Dr. Cindy Lou Golin, Ph.D. Response to Controversy     מכתב הפסיכולוגית גולין

DR. CINDY LOU GOLIN, PHD

March 14, 2007

To whom it may concern:

This letter is written in my capacity as a psychologist and its purpose is an examination of the issues surrounding the controversial publicity related to complaints made against him in May 2006. Following the complaints, character attacks were leveled against him, which found some expression in the press, on the internet, and within certain circles in the Jewish community. The nature of the critique focused on his relationships with several adult women.

I have gone to significant lengths at Marc’s request, to look at these issues. This process included a number of subjective interviews and psychological processes as well as reviewing objective data. The latter consisted of carefully perusing materials on the internet, reviewing extensive documentary material directly relevant to the issues, which clearly reveals the nature Marc’s relationships with the parties, as well as other accounts of these issues. After reviewing the material it is clear to me that the complaints filed were false. I have come to the following conclusions:

1. The relationships themselves were mutual and consensual.

2. Marc did not make false promises to gain sexual engagement.

3. Marc did not use his authority as an employer to gain sexual engagement.

4. The documented material indicates that these stories involve complex interpersonal dynamics and are not stories of sexual harassment or sexual abuse.

5. Marc has already expressed publicly his sincere and profound regret at any pain that may have been caused to people as a result of his relationship decisions. Marc has said that as the leader of his teaching community, he takes responsibility for any lack of wholeness or psychological health in the community. In my evaluation, Marc’s public letter in this regard, issued right after the incident broke, was written from a place of trauma and took on more responsibility than was warranted. As a result, irrespective of what happened or did not happen, Marc has taken two years off to go on an introspective journey and leverage this experience for the growth and opportunity it has to offer.

6. Marc has engaged in a number of lengthy processes of formal psychological and spiritual growth work to look into his part in the contribution system that led to this karmic creation. He has taken this tragedy in his life as an opportunity for a significant life review from early childhood to the present, he has shared with me, with humility, the insight, awareness, understanding and internal shifts within himself that have resulted from this process.

7. Because some of the participants in this process lodged formal complaints, Marc has been restricted from making direct contact with them. However, should the opportunity present itself in a safe context Marc would be more than willing to engage in a healing process with the people involved.

8. One of the places that Marc feels – that I concur – created the potential for controversy was the lack of transparency in his intimate relationships. In addition, Marc’s lack of disclosure in regard to personal relationships to close supporters and associates, while understandable, contributed to the dynamic. Marc shared regret of that lack of disclosure and commits to appropriate transparency in the future.

9. Marc believes (I concur) that mature adults are able to make decisions about whether to engage in relationship and to weigh appropriately the subtle dynamics of power that exist in the relationships.

10. I have also looked at the issues from 20 and 25 years ago that have been re-raised in the last year and conflated with the contemporary attacks with the apparent intention of portraying Marc in a highly negative light. This portrayal is inaccurate. Whatever mistakes may have been made long ago, Marc was not acting as a predator nor can these stories be fairly characterized as a form of psychopathology. To cite but one example of what is apparently a deliberate distortion, one website characterizes Marc as a “confessed child molester” raising the obviously false specter of Marc molesting young children. The actual incident referred to occurred in the context of a relationship, which, at the time, both sides experienced as loving (as evidence by a letter written by the woman after the relationship was over). The woman was in her first year of high school and Marc was out of high school just over a year. The relationship did not involve sexual intercourse, oral sex or any form of penetration. While this was not a conventional relationship, it may even have been inappropriate; it is distorted and malicious to characterize it as child molestation. It is common for a relationship which ends with emotional pain to be reinterpreted many years later, sometimes in the therapeutic process, in a way in which it was not experienced by the parties at the time. In any case, to characterize a person on a website, without qualification, as a child molester based on this type of relationship would appear to be a deliberate attempt at character assassination.

11. I have also retained a letter in our file from the law firm that looked carefully into these issues that affirms that that Marc is in violation of no laws and deserves our support..

Regards,
Cindy Lou Golin, PhD
Psychologist