Hartford —
A federal jury Thursday ordered prominent Rabbi Daniel Greer and his
Elm Street yeshiva to pay a former student $15 million in compensatory
damages because the rabbi raped and repeatedly abused him 15 years ago.
The jury awarded an additional $5 million in punitive damages, to pay the lawyers.
In
adjudicating a civil lawsuit brought by Eliyahu Mirlis, a former high
school student at the Yeshiva of New Haven, the jury deliberated in U.S.
District Court here for 12 hours over two days before coming to its
unanimous decision.
The eight jurors slapped Greer with the
eight-figure bill for the emotional suffering he caused Mirlis by
assaulting and battering the boy over a three-year period, from his
sophomore to senior years at the high school. The panel calculated the
total after also concluding that Greer and the yeshiva had shown
recklessness and intentional infliction of emotional distress and the
school separately had displayed negligence and negligent infliction of
emotional distress.
That sum was less than half of the $38 million that the plaintiff’s attorney, Antonio Ponvert III, had requested.
Jurors
also requested that the court nail Greer with extra punitive charges to
pay Mirlis’s lawyers. That added another $5 million to the bill.
“This
completely justified all my faith in the justice system. Even an
incredibly difficult case can be resolved fairly on the facts,” Ponvert
said. “What the plaintiff suffered and what has been suffered by
children for generations need to stop, period. Child abuse, in all
forms, is a plague that we all need to work together to stop.”
When asked why he believed his side prevailed, Ponvert responded, “The truth.”
Greer’s defense said the rabbi plans to appeal the verdict.
“We
are extremely disappointed by the jury’s verdict, and intend to pursue
all potential options to set it aside, including an appeal,” defense
attorney David Grudberg wrote in an email.
The verdict followed a
suspenseful four-day trial here at U.S. District Court, with a
cliff-hanger ending about whether the yeshiva was also liable.
Two
victims — Mirlis and the yeshiva’s assistant dean, Aviad Hack — both
described their underaged sexual encounters with Greer in graphic
detail. Shira Mirlis, the victim’s wife, said the abuse had hardened her
partner, preventing him being vulnerable. An expert in childhood sexual
abuse and a University of Connecticut professor, Julian Ford, explained
to jurors that the inability to trust was an normal response to
“betrayal trauma,” as he diagnosed Mirlis with post-traumatic stress
disorder.
From Greer’s side, the jurors didn’t hear much of a
denial. The rabbi repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against
self-incrimination. (He denied only one accusation: That he’d had sex
with Mirlis on a forested parcel of land in Hamden.) The defense’s other
witnesses presented only mitigating evidence: Neither the rabbi’s wife,
Sarah Greer, nor his secretary, Jean Leadbury, had noticed anything
unusual, they testified. The team’s defense instead, relied heavily on a
set of cheery wedding photos showing Mirlis continued to maintain a
relationship with his abuser, honoring the rabbi at life milestones.
Final Stabs At Character Assassination
Antonio Ponvert and his paralegal, Julie Vassar, outside court.
The final day in federal court Wednesday wrapped up with attorneys
presenting 40-minute closing arguments from a podium arms-length from
the jury box. The lawyers’ summations of the case volleyed from
high-minded (with references to the Founding Fathers) to ad hominem
(with accusations of deception and cheating).
Ponvert, Mirlis’s
counsel, said the two victims’ testimony and an expert’s diagnosis
proved the accusations against Greer were more likely than not true —
meeting the lower standard, a preponderance of the evidence, used in
civil suits as opposed to in criminal trials.
Ponvert, from the
firm Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder, argued that the yeshiva also deserved
blame. Hack, effectively the school’s manager, had suspected the rabbi
was abusing Mirlis, once even trying to beat down a locked door where
Greer was having sex with the boy inside. He failed to report his
suspicions to child welfare and law enforcement authorities as required
by law.
The defense, Ponvert added, still hadn’t fleshed out its
counter-arguments: why Greer couldn’t deny the accusations, why Mirlis
would want to attack someone he revered, why Hack admitted to only one
sexual encounter as a student if he truly wanted to bring down the
rabbi, and why the University of Connecticut pyschiatry professor might
have been so “duped” by his client.
In closing, Ponvert asked for
$38 million in damages to repay Mirlis for his stolen childhood and his
pain since. He argued that Mirlis’s first experience with intimacy
should have been dating a girl he loved. “Not a forced kiss, not
fellatio, not anal sex. Not with a man and not with a rabbi. Not
pseudo-romantic nights in motels with alcohol and hot tubs. Not coerced
intimacy but real intimacy,” Ponvert said. “What this man did to Eli
Mirlis has affected him in such a way that he cannot have a trusting
relationship. And at the end of our lives, ladies and gentlemen, what do
we all have but relationships with people that love us and the people
we love, the moments we share with them and the experiences that bond
us? Eli doesn’t have that.”
When defense attorney William Ward
stood up, he first thanked the jury for being in attendance — “more
than I can say for the plaintiff,” the lawyer added, pointing out that
Mirlis had been largely absent throughout the trial aside from a few
hours on the stand Monday afternoon. He then argued there was no hard
evidence of abuse in the exhibits. He called Mirlis a “liar” and a
“cheat.”
“That’s not even an inference; it’s an admission,” Ward said. Mirlis “told you some other lies, big or small.”
The
defense attorney made one last attempt to explain why Greer hadn’t
denied the accusations. Because Mirlis had spoken with police a year
ago, keeping silent on “anything that tends to incriminate you” by
pleading the Fifth would be “wise,” Ward explained. “That could mean
anything that puts Mr. Mirlis or Mr. Greer alone in the same room during
four years in high school, anything.” He added that Ponvert had fired
“loaded questions” throughout the trial, cornering Greer into remaining
silent. (Local police decided not to pursue a criminal investigation of
Greer, concluding that the statute of limitations had expired, according
to law-enforcement officials familiar with the matter.)
Ward
repeatedly sought to impeach Mirlis’s credibility. Mirlis, for example,
testified that his grades suffered when he rebuffed Greer’s entreaties,
but Ward pointed out that his report card didn’t reflect this, with five
As and two B-pluses in classes Greer supposedly taught.
Several
times, though, Ward himself twisted Mirlis’s testimony to make it sound
deceptive. In one misrepresentation, Ward claimed Mirlis had lied about
when he first informed his wife about Greer’s abuse. Ford, the UConn
psychiatrist whom Ward described as a “hired gun,” said Mirlis kept the
molestation secret during couples counseling — a fact that wasn’t
incompatible with Mirlis’s account of first telling his wife when they
were dating. But Ward conflated the two, making it sounds like Mirlis
had misled someone. That’s despite the fact that Mirlis testified, under
oath, that Ford didn’t ask when he first confessed to his wife, so he
didn’t tell the psychiatrist.
In another attempt to portray Mirlis
as dishonest, Ward said Mirlis had lied about having sex with Greer
repeatedly for 26 hours at a hotel in Paoli, Pennsylvania. Ponvert had
indeed tried to portray the stay as an overnight orgy, but Mirlis had
corrected him on the stand. To avoid violating the Sabbath, Mirlis
indicated that they had sex only before Friday’s sundown and after
Saturday’s sundown. By closing statements, Ward had reshaped that
exchange to look dishonest. “It’s not ‘the 26-hour sex-fest’ that he
told you in direct, isn’t it? It’s a lie, it’s a lie,” Ward claimed.
Ponvert
fired back with a seven-minute rebuttal, calling Ward’s speech the
“most bizarre and inaccurate” closing statement he’d heard in his
career. Flustered with anger, he paused once to compose himself.
“I’m
so frustrated I don’t know what to say at this point. Everyone wants
this man out of here!” he exclaimed, his voice rising. “He’s [Greer’s] a
child molester.”
Ponvert ended by saying it had been an honor to
represent Mirlis, as well as a weighty responsibility. “I share that
with you,” he said. “I ask you to accept that burden.”
“Dunkin’ Donuts Please”
Defense attorneys David Grudberg, William Ward and Amanda Nugent.
During the two full days that jurors argued in a locked room, starting
at 11:35 a.m. on Wednesday, the rabbi paced around the courtroom, asking
his lawyers about court procedure, gossiping with his wife about
spectators and making several trips to the bathroom. Sarah Greer
serenely read a book in the stands.
At 3:03 p.m. on Wednesday,
jurors knocked on the door to indicate they had a question. They handed
an unsigned, yellow sheet of paper to the marshal. It read, “If we
finish this evening, will [we] be able to render a decision tonight or
still have to come back tomorrow?” Judge Michael P. Shea sent his deputy
into the room to let them know that if the court accepts their verdict
tonight, they wouldn’t have to return.
At 3:19, they sent out another note. “We could use fresh coffee and donuts. Dunkin’ Donuts, please.”
The
jurors sent out a note at 4:35 p.m. asking to replay Hack’s deposition.
At 5:01 p.m., a second note said they’d finish deliberations on
Thursday.
Back in the courtroom at 9:10 a.m. on Thursday, jurors
examined the last 20 minutes of Hack’s deposition. Under pressure by
Ward to name exact dates when Greer had sex with him as a student, Hack
said he could not remember a single instance, aside from the first
fondling. In the same clip, Hack said he knew about mandatory reporter
laws, “certainly by 2007” — two years after Mirlis graduated.
For
nearly four hours, the jury discussed whether the yeshiva had been
negligent. After lunch, they wrote in a note that they couldn’t reach a
unanimous verdict on that specific charge.
At 12:51 p.m., Judge
Shea asked them to shrug off any fixed conclusions and reassess the
evidence. “This is an important case for all parties. Therefore it’s
important for you to reach a verdict without anyone surrendering a
conscientiously held view,” Shea said. “There does not appear to be a
reason why this case could be tried better or more exhaustively on
either side, nor that any other men or women will be more intelligent,
more impartially chosen or more competent to decide the case than you.”
He added that jurors in the minority, in particular, should reexamine
why more of their colleagues had tipped to the other side. “Take as much
time as you need to discuss things; there is no rush.”
At 3:39
p.m., the jury handed back their ruling. After reading through verdict
form, count by count, each juror stood individually to affirm agreement
with the decision.
The defense team left silently, hurrying
outside into oncoming traffic. Red-faced, Greer hugged Ward in the
parking lot behind the courthouse, then slid into his minivan.
Beginning
in the 1980s, Rabbi Greer oversaw the revival of the neighborhood
around his yeshiva at the corner of Norton and Elm streets, renovating
neglected historic homes.
Over the years, Greer has also crusaded
against gay rights in Connecticut, at times played an active role in
politics and government, and advocated for keeping nuisance businesses
out of the Whalley Avenue commercial corridor. He and his family earned
national attention for exposing johns who patronized street prostitutes
in the neighborhood, for filing suit against Yale University over a
requirement that students live in coed dorms, and then in 2007 for
launching an armed neighborhood “defense” patrol and then calling in the Guardian Angels for assistance to combat crime. In the 1970s, Greer 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.
New Haven Rabbi Daniel Greer found liable for $20 million in civil trial alleging he sexually abused a student
