Journalist Phil Jacobs says it only takes one touch.
Just one sexually charged fondling at the hands of a trusted adult may have a ripple effect that “can change the way you make decisions, change relationships — if you can have relationships — or can change you sexually,” Jacobs says. “One touch.”
Because he knew this from agonizing personal experience, Jacobs became something of an anti-pedophile crusader in his native Baltimore, where he wrote for the Jewish Times (he now serves as editor of the Washington Jewish Week in the nation’s capital).
Starting in 2006, the Baltimore Jewish Times began a series of nearly two-dozen stories about rabbis and other Jewish community leaders who allegedly preyed on the children among them. Jacobs named names.
The story of his crusade, and the high price Jacobs paid for it, is captured in the 2010 documentary “Standing Silent,” which had its California premiere last week at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. Jacobs and director Scott Rosenfelt were on hand for two of the Bay Area screenings.
The third and final screening takes place Monday, Aug. 8, at the Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael. Jacobs talked with j. during his Bay Area visit.
Echoing the scandal plaguing the Catholic Church (though on a smaller scale), the film tracks Jacobs’ efforts to expose alleged predators lurking in Baltimore’s tight-knit Orthodox community. One included a revered long-dead rabbi, others were still very much alive.
As Jacobs’ articles came out, many in Baltimore’s Jewish community were outraged. At Jacobs.
“I was very angry at the Orthodox community,” said Jacobs, who is himself Orthodox. “This was happening in our community and instead you’re getting mad at me. I didn’t molest anybody.”
He was in fact the victim of molestation. At age 14, a much older Jewish community activist lured Jacobs and a few friends to his home, where he cornered Jacobs. When the teen resisted, the man raped him.
The crime so traumatized him, Jacobs told no one until well into adulthood.
“If you could picture a three-drawer file cabinet,” Jacobs
says, “the bottom drawer was my molestation, with a deep chain around it with a huge bullet-proof Masterlock, and nobody could go in there.”
It wasn’t until years later that his past caught up with him. A TV news special about a pedophile priest transfixed him. Jacobs’ wife, Lisa, came home and found him sobbing.
“I told her that night what happened, when it happened and what it had done to me,” he recalls. “My therapist helped me unlock the lock of that cabinet, and we took out each file.”
Later, at the Jewish Times, he started his investigations into other alleged predators. Producer Rosenfelt, who had known Jacobs through a family connection, pitched the idea of a documentary soon after.
That began a three-year ride as a virtual reality show star.
“A videographer showed up in my office one day,” Jacobs remembers, “and started following me around. She was saying things like, ‘Could you back the car up again?’ We even went to Israel to visit my oldest daughter and the videographer followed us there.”
The “big reveal” in the film is Jacob’s molestation, but the high point of “Standing Silent” comes when the camera captures a phone call from December 2007. Jacobs learns that Yisroel Shapiro, the target of one of his investigations, is arrested for his crimes. Jacobs weeps, gratified that his work paid off for victims.
The joy is short-lived, however. Shapiro receives probation three months later, then quickly returns to his job at a kosher butcher shop. Shapiro was one of only two pedophiles investigated by Jacobs to be convicted.
Still, Jacobs is grateful for victories large and small.
“The result is we’ve had a number of [Jewish] healing services in Baltimore. We get together, survivors get up and tell their stories.”
He also touts the formation of survivor groups throughout Baltimore, one of which he attends. And he has spoken at Jewish day schools, with one Orthodox student claiming it was “the most important hour I ever spent,” Jacobs reports.
“Those are the things that make you cry with a smile on your face. The terrain has changed.”
Though he has moved on from covering the Baltimore Jewish community, Jacobs says he will continue his fight against child predators. For him, it’s personal.
“It sounds really shmaltzy,” he says, “but I feel I’ve been tapped on the shoulder by God to do something because something happened to me. My thing is that not one child goes to bed worrying about somebody touching them. That’s what drives me to this day. Protecting that kid.”
“Standing Silent” screens 4:30 p.m. Monday, Aug. 8, at the Smith Rafael Film Center, 1118 Fourth St., San Rafael. Information: www.sfjff.org or (415) 621-0523.