I can't speak to the Jewish religious/moral/cultural aspects of this, obviously, only to my own moral sense. But. I think you taught several important lessons here:

--what a community is, and how to relate to the members of that community we may not like so much.

--that there are *degrees* of wrong, and that verbally repeating lashon ha-ra to others is a greater offense than thinking badly of someone. (This, IMO, is where most sects of Christianity fall down--the idea that looking lustfully at another woman while you're in a monogamous marriage is as bad as actually going out and sleeping with her.)

--*why* some of the rules you're teaching them exist.

--a lesson about forgiveness, and how to heal, and how to move forward as a community after an incident like this has occurred.

I personally think you did a lot of good.