re: #3 EiMitch

The unwritten part of this story is that the engrained response in these communities is to turn to the local bet din for judicial relief. Civilian authorities, in the collective memory of the Eastern European Jews, were not to be trusted. What has happened over the decades, is that the willingness of the local religious courts to take action in touchy cases has been reduced. This may be due to a desire to keep negative events under wraps (to avoid bad press for orthodox Jews) or because of the difficulty of reaching halachically binding consensus and enforcing any subsequent decrees. Regardless, that is no excuse for ignoring, tolerating or worse harbouring and protecting sexual predators.