In a verdant rain-soaked forest in central Israel, Shaili Level, a former ultra-orthodox

Jew, is weeping as he calls out to God.

You can hear the emotion cracking his voice.

Shaili is wearing a white prayer shawl with thick black stripes and wrapped around his

head and arms. He has teflin, small boxes with leather straps containing scrolls with

verses from the Torah. He pleads for relief from a childhood trauma, crying out,

I have no energy left to suffer all this.

A warning, you might find the story he's about to tell upsetting. Shaili accuses Yehuda

Meshizahav, a well-known social activist, of sexually abusing him when he was a boy.

He says Meshizahav then used fear and intimidation to silence him. Shaili feels haunted.

And Shaili's far from the only one from this insular, devoutly religious community to

have undergone such an ordeal. In the past year, a series of high-profile sex abuse scandals

has come to light among Israel's ultra-orthodox or heredy Jews. When some rabbis and religious

media reacted with silence and even by criticising the victims, it drew a furious backlash, sparking

the beginnings of what some here are calling a Me Too movement.

I'm Yolanda Nell, the BBC's Middle East correspondent. For this week's crossing continents,

I'll be finding out if this really is ultra-orthodox society's Me Too moment, or if this is something

different altogether. I'm now a mere Shireem as an old and crowded ultra-orthodox

neighbourhood of Jerusalem. There are loads of posters pasted up here, but that card that's

going past is also broadcasting prayers and notices to the neighbourhood. People here

don't use the internet and they're assigned up asking women especially to dress modestly.

The dress code you can see, there's a lady going past with a push chair, people wear a long

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