A lawsuit filed Tuesday accuses Rabbi Daniel Greer — who revived a
declining neighborhood and has publicly crusaded against gay rights,
prostitution, and coed university dorms — of repeatedly raping and
molesting students at his yeshiva at Elm and Norton streets.
Greer, through his attorney, denied the allegations.
An attorney for Eliyahu Mirlis, the alleged victim, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in New Haven.
The suit names Greer and the two schools he founded and runs — the Gan School, a mixed-gender elementary school; and the Yeshiva of New Haven, a boarding high school for boys — as defendants.
The
case has already started fraying a tight-knit religious family
community centered around the yeshiva, in the former Roger Sherman
School building at 765 Elm St. Through a series of corporations, Greer
and his family bought, renovated, and have since rented out some four
dozen multi-family homes on surrounding blocks, many of them notable for
their eight-foot-high stockade fences. Passionate minyanim, or
prayer services, occur daily in the morning and evening on the second
floor of the school, which has doubled as a small neighborhood
synagogue. Enrollment at the yeshiva dwindled to close to zero in recent
months as word about the allegations spread through the Orthodox Jewish
community. Officials resigned from the boards of the schools and the
real estate corporations.
The yeshiva building at 765 Elm.
The fates of both the two schools and the portfolio of around 125
apartments in the neighborhood remain unclear in the wake of the
lawsuit, which seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
Mirlis attended the yeshiva and lived in Greer-owned housing from 2001 to 2005.
Greer,
who is 75 today and was in his 60s at the time, “repeatedly and
continuously sexually abused, exploited, and assaulted” Mirlis during
his sophomore through senior years, when he was 15 to 17 years old,
according to the complaint. It describes the abuse as “acts of sex ...
including forced fellatio, anal sex, fondling and masturbation.”
“Rabbi Greer frequently gave Eli alcohol at the time he raped and assaulted his child victim,” the complaint charges.
“Rabbi
Greer showed Eli pornographic films. Rabbi Greer anally raped,
sodomized and in other ways sexually assaulted, abused and molested Eli
dozens and dozens of times, with each incident lasting on average from
one to four hours, and sometimes all night.
“Rabbi Greer raped,
sodomized and sexually assaulted, abused and molested Eli on school
property, in the bedroom of the Rabbi’s private residence, at motels in
Branford, Connecticut and Paoli and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on land
in Hamden, Connecticut, and at rental properties in New Haven owned and
managed by Yeshiva of New Haven, Inc., The Gan School, Inc., and other
non-stock Connecticut corporations of which Rabbi Greer was the
President, Director and Treasurer, including properties located at 777
Elm Street, 203, 209 and 211 Norton Street, 139 West Park Avenue, 439
Edgewood Avenue, and 193 Maple Street.”
The school’s “senior
officials” “knew and/or should have known that the Rabbi was raping,
sodomizing and sexually assaulting, abusing and molesting the minor boy;
and they did nothing to stop it,” the complaint charges. “At all
relevant times, administrators and officials of The School failed to
safeguard the keys to the rental properties, providing Rabbi Greer with
multiple places where he could rape and assault his child victim at his
leisure without fear of being discovered or stopped.” The complaint
specifically cites an unnamed assistant principal as having had
knowledge of the abuse but not taking action.
The suit further
charges that “during the years prior to his sexual molestation of Eli,
Greer sexually abused, molested and exploited at least one other minor
boy in the care and custody of The School.”
State law — Conn. Gen.
Stat. Sec. 17-38a — required school officials to notify authorities
about suspicions about child abuse taking place, the complaint
continues.
“The School employed a pedophile, and allowed that
pedophile free reign to gratify his perverse sexual desires by molesting
a young vulnerable boy in The School’s care and custody,” the state
alleges.
The suit claims that the abuse has left Mirlis with
“severe emotional distress, humiliation, embarrassment, pain and
anguish, anxiety, panic, sexual dysfunction, PTSD, depression,
hyper-vigilance, shame, and low self-esteem” that have “permanently
damaged” his “educational and career prospects.” The suit does not
specify an amount sought for damages beyond Mirlis, who is 28
years old and lives in New Jersey, is represented in the suit by
attorney Antonio Ponvert III of the Bridgeport firm Koskoff Koskoff
& Bieder.
Rabbi Greer, who has maintained a confident position
of innocence amid the allegations, referred a request for comment for
this article to his attorney, William Ward.
Ward denied the accusations on Greer’s behalf in a conversation late Tuesday morning with the Independent.
“It
only takes a moment to make allegations with despicable indifference to
the consequences of the damage they would cause to my client, his
family, and his reputation that he spent a lifetime building in his
community. This is a difficult time for my client and his family. But I
would remind the public to ask for evidence before rushing to judgment,
as my client is now burdened with the task of proving something did not
happen 14 years ago, as alleged by Mr. Mirlis,” Ward said.
“Ask
yourself why Mr. Mirlis would wait 14 years. Ask yourself why Mr.
Mirlis, well into his adulthood, repeatedly honored the man he now
accuses. Ask yourself why Mr. Mirlis, an Orthodox Jew, would not seek
redress form a rabbinical arbitration court. Ask yourself why Mr.
Mirlis’s first stop was his lawyer’s office to seek money. And finally
ask yourself why his attorney would issue a press release.”
Attorney
Ponvert responded that victims of childhood sexual abuse often take
years to come to grips with what happened to them and come forward with
allegations, and in the meantime may maintain contact with their
abusers. He said his client felt his best chance for justice lay in the
civil courts.
“The waiting, first of all, is a well-known
consequence of the infliction of childhood sexual abuse. If children
were able to understand what was happening to them when they were being
groomed and manipulated by an adult for that adult’s sexual
gratification—if the children understood that at the time most of these
would be reported when they happened. That doesn’t usually happen,
because adults who sexually molest children tend to be very persuasive,
very calculated, and very adept at choosing vulnerable victims who do
not have the ability to get out of the relationship,” Ponvert said.
He
said that one reason Mirlis “waited 14 years was because of the power
that this man held over him. This your rabbi. This is the principal of
your school. This is a 60-year-old man who is showing affection to you
you’re not getting anywhere else in the world. He’s chosen you. You now
have this person who has chosen you for this special relationship which
he is telling you every day that it occurs is healthy and good. The time
lag between that and the reporting is evidence of how good a molester
and manipulator that Greer is.”
Police Will Look Into Case
The
statute of limitations to file a federal suit is 30 years from the time
of the alleged incident. The same is true for the state of Connecticut
to pursue criminal charges, under the Connecticut General Statutes section 54-193a.
Ponvert
said Mirlis has not sought to pursue criminal charges. But if the
police or state’s attorney decide to pursue an investigation, “obviously
my client will fully cooperate,” Ponvert said.
Upon the
announcement of this information, the department will be reaching out to
the plaintiff’s attorney,” Police Chief Dean Esserman told the
Independent Tuesday.
Ponvert said his client chose a lawsuit
rather than a criminal complaint to pursue his complaint because “he has
the ability to attempt to control getting justice in the civil arena.”
The
assistant principal named in the lawsuit did not return calls for this
story. He has retained a local attorney, who, according to a secretary,
is out of the country and unavailable. The assistant stepped down from
his job in 2015.
Neighborhood Builder
Since Daniel Greer returned to New Haven in the 1970s, he has fought to
create and preserve his visions of both urban neighborhoods and sexual
morality.
Greer first came to New Haven to attend Yale Law School,
where he roomed with future California governor and presidential
candidate Jerry Brown. He then moved to New York City, where he served
as an official (deputy commissioner for ports and terminals) for Mayor
John Lindsay. He also led a successful campaign to force the United States to pressure the Soviet Union into allowing Jewish “refuseniks” to emigrate here and start new, freer lives.
Back
in New Haven, he set out to create a walkable, safe enclave in the
Edgewood neighborhood where he and his wife could create an Orthodox
school for their children and other Jewish children.
His success
in stabilizing a declining neighborhood has inspired clergy from other
faiths to try the same approach in other parts of town plagued by
absentee slumlords.
From the start, Greer understood the need for political and community ties to succeed with his mission. He cultivated corporate donors,
some of whom could contribute to his group’s not-for-profit real-estate
efforts through the state Neighborhood Assistance Act. The annual yeshiva community dinner has honored leaders in the broader community and drawn political leaders from throughout the state.
He
served on city boards and commissions. He played an important role as a
member of the Board of Police Commissioners in hearings that exposed
massive illegal NHPD wiretapping of government dissidents and political
opponents. He later served on the Redevelopment Authority board as well.
Greer
was also outspoken about sexual mores. He railed to a crowd against the
evils of homosexuality and gay marriage at a rally at the state
capitol. Gan members also testified in New Haven against a domestic
partnership law.
Jew vs. Jew
When Greer’s daughter
attended Yale, he led a legal fight in 1997 against co-ed dorms, which
he depicted as dens of immorality. He didn’t prevail in court. But he
embarrassed Yale with national news coverage of the “Yale 5” case, including a lengthy New York Times Magazine story that author Samuel Freedman expanded into a central part of his book Jew vs. Jew.
In
recent weeks, Greer has threatened legal action against a local
blogger, Lawrence Dressler, who has published accusations against Greer
on his site.
Ward, Greer’s attorney, sent an April 18 cease-and-desist letter to Dressler, who used to pray at the yeshiva minyan and launched the blog after serving 20 months in prison on a mortgage fraud-related charge.
The letter requested that Dressler publish a “retraction and apology”
for what he’d written about Greer and the yeshiva, and refrain from
making “any further false statements about Rabbi Greer and the Yeshiva
of New Haven.” He also called the accusations “defamatory.”
“These
statements have caused great distress to my client and have damaged the
reputation of the Yeshiva and Rabbi Greer,” Ward wrote.
Joseph
Merly, an attorney in the New Haven law firm headed by John R. Williams,
responded on April 20 with a letter written on Dressler’s behalf. “Mr.
Dressler has no intention of retracting any statements ...” the letter
informed Ward. “The statements which Mr. Dressler made are completely
true and accurate and as you know, truth is the best defense to a claim
of defamation. In fact, Mr. Dressler intends to expand his efforts to
bring forth victims of your clients and publishing their stories and to
continue alerting the community to your clients’ crimes.”
