 11. (Case of Shmuel Juravel)
The yeshiva administrator. Steve was 13.(Case of Yosef Meystel
The attorney (Brad Hames). Steve was 15.(Case of Brad Hames)
Today, Steve is 25. He graduated recently from Towson University with a degree in science. He is awaiting response to graduate school applications.
Steve is from an Orthodox family of eight children. He is no longer observant. Still, he remains close to his parents and siblings. He was a student at a Baltimore-area yeshiva and then a yeshiva high school in the Midwest.
But along the way, everything went so very wrong.
Steve still makes his home in the Orthodox community here in Baltimore. He was one of the disenfranchised teens who hung out over on the corner of Strathmore and Park Heights avenues. People grouped him and the others as "reject" kids. They had, the community said, "Fallen off the derech," fallen off the righteous path . . .
. . . Steve would come back to his parents' home in Baltimore after the yeshiva experience. At first, he'd spend 18 hours a day just sleeping. He contemplated suicide. On one occasion, what kept him alive was simply hearing the happy voice of a younger little sister. He did not want to hurt her or miss her growing up.
But then came "the attorney." He was a ba'al teshuva, a returnee to observance, who became involved in the community, a guest of frum families in town for Shabbat lunches.
By now, Steve was 15 and still in a despondent state of mind. He and his family were introduced to the bright, vivacious young man. Steve said the attorney could sense there were issues, depression even. He would talk with the attorney, make light conversation at the Shabbos table.
The affable attorney invited Steve to go rent a movie with him and then head out to a "sister's" apartment in Columbia. The attorney rented the movie "Fargo." But when the movie was over, he put a porno movie in the VCR. There was, by the way, no sister in Columbia, Steve would later learn.
"I just started screaming," recalled Steve. "I asked to be taken home. He freaked out, and told me he'd take me right home, and he asked me not to tell anyone.
"You think you're climbing up a hill and you're about to emerge from it, and then there's a mudslide."
Steve kept silent, but then while in the neighborhood, he and a friend passed the attorney walking along Cross Country Boulevard on a Shabbat afternoon. Steve's friend volunteered, "There goes the child molester."
"He told me that the guy did stuff to him. The guy was a guest in his house, like, every Shabbos."
Steve and his friend did go to the rabbis, and the attorney has since left the Baltimore area. There were never any charges or disciplinary actions taken against the attorney.
In a meeting with a rabbinic official, Steve was told he should work hard in own personal life to be close to the "kisse ha coved" (the throne of glory). Instead, Steve wanted to kill the attorney who abused him. And for months, he and a friend would trash his car or stand outside of his Cross Country Manor apartment and yell expletives at his window.
"I thought sometimes that I had written on my forehead the words, 'Molest me.'"
There is a way Steve describes these incidents. He talked about how in a science class, he learned that a cheetah can sprint swiftly at short distances, but could never keep up with entire herds of gazelles, who can run at a quick rate for miles.
"But the cheetah," he said, "watches for hours until he can pick out the gazelle who is lame, or the young who can't find its mother. That's when it strikes."
What also started to "strike" Steve was the availability of drugs. He contends that an overwhelming number of his friends or acquaintances who were victimized by sexual predators would begin to self-medicate, be it with alcohol, marijuana, prescription drugs, cocaine or even heroin.
At 12-step meetings, he was overwhelmed by the number of sexual molestation incidents he would hear as part of the lives of those Jews in recovery. He was also, in a sense, relieved that he wasn't the only Jewish person victimized.
Steve smoked pot, but he said his priority was getting an education. He would go on to attend the Community College of Baltimore, earning his degree, and then attend Towson. He wants to work in the sciences.
"There's a lot of sick people out there," he said of sexual predators. "These people are in all of this for themselves. They do not care about anybody, about you or your mental state when they violate you. It's so rampant. It's like the AIDS virus, it's gone wildfire. For guys like me, there used to be a sanctity about Judaism that prevented these things from happening. That sanctity is gone. When it comes to religion, I might talk the talk, but I'll walk my own walk."
It "sickens" Steve to even walk into a synagogue these days. He called the yeshiva system a "breeding ground for sexual molestation."
He said the best "therapy" he's had has been to talk to other victims, or "survivors," as he calls them. There's an anger, tears are in his eyes as he gets ready to say his next comment, which simply is, "Nobody is ever going to hurt me again." . . .
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Last Updated: 02/24/2007
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