By Debbie Teller
(Editor Ad-Kan)
My admiration for Ms. A grows as I watch the defense team try to break her down.
For four hours, Mr. Farkas junior pounded away asking questions about times and dates that could very easily have boggled the mind of even an expert witness.
But Ms. A stood her ground and did not waver even once. I noticed that even the judge was getting a little annoyed even though he comes across as extremely easy going and even jovial at times.
Michael Farkas spent most of the day going over dates and times of when Ms. A met certain relevant people. It seemed as though he was trying to prove that she is unreliable and a liar to boot. From my perspective he was not successful. He spent over half an hour trying to find out if Weberman knew that she was having a hard time in school or not. He kept going over and over these points until even the jury seemed exhausted from listening to the repetitive questions.
At one point Mr. Farkas asked Ms. A if it is a fact that Mr. Weberman is a Satmar. (He pronounced it Sat maaaar) And she responded that she didnt know.
Farkas turned to the victim and barked: "What do you mean you dont know, cant you see that he is- what makes you think that he might not be Satmar?"
And without a blink she responded that all Satmar men pray at the Satmar synagogue, and Mr. Weberman did not.
There was an audible chuckle from the audience.
It goes without saying that Farkas said nothing further on the subject of the authenticity of Nechemya's "Satmerism".
Today the judge threw out a piece of so called evidence. It was a telephone directory - a Jewish one of course. Apparently it is a joint business venture between Weberman and Ms A's father. This business partnership had absolutely no relevance to the case, yet Michael Farkas tried very hard to get it to be admissible going as far as handing the book to the victim to see if she recognized it.
The defense continuously tried to portray Ms. A as not only dishonest but as an angry teenager who spent her teenage years in Williamsburg engaged in all sorts of terrible activities. It was laughable because the worst thing he came up with was that she had been reading Cosmopolitan and People magazine! (I am sure that the mostly black jury were wondering if there was something in People magazine that they didn't know about)
She also testified that she used Mr. Webermans email account (Apparantly HE is allowed to have Internet access) to sell some poems and lyrics that she had created. It was almost amusing to see how hard Farkas and his team were digging to find some nasty, terrible deed in her past. But of course the worst this young girl had "done" in her life was to be raped and molested by her guidance counsellor Nechemya Weberman.
The argument that she should have told someone what was happening was terribly lame. One can Google anything to do with sexual abuse and disclosure and hundreds of articles will appear on this subject. It is well known that coming forward and exposing the secret of being abused is very difficult for the victim. It is beyond my understanding how this highly trained team of lawyers are using something like this as a defense.
Ms A. is a resilient young woman who has shown unbelievable emotional strength in the face of her ordeal. And on day 3 of this trial she has once again shown us that the truth will always prevail!
Please come to the trial tomorrow at 1:45pm to show your support!!
http://www.adkanenough.com/index.html
4 comments:
The truth always prevails? I don't know about that. I wish! But thanks for trying to make it be that way.
Isn't there an 'Asked and Answered' line that a defense attorney can use to stop repetitive questioning? What about 'Relevance'? Or is that only in the movies?
Like Baruch Lanner, a lesser known detail about Ephraim Bryks is that he was also an NCSY director. Heshy Nussbaum was hanging around Bryks in Winnepeg after he was fired for molesting in Toronto at Eitz Chaim and got divorced. It was ironic that Mrs. Bryks was warning single women in Winnepeg that Nussbaum is a suspected molester. A desperate attempt to deflect attention from her own husband? And then why allow Nussbaum to hang around by public events and more private, dangerous settings?
Regarding Queens Vaad's Ephraim Bryks & Kedassia's Chaim Halpern, a choshuva rov has this to say:
I think many others who lost name and reputation because of inappropriate conduct slipped into pritzus through involvement in marriage counselling. Counselling of all types is not for an amateur, and most rabbonim and roshei yeshiva are amateurs who can often give an eitza tovah but not do the long clinical process needed to solve a major problem. Our community is tragically vulnerable to fraudulent investors and fraudulent counsellors due to the emphasis on belittling secular credentials, and trashing the civil system. As a result we are seen by both insiders and outsiders as sitting ducks for get rich quick schemes, and cheap and easy 'Sholom' Bayis.
Every week the heimishe newspapers advertise courses under very frum auspices to become a life coach..... so be prepared for 100s of new scammers in the years ahead. I have the impression that some of the problem with the London rabbi revolves around his starting to believe in himself as a sacred sex therapist who is therefore allowed to talk in a highly intimate manner in the course of therapeutic intervention. He should not be doing that even if nothing worse than pritzusdike conversation occurred. Rabbis should give the business to qualified professionals with licenses who have to toe the line or be disbarred.
On the cemeteries (where thousands of yesomim were ripped from resold kevarim under Queens Vaad supervision) I am just horrified that in NY, the biggest community in the world with the most noise-makers there is more grave desecration than in the most forsaken corner of communist Poland.
Bryks has a son who participates in professional gambling events in Atlantic City according to the websites of those organizations. Doesn't that make someone possul for edus? Bryks should know considering that he heads a (phony) beis din
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