Education Minister Naftali Bennett speaks at the 2018 INSS Conference, 31 January, 2018. (photo credit: CHEN GALILI)
Education Minister Naftali Bennett has called for an investigation into the allegations of sexual misconduct at Tel Aviv’s Thelma Yellin High School for the Arts.
In an interview on Army Radio, Bennett said he has instructed the education ministry's director-general, Shmuel Abuav, to conduct a "comprehensive inspection of the events at Thelma Yellin so we can generate lessons for the school and the education system as a whole."
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Artist Boaz Arad, 62, a teacher at the art's school, was found dead outside his home in Tel Aviv on Friday in an apparent suicide.
It is believed that Arad took his life in response to a report released Thursday by Channel 2 that he engaged in sexual relations with several of his under aged high school students while teaching painting at the school between 1983 and 2006.
In the report, a former student spoke of her four-year relationship with Arad, which started when she was 16.
Calling herself “G.,” she told Channel 2: “Boaz used to invite students to his home, this was a known thing. We would come and talk about art and the world. When I was 15, my relationship with him became closer and more intimate.
“I think it was love at first sight. He was over 20 years older than me, I was in awe of him as a teacher and we all admired him. To this day, there are a lot of students who feel this way toward him.”
Arad denied the allegations of sexual misconduct with minors in the report and explained that he had relationships with four former female students when they were of age.
The former student also alleged that the school knew about her affair, as well as numerous others, but had turned a blind eye.
When asked in the report if she was "mad" at the high school, “G.,” responded: "Yes, one of the reasons it was so important for me to speak is the anger at the management and the other teachers in the plastic arts, who knew in one way or another about my story."
She continued on to say that another teacher had once criticized the underage relationship, only to go on and develop a student-teacher relationship of his own.
"This is the point. I say if I was the only one, so you could say there was something unusual here, something not okay but special. But this is not what happened," "G." said.
Last month Haaretz reported that Menahem Nebenhaus, a respected music conductor and teacher at Thelma Yellin, had for years sexually molested his high school male students.
Sarah Levi contributed to this report.