Joseph Fried, Yona Weisman and Lemon Juice were arrested Thursday evening and charged with judicial contempt, a misdemeanor, after a court officer found pictures on their phones of the alleged victim testifying in the courtroom where Weberman has been on trial. Abraham Zupnick was arrested as well but the charges against him were dropped on Friday.
Weberman, 54, the head of a Satmar sect of Orthodox Jews, is accused of repeatedly sexually assaulting the young woman starting when she was 12 years old.
Prosecutors said the men accused of taking photos made the trial even more difficult for the alleged victim, who is now 17 years old.
"There was no other reason to do this except to intimidate and dissuade this witness and other potential witnesses from testifying in this highly public rape trial," Assistant District Attorney Joseph DiBenedetto said.
But lawyers for all three men said that while their clients may have taken photos outside of the courtroom in the hallway, they did not take any pictures of the young woman while she was testifying.
"If any pictures were taken, they were taken in the hallway," said Shekera Shahid, Fried's lawyer.
The defense lawyers said the photos of the alleged victim testifying must have been taken by someone else and sent to their clients' phones. The lawyers also said no one had witnessed their clients taking photos in the courtroom, although prosecutors said court officers observed Weisman with his phone out during the trial on Wednesday.
Lawyers for Fried and Weisman declined to say who their clients supported in the trial, but Leopold Gross, Juice's lawyer, said Juice attended the trial to support the victim, not intimidate her. Gross said Juice did not know he wasn't supposed to take pictures in court, and Gross denied prosecutors' claim that Juice had posted a picture of the young woman to Twitter.
Bail was set at $5,000 bond or $2,500 cash for each of the three men, and they were expected to be released late Friday or early Saturday.
If convicted, they each face up to a year in jail.
The men appeared before a judge after sundown on Friday, during a time when Jews are not allowed to work, drive or use an elevator.
That made it more difficult for their families to be there for support, and the men will be unable to get a ride home when they are released.
"It's a huge problem," said Joseph Fried's brother, Yoel Fried. "They are going to have to walk home."
The men belong to the Satmar sect of Hasidic Jews who live in Williamsburg, approximately 2.5 to 3 miles from the court.
The case has been a lighting rod within the Brooklyn ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, which does not generally want to involve outside law enforcement.
Supporters of the young woman said she has already faced intimidation from the community in coming forward, and that the pictures may be another attempt to shame her.
"It's extremely disrespectful, especially in her community," said one 18-year-old woman on Thursday. "It's hard enough for her to stand in front of Weberman."
Her testimony continued Friday, and the court ended those proceedings at 2 p.m. because of the Sabbath.
The Brooklyn District Attorney's office would not comment on the arraignment taking place Friday night, but did say they have no control over when it happens.
A friend of the young men said he felt the proceedings were being stalled.
"It's very bad. They're doing it on purpose," the friend said. "The paperwork should be done by now. It's been 24 hours."
http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20121130/downtown-brooklyn/orthodox-men-charged-with-snapping-court-pics-be-arraigned-on-sabbath#ixzz2DqvlIHoy
9 comments:
http://articles.philly.com/2000-12-08/news/25579542_1_unlawful-contact-or-communication-charges-of-sexual-abuse-lower-salford
Ari Sorkin from Philly just had his 10 year chiyuv to register as a sex offender expire. But someone who had all kinds of child porn of kids as young as 10 & went all the way with at least one of them, must be really sick even now
http://articles.philly.com/2002-03-01/news/25342481_1_youth-adviser-child-pornography-synagogue
The Reform rabbi at the temple where Sorkin taught in the Hebrew school defends Sorkin. So much for Shmarya's baloney propaganda that the Reform movement properly deals with child molesters, unlike the Orthodox.
http://www.etz-hayyim-hania.org/cont.html
As recently as Jan. 2010, there are newspaper articles mentioning a Canadian named David Webber who is affiliated with the Etz Hayyim shul on the Greek island of Crete. Etz Hayyim is a kehillah of Romaniote Jews that predate Ashkenazim & Sephardim.
[Edmonton Jewish Life, Undated, 1990s]
"A former employee of Calgary Jewish Community Council, who served as kashrut supervisor for Calgary Kosher, has been charged with possession of child pornography, sexual assault and sexual interference with a child under 14 years of age. David Webber, 35, was arrested on February 22. On that date, police executed a search warrant on his apartment. In the search, they seized a large number of Polaroid photographs of nude boys aged 10 to 14 and written materials. Several children have already been interviewed and are alleged to be victims of sexual assault ... Before moving to Calgary, Webber was youth director of the modern orthodox Beth Israel Synagogue in Edmonton. In 1990, he was charged with sexual assault in Edmonton, but the charges were subsequently dismissed."
[SLADE, D., 10-26-96, p. B5]
In 1996, David Webber, former director of the Calgary Jewish Community Council and Youth Director of Beth Israel Synagogue, was sentenced to six years in prison "for possessing child pornography and molesting seven boys over the past eight years." Police found in his possession 3,635 photos of young boys, 16 pornography videos, 224 books and articles about "man-boy love," and other indicting materials. The provincial prosecutor called Webber an "unrepentant pedophile."
https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR65_eBEAEIdQTzo5ttXR1sk1X50AGFH0zs1siIok6VxW-BPX0Emg
Picture of David Douglas Webber
http://manalapan.patch.com/articles/lakewood-man-allegedly-steals-expensive-razors-from-target
Manalapan police arrested a Lakewood man who reportedly shoplifted merchandise valued at over $500 from the Target located in Epicentre Shopping Center on Route 9 in Manalapan.
On Nov. 5, Yitschok Abraham, 35, removed merchandise protection from two Braun electric razors and placed them on the lower portion of his shopping cart, loss prevention officers told police.
Abraham then approached the cashier where he purchased a variety of items, but he left the store without paying for the two electric razors, according to the Manalapan Police Department.
The value of the razors is $534.98.
Police later discovered that Abraham had an additional arrest warrant out of Freehold Township. He posted bail for the warrant and was released pending court.
Demand that Rabbi Yaakov Hopfer Make Public A Safety Plan To Keep Chazan Stuart David Friedman Away From Children
Contact:
Rabbi Yaakov Hopfer - Shearis Yisroel (Glen Ave. Shul)
Phone: 410-466-3060 Fax: 410-367-9183
Cantor Stuart Friedman regularly davens at the Glenn Ave Shul. As of today Baltimore Av Beis Din Rabbi Yaakov Hopfer has not warned parents in the community that a convicted sex offender is a regular at his shul nor has a safety plan been made.
The Awareness Center is asking everyone to contact Rabbi Hopfer and demand that he make the following information public. We are also asking that the following be apart of the safety plan.
Parents within the Eruv of Baltimore be notified that Cantor Stuart Friedman resides in the community. The notification must include his photograph as a way to keep unsuspecting children safe.
A special minyan be created in which no children under the age of 21 are present, so that Stuart Friedman can daven without being tempted.
Stuart Friedman be escorted when in shul or any other public location in which children can be present. Friedman especially needs to be escorted when using the bathroom or in hallways.
BACKGROUND HISTORY:
August, 1994. Cantor Stuart Friedman was hired by modern orthodox Beth Israel Synagogue in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. His previous positions include shuls in Cleveland and Detroit. Friedman holds a music degree from a university.
July 18, 1996. Cantor Stuart Friedman chatted online from his home computer in Halifax with an undercover FBI agent who was located in Long Beach, CA.
September, 1996. Cantor Friedman was arrested after he sent 29 pornographic photos of children over the Internet to an unidentified source in the United States. The photographs included children performing sexual and sadomasochistic acts.
Authorities said Cantor Friedman, was arrested after a lengthy Canada-U.S. investigation into a child porn ring on the Internet. The Canadian police seized up to 300 still photos involving nudity and sex acts involving children as young as eight. They also confiscated dozens of computer disks and videotapes containing child porn, as well as magazines with titles such as First Hand and Boys. [CANADIAN JEWISH NEWS, 2-6-97, p. 10] Police found a range of pornographic materials, including sets of handcuffs.
January 6, 1997. Cantor Stuart David Friedman pled guilty to possessing child pornography in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He was fined $2,000 & a $200 victim surcharge and was then allowed to leave the country immediately for the United States.
August 13, 1998 Cantor Stuart Friedman was arrested by the FBI in Baltimore, MD and flown to Los Angles, CA. He faced a maximum sentence of a $380,000 fine & 15 years in prison. His attorney, Marcia Brewer, succeeded in reducing the punishment to 15 months in prison & 3 years probation. She also persuaded the judge to remove the requirement that Friedman must disclose his child-pornography conviction to parents of anyone younger than 18 with whom he has contact. Instead, Friedman is ordered to just notify his employer. Judge Moreno said he took into account the pictures were not of boys younger than 12 and did not depict sadism. Yet sources do not say if any of the boys over 12 depicted sadism.
May 9, 2000. Cantor Stuart Friedman was released from federal prison and relocated to the orthodox community of Baltimore, residing at 3809 Clarks Lane.
2004. Cantor Stuart Friedman was noncompliant with the Maryland Sex Offender Registry for over a year.
2008. Stuart Freidman currently lives at 6016 CLOVER RD, Apt# 3, Baltimore, MD. He davens by Shearis Yisroel (Glen Ave. Shul), run by Rabbi Yaakov Hopfer. He is listed as living in an apartment owned by one of the daughters of Rabbi Moshe Eisemann. His apartment also is next door to the childhood home of convicted sex offender, Shmuel Zev Juravel.
Ha'aretz, January 22, 2003
"Tel Aviv District Court on Wednesday sentenced a 29-year-old Bnei Brak resident to nine years in prison and two years' probation for sexually harassing and assaulting six ultra-Orthodox youths between the ages of 14 and 16 over a period of years. Avraham Asher was also accused of 'offering' one of the youths to two of his friends, who also abused him. The two, Yossi Mozas and Yosef Garus, both 29, from Bnei Brak, were given much lighter sentences ... The court heard that Asher and his friends harassed the youths in bus shelters and at ritual baths in Bnei Brak. Asher also assaulted the youths in showers and once visited a yeshiva in Jerusalem, where one of the teenagers studied."
Child Molester Sent to Treatment Center
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, February 7, 2003
"David Schwartz, a counselor for preschool boys at an Orthodox music and arts camp, was sentenced to one year in residential treatment and five years’ probation for molesting a 4-year-old boy in his care at summer camp. A six-year prison sentence was suspended. The Jan. 21 sentencing at the Airport Courthouse came after Schwartz, the 36-year-old father of young children, accepted a plea bargain in which he pleaded no contest to one felony count of committing lewd acts with a child. (A plea of no contest in a criminal court is the equivalent of guilty, but if victims decide to sue Schwartz, they cannot use the criminal plea against him, according to the district attorney’s office.) Schwartz will have to register as a sex offender for life, undergo at least two years of sex offender therapy and is prohibited from being alone with minor children, including his own, for the period of probation ... While all the boys in the group told stories that indicated they had been molested and tormented, only two were able to tell their stories coherently and consistently enough to be considered admissible in court. Three parents spoke with The Jewish Journal, telling of the long-lasting pain Schwartz has inflicted on their families. Parents said their children spoke of being touched and hurt, and watching Schwartz make 'white pee-pee.' Testimony and physical evidence on at least one boy indicated that he was sodomized. Schwartz is alleged to have brought a bird into class and cut off its head in front of the children, telling them that if they told anyone about what happened, he would do the same to them and their parents... When Schwartz was first arrested, many in the Orthodox community — those who knew him and those who didn’t — asserted the innocence of Schwartz, who was a counselor at Camp Ruach for two years and taught middle school social studies at Yeshivat Yavneh in Hancock Park. Several rabbis who knew him privately expressed disbelief that he could have perpetrated such acts. At a hearing soon after his arrest, at which his bail was reduced from $1 million to $300,000, Schwartz’s supporters heckled the parents of the victims, accusing them of harming another Jew. But as details of the boys’ stories came out, support waned."
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/09/nyregion/inquiry-begun-into-claim-of-child-abuse-at-center.html
March 9, 1990
The Brooklyn District Attorney is investigating claims that dozens of children were sexually molested at a now-closed unlicensed day-care center in Brooklyn last year, according to participants in the case.
A spokesman for District Attorney Charles J. Hynes refused to confirm or deny that an investigation was under way, but Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a Brooklyn Democrat, said he and more than 70 parents of children who had attended the school met with Mr. Hynes on Feb. 6 to discuss what they contended was slow progress in the investigation.
The operator of the school was Mordechai (Morton) Ehrman, participants in the case said. He ran the school, known as the Simcha Play Group, at his home at 1444 East Fifth Street in the Midwood section. Working with him were his wife, Tova, several of his 10 children and an undetermined number of hired teachers, participants in the case said.
OU Kosher missing in action, again
WABC-TV
2012.11.26
The Food & Drug Administration halted operations of the country's largest organic peanut butter processor Monday, cracking down on salmonella poisoning for the first time with the new enforcement authority the agency gained in a 2011 food safety law.
FDA officials found salmonella all over Sunland Inc.'s New Mexico processing plant after 41 people in 20 states, most of them children, were sickened by peanut butter manufactured at the Sunland plant and sold at Trader Joe's grocery chain. The FDA suspended Sunland's registration Monday, preventing the company from producing or distributing any food.
The food safety law gave the FDA authority to suspend a company's registration when food manufactured or held there has a "reasonable probability" of causing serious health problems or death. Before the food safety law was enacted early last year, the FDA would have had to go to court to suspend a company's registration.
Sunland Inc. is the nation's largest organic peanut butter processor, though it also produces many non-organic products. The company recalled hundreds of organic and non-organic nuts and nut butters manufactured since 2010 after Trader Joe's Valencia Creamy Peanut Butter was linked to the salmonella illnesses in September.
In addition to Trader Joe's, Sunland sold hundreds of different peanut products to many of the nation's other large grocery chains, including Whole Foods, Safeway, Target and others.
In a monthlong investigation in September and October, after the outbreak linked to processor Sunland and to Trader Joe's, FDA inspectors found samples of salmonella in 28 different locations in the plant, in 13 nut butter samples and in one sample of raw peanuts.
The agency also found improper handling of the products, unclean equipment and uncovered trailers of peanuts outside the facility that were exposed to rain and birds.
The FDA said that over the past three years, the company shipped products even though portions of their lots, or daily production runs, tested positive for salmonella in internal tests. The agency also found that the internal tests failed to find salmonella when it was present.
FDA inspectors found many of the same problems - including employees putting their bare fingers in to empty jars before they were filled, open bags of ingredients, unclean equipment, and many other violations - in a 2007 inspection. Similar problems were recorded by inspectors in 2009, 2010 and 2011, though government officials didn't take any action or release the results of those inspections until after the illnesses were discovered this year.
In a statement earlier this month, Sunland officials denied that they knowingly shipped tainted products.
http://www.sunlandinc.com/788/html/nutrition/
OU
It's perturbing when Jews can't differentiate between acts of abuse. These 4 cheesballs are no less abusive than the accused and yet there are many who will cry that they were victimized. How so, because we have become used to being entitled by our political and financial communal strength. Hashem has given us the wherewithall to use this commodity for the improvement and betterment of the community at large and we've done so. In this case we use our prowess to cower and antagonize an accuser because we are victimized and entitled. I'm just waiting for the actress to come out of the woodwork to yell that Nechimia is a good boy and would never do these things, the room was dark, how could she tell it was him? I'm waiting. I'm waiting for the grownups to show up as well to repeatedly slam the "victims" of this media circus and vociferiously proclaim that a crime against our community and our values is being brought to court. It's no less of a violent crime than looting or car jacking being brought to justice. Why, I see asked, aren't the generous donators to the defense being lined up to experience the same rape that this child experienced. Why are pidyon shevuim dollars going to Nechimia? Why should you give to any other accused Jewish criminal? Either they're all worthy of keeping out of jail or not. Who put us in charge? I'm not giving Nechimia a free pass; I'm giving our community the breathing space it needs not to question pidyon shevuim. If Nechimia is found guilty, then he should get the maximum punishment allowed by law, no asifahs, no hand-wringing, no mi sheberachs at the Agudist Convention. This isn't about losing ones forest for the sake of the diseased trees.
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