Sinas Chinam VIII(b) – Innocence Found

 

As we left off in our previous post, we were hearing a fascinating story from the mouth of Zvi Gluck. This was right after he claimed that Rav Elyashiv, ZTL, said "in my presence" (i.e., he wasn’t talking to Zvi) that one should let the police decide if “the person” is lying. Here is the entire story (1:28:11):

 

Now I'm going to share a story if I may, just to prove that point. Many, many years ago, not so many because Amudim was open already, a person who I knew growing up came to me and said, "I need your help. I was falsely accused of molesting somebody." I looked at him. I said, "You need my help. I'm the wrong guy for this." And he says, "No, you're the right guy for this because I firmly believe you look for the truth and not for an agenda."

He says, "I was accused of molesting somebody. I was an employee at a school. The school fired me. My wife doesn't believe me. She left me. I can't get another job. My whole life fell apart. I need you to help prove my innocence." And I remember telling him, "I don't know if I can prove your innocence, but if I find out you're guilty, I'm going to be the one to bury you." And I remember saying it like it was yesterday. And he said, "Game on. Anything you could do."

Make a long story short, this person was a bus driver. The accusation came from a parent on the bus that he molested a child on the bus. I reached out to the school and the school said to me, "What do you mean? You should be so happy we fired him as soon as we heard it." I said, "Firing someone and putting them on a leave of absence till it can be investigated is two different things.”

“Did you go to the police?" No, of course not. “Why not? Well, so how do you know that anything's even true?” Well, we believe the parent. I said, “You know what? I gave my word. Either I'll have to go after this guy or not, but can you, uh, can I speak to the parent that spoke to you?” Of course.

The parent gets in touch with me and tells me, "Oh, wow. It's so nice. You're finally taking it seriously. Someone's taking this seriously." My daughter came home and told me that she saw the bus driver molest another kid on the bus. “Did you call that other parent?” Yeah. “And what did they say?” They said, "I'm crazy and it's not true." Okay. I asked the school, "Can you share with me who the other parent is or have the other parent talk to me?" And the other parent got in touch with me and said, "Listen, we took my daughter to a therapist. We wanted to just be safe, but it came out that nothing was true and we don't know what this other mother was. And we told the school that they need to stop it.”

So, I asked the school, I said, "Is it?" And I don't know. I promise you, I'm not a detective. I'm not an investigator until today. I have no idea why this thought came into my head. But I asked the school specifically in this case, can the bus driver take the bus at night with me and drive the route that he did with these students? I could try to figure out what happened.

I will say to the credit of the school, they never told the bus driver who made the accusations. By the way, bus driver gets on the bus with me. It was a small bus, a mini bus. So, the driver's door, the driver would get in from that door and the students would get in from the other side. My mazal, it was pouring that night and the bus driver starts driving and I'm looking at the route and I see the names and I see in one place he drives on the wrong side of the street. Like, just interesting things happening, and at one point, by a dead end, he cuts the curb and opens up the driver's door.

I said “What's going on here?” He says, “Oh, when it's raining, this family, it's a single mother. She has a bunch of kids in the house. The father, the husband passed away and I basically passed the child to the mother through my door so she shouldn't have to come around the bus.” It was the next stop of the child who complained to her mother ‘cuz I don't get a ride on the bus driver's lap like my friend Chani.

I can promise you if this case went to the police, there would have been no arrest. It would have been investigated properly and this guy's life wouldn't have been destroyed. There is a system that works. If we utilize the system, it will be beneficial to everybody. But this school was so proud of themselves. We fired him right away. You should be happy. No, you destroyed a family. You destroyed a person's life for no reason. So, to answer that question, what if the person's lying? That's for the police to decide. And I stick to that all the time.

Zvi Gluck claims that the purpose of telling this story is to prove a point about letting the police decide whether a “person” (which person???) is lying. He closes the story by saying “So, to answer that question, ‘what if the person's lying?’ That's for the police to decide. And I stick to that all the time.”

I’m sorry to hear that. I think his closing statement is wrong. Moreover, I don’t see how this story even proves his point. We’ll get to this later. But this story does indeed prove other points.

Firstly, it proves that false accusations happen. Most Child Abuse Advocates do not believe that they do. It tells us, contrary to Zvi Gluck’s entire misguided philosophy, that there is such a thing as an “alleged” abuser. Secondly, it shows that false accusations are totally devastating. And that well-meaning people tend to jump to conclusions. It also tells us that the accusers may not actually be “lying” or may not think that they are lying, yet the accusations can still be false.

His remark that “firing someone and putting them on a leave of absence until it can be investigated are two different things” is also very revealing, although he doesn’t see it. What he is saying is that we need to distinguish between what needs to be done to protect potential victims, which is essential, and what “needs” to be done to punish suspected offenders, which is not. I have been preaching this for years (HERE) but nobody cares. Here comes Zvi Gluck and blurts it out as if it means something to him. But this is not what he preaches and certainly not what he practices. 

Zvi conceded that he was trying to "make a long story short". Sometimes this is a service to the listener and sometimes a disservice. For me, it was the latter. There are several gaps in the story due to details he left out.

As I mentioned, I have had personal experience with these types of stories, so I needed to know some of the missing pieces. I also wanted to challenge some of his assertions, especially his unwavering faith in the police. As such, I emailed Zvi Gluck with a list of questions.  The email is dated April 20, 2026 and the subject line was Please End this Sinas Chinam.

Here is the email in its entirety (note - in case this embedded file does not display in the blog email versions, the email can be accessed HERE):

As you can see, I asked 15 questions. I think the questions and their intent are self-explanatory. They were all honest and sincere questions and I really wanted to know the answers. I still do. They are not “shtuch” questions.

15 questions may be a bit heavy and I said as much, so I listed the 5 questions that I thought were the most important.

Zvi Gluck never responded to me. He did not answer the 15 questions and not even the 5 preferred questions. He did not answer a single question. What’s more reprehensible is that he did not even acknowledge the email at all. Not even to politely blow me off and say, “Dear Mr. Hirshman, Thank you for writing. I appreciate your thoughtful questions. Unfortunately, I am very busy and cannot address your email at this time. Have a nice life.” Or anything remotely close to that.

I think he is afraid to answer the questions. Very sadly, he is not the courageous hero I thought he was.

This email was the first of a series of 5 emails that I sent to him pleading to tone down the sinas chinam that he is perpetuating in public. There are four more to come. (Spoiler alert - None of them was answered or even acknowledged.)

For now, all I can say are to repeat the immortal words of HRHG RavAsher Weiss, Shlita:

I came to the conclusion you can't even have a dialogue with these people. They are so bent on what they believe.