Aaron Teitelbaum, the other Satmar Gangster Rebbe went so far as to
suggest that Weberman’s accuser was “a zona,” which translates to
“whore.”
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| ווי אזוי וואוינט מען אין כלא אן א גארטל |
Satmar head"less"- Zalmy visits convicted sexual abuser Nechemya Weberman in NY prison
Sex abuse survivor says victims feel they are
‘being stabbed’ when they witness support by Hassidic community leaders,
media for perpetrators of crimes
JTA — The Satmar “Grand Rebbe” Zalman Teitelbaum paid a visit to
convicted sexual abuser Nechemya Weberman in prison last month,
according to a Yiddish-language newspaper serving the Satmar Hasidic
community that has published a series of favorable articles about the
former therapist convicted of sexually abusing an adolescent girl
starting from when the victim was 12 years old.
The visit, and the weekly series of articles in Kiryas Joel
Vochenshrift, have riled advocates for sexual abuse victims in the
Hasidic community. They say the community’s leadership has a pattern of
downplaying abuse charges and in this case convictions, further
traumatizing the victims.
A sexual abuse survivor who lives in Kiryas Joel, the Orange County,
New York seat of Zalman Teitelbaum’s Satmar faction, told the New York
Jewish Week that abuse victims like her feel they are “being stabbed”
when they see support for accused abusers in the Hasidic media and among
their leaders.
“It’s retraumatizing victims,” said the survivor, who asked not to be
named for reasons of privacy and safety. “It’s being stabbed every
week, again and again, and knowing that if you’re ever going to open
your mouth you’re going to be kicked out.”
The woman said that other survivors within the community told her
“that they are not going to come forward so quick again because they see
this every week.”
“It’s the most horrific thing,” the source said. “I am reliving all
the hell that I’ve gone through. They are taking a molester, who did the
worst thing, and they are promoting him, and calling him holy.”
Nechemya Weberman was convicted and sentenced to 103 years for child sexual abuse, October 16, 2012
The newspaper serves the faction of the Satmar community that is
loyal to Zalman Teitelbaum. It published an article about his visit on
Nov. 11.
A weekly series sympathetic to Weberman has been running since
August. The articles are written accounts following organized visits to
Weberman’s jail cell by members of the community, including prominent
rabbis. They include letters from Weberman himself and letters from
people in the community to him.
“They say he’s wrongfully accused,” Shulim Leifer, a member of the
Hasidic community who has read the articles, told the New York Jewish
Week. “It’s written in a sense that it’s a foregone conclusion, that
it’s a lynching that he went through.”
According to the article about Teitelbaum’s visit, the rabbi spent
over an hour with Weberman and “offered words of faith and belief in
God” while the convicted sexual abuser was at Rikers Island for an
appeal, the article said. Weberman is now at Shawangunk Prison in
upstate New York. “Thanks to Hashem, after much advocacy, we did manage
to prevail and we managed to get a visit from the [Grand Rebbe] who was
able to come into the dark walls,” the article reported.
The United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg and North Brooklyn,
whose leaders act as spokespeople for Teitelbaum, declined a request
from the New York Jewish Week for comment.
The articles are written by Rabbi Abraham Yehoshua Fraynd. Neither Fraynd nor the newspaper responded to a request for comment.
Weberman, an unlicensed therapist who served the fervently Orthodox
Satmar community, was 54 when he was convicted in 2012 of sexually
abusing a young woman over the course of three years beginning in 2007.
He was given a 103-year sentence in 2013, close to the maximum permitted
by law.
The victim spent 15 hours on the witness stand recalling how she had
been repeatedly raped and forced to perform oral sex in Weberman’s
counseling office, where she had been sent because of her alleged
immodest dress and rebellious behavior.
Many members of the Satmar community stood behind Weberman, who had
served as the driver for the late Grand Rebbe Moses Teitelbaum, the
father of Zalman Teitelbaum and his brother Aaron, who now lead rival
factions of the Hasidic movement. Aaron Teitelbaum went so far as to
suggest that Weberman’s accuser was “a zona,” which translates to
“whore.” The victim claimed that after going to the district attorney,
she received both bribes and threats in an attempt to convince her not
to testify. The Hasidic community has long discouraged members from
going to outside law enforcement, a practice long decried by advocates
for victims of sexual abuse and other crimes.
In an article published on Dec. 6, Weberman is quoted saying that his
prison trial was “a mesira,” an act in which one Jew informs on another
in contravention of Jewish law.
“Yes it’s true that there was a jury trial,” Weberman said in the
piece. “It’s true in the course of nature, you can expect to get a
prison term from a jury in such a case, but I got something that’s over
100 years. And that is something that’s outside of the ordinary.”
Weberman then laments that he doesn’t have a way to advocate for himself while stuck behind bars.
“I’ve been trying to appeal three or four times, that’s not normal,”
Weberman said. “What am I left to believe? Am I supposed to believe that
I’m never getting out of here? No.”
In another article, Weberman said, “I’ve accepted that God put me through this for reasons that I can’t understand.”
“Even though I’m wrongfully accused, I think one day, I’ll be out,” Weberman said.
Throughout many of the articles, Weberman is called many honorific
names, including “a tremendous Hasid” and “shlita,” an acronym reserved
for revered members of the community.
Leifer said that there are sexual abuse survivors within the
community who are “beside themselves and disturbed by how this guy is
lionized and idolized.”
“Sex abuse victims feel hurt and betrayed by this behavior,” Leifer
said. “There is sort of a widespread undercurrent in the Haredi
community that we don’t do a good job with sex abuse, in terms of
exposing it, preventing it, or helping victims.”
Illustrative: Hasidic Jews in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
A Hasidic community member in Williamsburg who is close with the
Weberman family told the New York Jewish Week that “no one really knows
what happened behind closed doors,” referring to the abuse charges.
“It’s a pity that he’s been in jail already for such a long time,” the community member said.
The source added that Weberman, 64, is now “an old, broken man, with a family who suffers.”
“The community felt like he didn’t have a fair trial,” the source
said. “If it really happened, he’s no longer a threat, that’s for sure.”
The source also said that according to Weberman’s family, the
convicted felon is being kept in “inhumane” conditions. “There’s no air
conditioning, no heat, no TV, it’s freezing,” the source said. “I’m not
sure why we are not allowed to give a voice to someone who is inhumanely
treated.”
David N. Myers, co-author of “American Shtetl,” a 2022 book about the
Hasidic community of Kiryas Joel, told the New York Jewish Week that
Teitelbaum may have visited Weberman in prison due to the rabbinic
principle of “pidyon shevuyim,” which translates to “liberating
captives.”
“Haredi Jews take this principle seriously,” Myers, a professor of
history at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote in an email.
“There is a strong ethos of providing assistance to and seeking the
release of fellow observant Jews who are incarcerated — often on the
presumption that they, as good Jews, must have been treated unfairly or
imprisoned under false pretenses.”
Myers added that there is a growing sense among Haredi Orthodox Jews
that they are under siege by the media and secular authorities. He noted
the community rage over a New York Times investigation in September
that reported on Hasidic schools that are not meeting New York State
standards in secular instruction.
“Many New York-area Haredim feel under siege,” Myers said. “To be
sure, the Weberman case precedes this new wave. He has always had some
supporters, as well as many accusers and critics. But the current moment
is one in which people in the Haredi world feel greater liberty to say
that the media are biased against them.”
In August 2021, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez wrote to
then-governor Andrew Cuomo and asked him to commute Weberman’s sentence.
(By then, Weberman’s sentence had been cut in half under a state law
that requires a maximum of 50 years for the type of felonies for which
he was convicted). Gonzalez had long sought leniency for people with
lengthy prison sentences, but local activists said his request smacked
of politics.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/satmar-head-visits-convicted-sexual-abuser-nechemya-weberman-in-prison/
