No religious institution has the right to shield its child abusers from civil prosecution!

Editorial -- Justice in Williamsburg - Brooklyn, New York

The sexual abuse conviction in a State Supreme Court in Brooklyn of a prominent member of the Satmar Hasidic community sends a strong and overdue message to Williamsburg’s tightly knit ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood, which has shielded such abusers from legal scrutiny.

In a case brought by Charles Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney, the court convicted Nechemya Weberman, a 54-year-old unlicensed therapist, of repeatedly sexually abusing a young girl who had been sent to him for help. Mr. Hynes said the verdict had lifted the “veil of secrecy” and had served notice that henceforth the prospects for justice are “only going to get better for people who are victimized in these various communities.”

Prosecutors have long had trouble finding witnesses in the community because speaking out, especially to non-Jewish legal authorities, could bring retaliation. In this particular case, Mr. Hynes charged four men with allegedly trying to interfere with bribery and threats. Four others face criminal contempt of court charges for taking pictures in the courtroom in an apparent attempt to intimidate the victim. On Tuesday, Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg, an advocate for child sex abuse victims, was taken to a hospital after what appeared to be bleach was thrown in his face as he walked down the street in Williamsburg.

The Weberman case is Mr. Hynes’s first conviction involving sexual abuse by a prominent member of Williamsburg’s Satmar community. He and his prosecutors owe much of that success to the bravery of the victim, who was 12 when she was sent to Mr. Weberman for what school officials considered rebelliousness. Now 18, she testified that she was forced to endure the abuse for three years. Mr. Weberman denied her charges, and his lawyer said he plans to appeal.

After receiving some criticism for not aggressively pursuing such crimes in the politically active ultra-Orthodox community, Mr. Hynes’s office has stepped up prosecution of abusers. Groups supporting the rights of victims have also been winning ground: a religious court for another Jewish community ruled last year that in cases of child abuse, “one is forbidden to remain silent” and must report the charge to civil authorities. The Satmar community should do the same.

No religious institution has the right to shield its child abusers from civil prosecution.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/12/opinion/justice-in-williamsburg.html

UOJ GETS RESULTS!

RCA on Guilty Verdict of Orthodox Jew for Child Molestation

The Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), the world's largest organization of Orthodox rabbis is encouraged by the process that led to the conviction of Nechemyah Weberman, an Orthodox Jew who acted as an unlicensed counselor and was today found guilty for the sexual molestation of an adolescent girl. For many years the RCA has condemned the efforts of many parts of the Jewish community to cover up or ignore allegations of abuse, viewing these efforts as against Jewish law, illegal, and irresponsible to the welfare of victims and the greater community. The RCA strongly advocates, as a matter of Jewish law, the reporting of reasonable suspicions of child abuse to the civil authorities and full cooperation with the criminal justice system. The RCA decries any invocation of Jewish law or communal interests as tools in silencing victims or witnesses from reporting abuse or from receiving therapeutic and communal support and strongly condemn those members of the Jewish community who used such tactics in this case.

In light of the issues raised in this trial the RCA commits itself to increasing the training of its members who serve in all areas of the rabbinate, including pulpits, education, chaplaincy, and communal service, to know how to recognize, prevent, and respond appropriately to issues of child abuse. In addition, the RCA will help its members develop policies regarding prevention and response to issues of child abuse in their individual congregations and schools, as well as in their larger communities, and, where nonexistent, to support the creation of response teams that include mental health practitioners, law-enforcement personnel, and specially trained rabbis to respond to allegations of abuse and molestation.

Rabbi Shmuel Goldin, president of the RCA, stated, "Weberman's conviction is validation of our commitment to work with law enforcement to protect the innocent victims of our community and to hold their perpetrators accountable." Rabbi Mark Dratch, Executive Vice President of the RCA and founder of JSafe: The Jewish Institute Supporting an Abuse Free Environment, added, "We, like other religious communities, have come a long way in recent years in recognizing and addressing issues of child abuse in our communities. We increasingly understand that our religious texts, traditions, and values must serve as resources of strength and support for members of our faith communities, not as roadblocks to their safety and security."

http://www.rabbis.org/news/article.cfm?id=105726

“The veil of secrecy has been lifted,” said Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney. “The wall that has existed in parts of these communities has now been broken through.

Nechemya Weberman aka THE ANIMAL

Abuse Verdict Topples a Hasidic Wall of Secrecy!



Sexual abuse in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community has long been hidden. Victims who came forward were intimidated into silence; their families were shunned; cases were dropped for a lack of cooperation.

But on Monday, a State Supreme Court jury in Brooklyn delivered a stunning victory to prosecutors and victims’ advocates, convicting a 54-year-old unlicensed therapist who is a prominent member of the Satmar Hasidic community of Williamsburg of repeatedly sexually abusing a young girl who had been sent to him for help.

“The veil of secrecy has been lifted,” said Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney. “The wall that has existed in parts of these communities has now been broken through. And as far as I’m concerned, it is very clear to me that it is only going to get better for people who are victimized in these various communities.”

The case against the therapist, Nechemya Weberman, was a significant milestone for Mr. Hynes, whose office has been criticized for not acting aggressively enough against sexual abusers in the borough’s large and politically connected ultra-Orthodox community.

The verdict represented the first time Mr. Hynes’ office has won a conviction of a prominent member of the Satmar Hasidic community of Williamsburg for child sexual abuse.

The case also offered a glimpse of the Satmar community’s shadowy efforts to enforce rigid codes of behavior — particularly for young girls — by allowing so-called modesty committees to intimidate girls for wearing revealing clothing or using cellphones, and requiring parents to send children judged to be breaking rules to religious counselors, many of whom are not licensed and charge high fees.

The trial of Mr. Weberman, which began on Nov. 26, was a difficult one because there was no physical evidence; the trial hinged on the credibility of Mr. Weberman, who is well connected and powerful in his community, and that of a young woman who had been shunned for being a rebellious teen. The girl said Mr. Weberman had abused her for three years, starting when she was 12, groping her and forcing her to perform oral sex. He denied he had ever touched her.

The jury believed the young woman and convicted Mr. Weberman of all 59 counts against him. Justice John G. Ingram scheduled a sentencing on Jan. 9; the most serious charge carries a maximum sentence of 25 years, but depending on how the sentence is structured, Mr. Weberman could spend even longer in prison.

Samuel Heilman, a professor of sociology at Queens College of the City University of New York who studies the Hasidic community, called the verdict “remarkable.”

“Here was a guy protected by the community, supported by the community, and the case against him was from a young girl,” Professor Heilman said. Among the things it demonstrates, he said, is that “the district attorney should have started this kind of thing sooner.”

The verdict against Mr. Weberman was a deeply emotional moment for the young woman, who is now 18, and her family, according to her mother, who spoke in a telephone interview several hours after the verdict.

“I cried and cried, and couldn’t stop crying,” said the woman, whose name is being withheld by The New York Times to shield the identity of her daughter. “I couldn’t stop crying that justice came out.”

Mr. Weberman did not show emotion as the word “guilty” was read out, 59 times, in the 20th floor courtroom. He looked briefly at members of his family, who held on to each other as the verdict was read, and then was led into custody.

One of Mr. Weberman’s lawyers, George Farkas, said he would appeal.

“We firmly believe that this jury got an unfairly sanitized version of the facts, and as a result the truth did not come out,” he said. “The struggle to clear an innocent man will continue in full force.”

Prosecutors told reporters after the verdict that other women had come forward to assert that they had been abused by Mr. Weberman, including one who had come forward during the trial. Mr. Hynes said those women were unwilling or unable to testify, leaving his office with just one prosecutable case.

Mr. Hynes said he was hopeful that the victim’s “great courage” in testifying would encourage other women who have been abused, particularly in ultra-Orthodox communities, to come forward.

Prosecution of sexual abuse allegations in the ultra-Orthodox community has been hampered in the past by the intimidation of witnesses. In this case, Mr. Hynes’s office brought charges against four men for allegedly trying to interfere with the case, through bribery and threats. Then, during the trial, four other men were charged with criminal contempt in the second degree for taking cellphone pictures of the victim, in violation of court rules. And although supporters of accused abusers often dominated the galleries at previous trials of ultra-Orthodox Jewish men, on many days at this trial, supporters of the accuser and advocates for abuse victims were in the majority.

Rabbi Yosef Blau, a victims’ advocate and the spiritual supervisor of Yeshiva University, said he hoped that the Satmar community would now be forced to change how it dealt with troubled young people, who, like this young victim, had been sent to counselors without training or accountability, instead of licensed professionals.

“It’s a system which allowed this abuse to take place,” he said. “It involves no scrutiny, no controls, and is a terrible way of dealing with children who have issues, whatever those issues might be.”

But Pearl Engleman of Williamsburg, who became a victims’ advocate after her son said that he had been molested in the Satmar school system, said it would take more than this case to transform her community. Hundreds turned up for a fund-raiser in Mr. Weberman’s support this year, and even with a guilty verdict, she said, she does not expect many to change their minds.

“There are people who are still rooting for him,” she said. “They just can’t wrap their heads around a Jew sitting in jail for that much time.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/nyregion/hasidic-man-found-guilty-of-sexual-abuse.html?pagewanted=2&hp

Jewry accused of hiding sex-abuse - ''This is not reporting that a child is at risk, it is reporting a crime.''

Community leader and abuse whistleblower, Manny Waks. "Worse, in all of these new cases, those in positions of authority attempted to cover up these crimes."

TWO paedophiles - one reportedly the youngest person ever put on the Victorian Sex Offenders Register - were ''roaming the Jewish community'' with most members utterly unaware, the state inquiry into how religious groups handled child sex abuse was told on Monday.

Community leader and abuse whistleblower Manny Waks said there was overwhelming evidence that child sexual abuse was endemic in the Jewish community and ''the appalling way in which it has been mishandled'', including credible claims of continuing cover-ups.

He said that in the few months since his written submission there had been more serious allegations of child sexual abuse. ''Worse, in all of these new cases, those in positions of authority attempted to cover up these crimes.''

Mr Waks, a former vice-president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, last year became the first Jewish victim to publicly tell the story of his abuse, at Yeshivah College in Melbourne more than 20 years ago. He gave evidence with his father, Zephaniah Waks, but Family and Community Development committee chairwoman Georgie Crozier suppressed Mr Waks senior's testimony.

Manny Waks said several new allegations had come to him, partly because victims and families often sought his advice. In one case, he said, a family was forced to leave Melbourne under pressure from rabbis after they made allegations against a senior figure who ''is still roaming freely within the Melbourne Jewish community''.

In another case, a young member of the Jewish community was convicted of multiple counts of sexual assault against minors - becoming the youngest listed offender - and he too was freely roaming the community, Mr Waks said.

Another man, 36, was alleged to have sexually abused several children in the Yeshivah community - part of the Orthodox Chabad movement - and fled Australia as soon as he heard police were investigating him. Mr Waks said the man was himself allegedly sexually abused repeatedly as a child by a relative, an active member of the Sydney Jewish community.

In another Yeshivah case, a man, 30, is alleged to have abused a child, 13, about three years ago.

''Most devastatingly, over the past few days, I have been informed of a possible link between an alleged incident of child sexual abuse at Yeshivah and a subsequent suicide.''

He said he had also received a number of allegations of abuse and cover-ups within the Sydney and Perth communities.

Mr Waks said the Executive Council of Australian Jewry had ''done everything it could to downplay this scandal'' and that in some cases ''their scant response was highly damaging''.

He said he and other victims were deeply hurt, angry and incredulous not only about the abuse and the cover-ups, the intimidation of victims and their families, but the ''meek response'' by Jewish community leadership.

Dr Tom Keating, abuse victim, academic and child protection expert, told the inquiry that mandatory reporting was irrelevant for child sex abuse by clergy, because the purpose of mandatory reporting was to ensure the guardian was protecting the child.

Dr Keating, a former head of Victoria's Department of Human Services, said a child protection worker to whom abuse was reported would have to advise telling police. ''This is not reporting that a child is at risk, it is reporting a crime.''

He said the Catholic Church abuse protocols, Towards Healing and the Melbourne Response, were perfectly designed to produce the results they did, protecting the church's reputation and wealth. ''In my experience the church authorities are entirely unencumbered by ethical or pastoral concerns.''

He said that despite church leaders' protestations that flourishing abuse was a thing of the past, their modern attitudes of clerical control, suppressing dissent, alienating women and persecuting gays meant sexual abuse was more likely.

 http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/jewry-accused-of-hiding-sexabuse-20121210-2b5o7.html#ixzz2EiKkSjN1

Jury finds Nechemya Weberman, Satmar Hasidic leader, guilty of molesting teenage girl he was paid to counsel - GUILTY 59 TIMES!

Weberman is facing a maximum of 25 years on prison of the top count alone, prolonged sexual conduct against a child - GUILTY 59 TIMES!!!

A Brooklyn jury found Nechemya Weberman - a prominent figure in the Satmar Hasidic community - guilty Monday of sexually abusing a rebellious young girl he was paid to counsel.

Weberman was convicted on one count of Course of Sexual Conduct Against a Child in the First Degree, 12 counts of Criminal Sexual Act in the Second Degree, two counts of Criminal Sexual Act in the Third Degree, 18 counts of Sexual Abuse in the Second Degree, 25 counts of Sexual Abuse in the Third Degree, and one count of Endangering the Welfare of a Child. The top count of Course of Sexual Conduct Against a Child in the First Degree carries a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison. He faces a total of 117 years. Weberman was remanded and he will be sentenced before Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice John Ingram on January 9 at 10:00 AM.

The verdict came after an explosive two-week trial, where customs of the strict Williamsburg-based sect were aired in Brooklyn Supreme Court.

He is facing a maximum of 25 years on prison of the top count alone, prolonged sexual conduct against a child.

The main evidence against the 54-year-old counselor was testimony from the victim, who turned 18 last week. During four brutal days of testimony and cross-examination, the striking young woman recounted how she was forced to perform oral sex and reenact porn scenes during closed-door counseling sessions that started in 2007, when she was 12.

Her yeshiva referred her to Weberman because she flouted her sect's strict modesty rules and asked probing questions about the existence of God.

But instead of guidance, she was molested at every opportunity.

"I wanted to die," she testified of her torment.

Prosecutors offered no physical evidence of the sexual activity that took place inside Weberman's home office, which the trial revealed had been a flop house for other wayward teenage girls.

The counselor took the stand in his own defense, insisting he "never ever" inappropriately touched the teen. But he was forced to acknowledge that funds from his charity were used to pay for his kids' tuition and buy lingerie.

The defense team claimed the victim's accusations were fueled by revenge, after Weberman teamed up with her father to film her in bed with a former boyfriend - then used the footage to get the boyfriend arrested for statutory rape.

That case was dropped shortly before she made her complaint against Weberman.

The high-profile case was rocked by allegations that Weberman and his henchmen tried to intimidate the accuser. Then during the trial, three men illegally snapped her photo while she was on the witness stand, and it ended up being posted online.

The sordid, soap opera-like revelations in court rocked the insular Satmar Sect, which derives its practices from a strict interpretation of Judaism. The trial was also a major challenge to Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes, who came under criticism for his handling of sex abuse cases in the Orthodox Jewish community

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/satmar-leader-weberman-guilty-molesting-girl-article-1.1217092#ixzz2EgQQCCq7

Weberman teen abuse trial questions Jewish group's customs

Webernan aka the ANIMAL in Court

 If Weberman had a guilty look in his eyes, the jurors never saw it. He didn’t look at them once as the prosecutor gave graphic details Thursday of the 88 counts of sexual torment he allegedly wrought upon a teenage girl he was paid to help.

If Nechemya Weberman had a guilty look in his eyes, the jurors never saw it. He didn’t look at them once as the prosecutor gave graphic details Thursday of the 88 counts of sexual torment he allegedly wrought upon a teenage girl he was paid to help.

If the jury finds Weberman guilty — now that lawyers have wrapped their case — the leaders of the insular Satmar Hasidic sect to which he belongs must ask themselves the same questions that dogged the Catholic Church in the wake of its own pedophilia scandals.

They must ask, did we enable him? Do our methods of reigning in rebellious young girls run counter to American law? Do we deny these girls freedoms they are entitled to, treating them as prisoners despite more than a century of hard-fought victories by women’s rights activists?

Instead, it seems this Williamsburg-based sect is operating under its own rules, some of which run counter to the law.

Satmar girls who break the sect’s stringent rules for modesty and behavior are sent by rabbis, teachers or their parents to “therapists” for “counseling” — more like one-on-one reeducation camps.

At the age of 12, Weberman’s beautiful blond accuser dared show her girlfriends a dance video from the family’s computer, a no-no for Satmars forbidden TV, radio and nonbusiness uses of the Internet.

“She lived in an insular, male-dominated society that forbade any contact with the outside world,” prosecutor Linda Weinman told the jury Thursday. “Accept your fate. Never question authority.”

The girl, already in the sights of the Satmar “modesty committee” — known to enter girls’ rooms to seize offending cell phones and clothing — was sent by her principal, Weberman’s cousin, for “therapy.”

Her counselor’s qualifications? He had been a worker in a pants factory, after leaving school in the 11th grade.

Oh, and he had also been a driver, albeit for the sect’s then-Grand Rebbe Moshe Teitelbaum.

Weberman wasn’t a licensed therapist at all.

But that was considered a positive thing, since Orthodox Jews believe any Jewish person who informs police or government agencies about a fellow Jew is a loathed informant, a “moser.”

Licensed therapists are required by law to report child molestation and domestic violence incidents.

As a nonlicensed therapist, Weberman could keep anything he heard within the Satmar community to himself.

Padlocking this girl even tighter in his grip, the young woman testified she would be expelled from her school if she tried to leave “therapy.” Her parents were forced to pay Weberman $150 an hour for this service.

But for three years, starting in March 2007 when she was 12 years old, he grotesquely manhandled her young body, Weinman told the jury as Weberman looked into a corner of the courtroom.

“I’m not doing anything wrong,” he allegedly told the girl.

She finally told a licensed therapist outside the community , who promptly reported Weberman to authorities.

Why hadn’t the alleged victim reported it to the top rabbis?

“I didn’t think they would believe me,” she testified in court.

 http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/molloy-teen-abuse-trial-questions-jewish-group-customs-article-1.1215238#ixzz2ELP9gutQ

Brooklyn criminal courtroom resembles nightclub as members of the Satmar Hasidic Jewish sect show up to support Nechemya Weberman

Weberman aka THE ANIMAL in court today

Weberman took the stand to defend himself against charges that he sexually molested a beautiful Satmar teenager while he was supposed to be her therapist. Lubavitcher and Modern Orthodox Jews showed up to support the woman, sequestered in another room, quietly celebrating, if you could call it that, her 18th birthday.

With a costumed crowd pressing against velvet ropes begging to be let in, the Brooklyn criminal courtroom resembled a nightclub Wednesday.

The iconoclastic garb of the Satmar Hasidic Jewish sect was unmistakable as members showed up to support Nechemya Weberman when he took the stand to defend himself against charges that he sexually molested a beautiful Satmar teenager while he was supposed to be her therapist. Lubavitcher and Modern Orthodox Jews showed up to support the woman, sequestered in another room, quietly celebrating, if you could call it that, her 18th birthday.

Ladies in wigs and hats, with long skirts and arms and legs covered, sat apart from the men in dark suits, wearing yarmulkes, their hair in forelocks, as the jury as diverse as Brooklyn itself stared out over the insular community and got a lesson in Hasidism 101 from the testimony.

Like the fact that what you wear is no joke, as the alleged victim found out when she began to break the dress code with short skirts and sheer tights, and when she began to share pop songs like “Love Can Kill You” and sneak off to Hollywood movies.

The recalcitrant teen had come to the attention of an internal committee of men called the Va’ad Hatznius, which helps enforce modesty rules — among 613 commandments Satmar members believe must be followed.

According to the testimony of another young woman who'd taken the stand Wednesday morning, you don't want to mess with Va’ad Hatznius.

“Isn't it true that masked individuals came into your bedroom in the middle of the night and seized your cell phone?” no-nonsense prosecutor Kevin O'Donnell asked Baila Gluck. “And that this is the type of action Va’ad Hatznius takes when Satmar don't follow the rules? And wasn't it traumatic for you?” Yes. Yes. And yes.

But it was nothing like the trauma Weberman's accuser said she suffered as he allegedly forced her to perform oral sex and recreate scenes from porn movies. She had been ordered by her religious school's principal, Weberman's cousin, to go to Weberman for therapy, which he had no license to provide. And her parents were forced to pay for it.

If she didn't get therapy, she would be thrown out of the school, Weberman admitted. Though Weberman adamantly denied ever molesting her, the girl says the abuse went on for three years.

A young Satmar woman dressed modestly but wearing green nail polish against her husband's wishes told the Daily News, “I don't have time to come here, but I'm compelled to listen for myself. I need to know the truth.”

The victim of molestation for five years as a child, Debbie Teller set up the website adkanenough.com — Enough is Enough — to post names of sex offenders in the Orthodox community worldwide. Since the Weberman trial began, her site’s visitors have spiked by the thousands.

Sex abuse isn't greater within the Hasidic community than outside, said social worker Carole Sher, who helps run the SOURI Hotline, Support Orthodox Victims of Rape and Incest.

But there's been a lot of covering up in the past. But now with more receptive rabbis and greater communication, that's changing.”

The Brooklyn jury learned that if a Jewish person reported another Jewish person to the police, they would be labeled a “moser” — informer — and ostracized as strongly as a Mob rat.

With the Internet, the thin black line of silence in the religious community has been erased, agreed Joey DiAngello, perhaps one of the most colorful people attending the trial.

Born Yoel Deutsch into the Satmar sect 32 years ago, DiAngello, a heavy-metal drummer with Slayer and Iron Maiden tatoos on his arms, told The News he was raped at the age of seven in a mikvah, or public bath. He's set up the Facebook pages War on Vaad Hatznius and Survivors for Justice.

“I've gotten tweets from people calling me a self-hating Jew, but I really want to help Jewish kids in the same situation I was in,” he says. “It's like metal. I have something to say, and if you don't like it, I'll turn it up even louder.”

 http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/molloy-weberman-courtroom-resembles-nightclub-article-1.1214343#ixzz2EEeXLeR3

I was a frum innocent little girl just like your daughter

http://mypureneshama.tumblr.com/

 I really want this blog to be a healing happy place for myself and whoever is reading which is why I am hesistant to post what this woman wrote but I want to give myself a voice and a chance to fight back against society’s perception of what I went through. So I am going to post what this woman wrote and I know it is a painful thing to read. I got so angry and sad when I read it. I just have to remember that she is saying this stuff from a naive, uneducated and lucky place. I don’t think she is intentionally being cruel. I’m sorry if this is going to cause anyone undue pain.

Leah’s words -“What I said is, A Weberman type WOULD NOT BE ALLOWED ACCESS to my child. If I took my child to a therapist, it would be a WOMAN (and as you well know, women are very unlikely to sexually molest young girls), I would attend sessions with my daughter/wait outside, etc. Therefore, I don’t think THIS TYPE OF ABUSE would happen to my family. Plus I have told my daughter about sickos and she knows to tell me if an adult, even a teacher, does something inappropriate. I think the parents here made many mistakes, and bear responsibility for putting their child in danger. And no, I don’t believe that Satmar-type communities are filled with dopes. I suspect that there was something very wrong/off with this particular family, and that is one reason Weberman preyed on the kid.”

Everything you said is the exact reason how so many children are getting abused. I hope you said what you did because of a lack of knowledge not of sensitivity. Everybody thinks that a ‘weberman’ has no access to their child. I can’t even describe to you the pain I feel upon reading that. You are condemning all parents of abused children. You can’t imagine the grief, self-blame and blinding pain that parents of abused children go through. I want to clarify so you can be aware and have a clearer picture of how the majority of abuse in the frum community actually happens. I also want to clarify so that people who think the way you presently do can understand how the parents of abused children love, care and protect their children just as much as you do if not more. They are not bad parents. Quite the opposite.

I was a frum innocent little girl. Just like your daughter. I was the oldest in my family. I was adored. I said Modeh Ani every morning twice. Once when I woke up and once in school. I was that happy to be awake every day. My teachers loved me I had friends and I was always happy. My parents were the center of my existence. They adored me. I was their pride and joy. And if you love something, you protect it with your life. If you would have asked my mother years ago she would have definitely agreed with you and maybe have even be more condemning of the parents of ‘Off The Derech’ children. Whispering questions like how could their parents have let this happen while shooting dark glances in their direction. She was and still is the pinnacle of a concerned and slightly overprotective mother.

 I got countless speeches about the sick people in the world and how I should come right to my mother if anyone says or does anything remotely inappropriate. She defined clearly from a very young age how important it is to be open and honest with her about these things. She was crazy protective. She never let me go to my friends houses unless she knew the family extremely well. I remember throwing tantrums about how everyone is having a sleepover by a certain girls house and my mother refused to let me go because something about the girls older brother was weird. My mother insisted on walking me to and from my bus stop everyday even when I was old enough to be embarrassed by it. She stayed in the doctors room by my yearly checkups even when I was begging her to leave.

 Every time we went shopping she would grip my hand the entire time and not let go until I was back in the car. Once I got distracted by something pretty in a shop we were in and let go of her hand to get a better look at it. When I found her two minutes later (not more) she was speaking to the security guard with tears in her eyes about shutting down the store until I was found. I was like ‘Ma what are you doing? I’m ten years old – I was right behind you’ and she just hugged me for way too long. I remember being so embarrassed because I was way too old to be seen hugging my mother in public. I was never allowed around any males alone, EVER. Not even my cousins. I used to think she was paranoid but now I know I would do the same for my daughter.

I was sexually abused. Badly, for many years. It was by a female. My babysitter.

 We knew the family really well. This is why I didn’t tell my mother. One night before all this started I walked passed my parents room and I heard my mother crying so I stopped and listened in the way that little girls do, she was on the phone to a friend of hers and she was crying because there was a playgroup that was found out to have been molesting children for years and another one of her close friends sons had went there years before. I so badly wanted to protect her from any sort of pain like she always did for me so when it happened the first time I couldn’t bring myself to tell her. I loved her that much. After that I had already been victimized and predators know how to keep their victims under their control.

Read up on the psychology behind it. It is a rare phenomenon when a victim breaks the cycle. My head was put in a bath tub and held there until I nearly drowned and when it was taken out I was told that if I ever told anyone then she would do that to my little brother but she would keep his head in. I was old enough to understand the term ‘drown your baby brother and make it look like a mistake’. And yes I thought it might be a possibility that my parents could save me. But it wasn’t worth the risk. I loved my baby brother too much. To this day I wonder if she would’ve drowned him had I show any hesitation. I was just an eight year old girl protecting her family from a nightmare that was too painful to share. It wasn’t worth it.

I have tears streaming down my face as I write this. I can’t remember the last time I cried like this. I’m sobbing over this laptop. I have never ever spoken of any of this outside of therapy. Reading you proscribe my parents as bad parents has been singularly painful for me. There was nothing ‘wrong’ or ‘off’ about my family. Me and my younger siblings were the prettiest, best dressed, happiest little children you have ever seen. If you saw us on the street you would probably glance enviously at my perfect little family, with our bright blond hair, little dimples and bright blue eyes. My young parents were everyone’s idea of perfect. My father learned my Chumash homework with me every night. For years. Point is that people rarely have parents as good as mine are. Leah, If there is such a thing as a Parent Award, you, Leah would be the first to give it to them.

I’m not saying that it didn’t change anything, my perfect childhood outside of the abuse probably gave me the strength to get through this all. When as a teenager I finally told my parents what had happened it broke them as people, but as parents they pulled themselves together and have been here ever since helping me pick up the pieces of my shattered soul. I can honestly say if it wasn’t for their strength I, the little girl who once was exactly like your own little girl would be lying in a grave with the whole world wondering what had happened. Leah I truly hope you never need to know the inhumane amounts of courage and strength it takes people to accept and love their children despite all the anger, drugs, boys etc. I hope you never need to find out how identical you are as a mother to mine and how similar I once was to your own little girl.

Hasidic counselor, Nechemya Weberman, suspected of sexual assault will testify

The 54-year-old is accused by the teenager of forcing her to perform oral sex and reenact porn during three years of spiritual counseling that started when she was 12.

Nechemya Weberman aka THE ANIMAL

A once-respected Hasidic counselor accused of sexually assaulting a Brooklyn girl is expected to take the stand in his own defense Wednesday .

Tuesday’s witnesses represented the torturous journey of the alleged victim — who turns 18 Wednesday — from a student who rebelled against the strict modesty rules at her Satmar school to a “depressed” teen who reported the purported abuse. In December 2010, social worker Sarah Fried testified in Brooklyn Supreme Court, the “very anxious” girl recounted her “trauma.”

“At the end of the session, she uttered the words ‘I was molested,’” Fried testified, “then ran out of the office.”

It wasn’t until February 2011 that the girl named Weberman - an accusation the defense contends was motivated by revenge upon learning the counselor set up her boyfriend to be arrested.

The teen ended up at Weberman’s home office in 2007 after having trouble at her school, where the thickness of her tights was constantly examined.

“Her modesty was not like the other girls’,” said Benzion Feuerwerger, the principal of the girls school at United Talmudic Academy in Williamsburg.

He added that the school demanded the girl’s parents pay $12,800, mostly as an upfront fee for Weberman’s services, if they wanted their daughter to stay enrolled.

The principal, who said he had no secondary education beyond yeshivas, was also asked if he knows about Va’ad Hatznius, a Hasidic squad that enforces modesty rules and to which prosecutors say Weberman belongs.

“It doesn’t exist, as far as I know,” Feuerwerger said, to gasps in the packed courtroom. The modesty patrol is a well-known presence in the Satmar community.

Having Weberman take the stand is tactic that’s not without risks. During pretrial hearings last summer, prosecutors claimed six other women have made allegations against the defendant, but none agreed to press charges, which barred them from addressing the jury.

Under exceptional circumstances, court insiders said, Weberman's testimony might open the door to allow other alleged victims to be heard.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/weberman-suspected-sexual-assault-testify-article-1.1213602#ixzz2E9BR3rg7

If she stopped seeing her alleged abuser, she would have been expelled from school!

Mom: I had to pay 12G to this ‘sex fiend!’



Nechemya Weberman aka THE ANIMAL

The mother of a teenage Brooklyn girl who was allegedly sexually abused by a prominent Hasidic leader testified yesterday that she was forced by her daughter’s yeshiva to send the girl to the man for counseling — and even had to pay for the dubious privilege.
Nechemya Weberman, 54, allegedly abused the girl during their frequent counseling sessions beginning when she was just 12 years old, prosecutors charge.

“The school gave her a hard time and said she was ‘apikoros,’ ” a Hebrew and Greek word that means heretic, the mother testified in Brooklyn Supreme Court.

When asked the repercussion of not sending her youngest daughter to Weberman, she answered in halting English, “They wouldn’t accept her. They wouldn’t allow her to go to school.”

United Talmudical Academy administrators even required the family to pay Weberman $12,800 in advance — before the teen started eighth grade, the mother testified.

“They wanted to make sure that I would send [her] to Weberman,” said the 53-year-old mother of seven, who covers her hair per Orthodox requirements and has worked as a Mary Kay cosmetician for 21 years.

The South Williamsburg school referred questions to its attorney, who did not return requests for comment.

Now entering its second week, the Weberman trial has provided a rare glimpse into the clandestine world of ultra-Orthodox Judaism in general, and the Brooklyn Satmar sect in particular.

One story the mother told illustrated the power the school held over her daughter, now 17. When Weberman announced he was taking the teen on a daylong drive, her mother protested, citing “Yichud,” the religious rules that prevent unmarried men and women from being alone together.

But again, the school stepped in and ordered the family to go along with Weberman, she testified.

“I had no other choice,” said the mom, who explained that the school even made her write Weberman to say she was sorry for disagreeing with him. “I had to write him an apology letter.”

The teen’s mother also described the harassment her family faced after her daughter reported the alleged abuse.

“They would scream at him ‘moser, moser!” a Yiddish term for a Jew who reports another Jew to secular authorities, the teen’s mother said. Her 5-year-old granddaughter was also barred from beginning school.

Much of the Satmar community still stands behind Weberman. Rebbe Aaron Teitelbaum, one of the Satmar sect’s two top leaders, spoke out against the teen at a fundraiser this weekend.

“If you keep up with what’s happening in [Williamsburg], it is frightening. A Jewish daughter has sunk so low, it is terrible.” he said, according to sources who attended the fundraiser.



http://m.nypost.com/p/news/local/mom_had_to_pay_to_this_sex_fiend_M73CCGJs4ZGww1Gbbm5ZxJ?utm_medium=rss&utm_content=Local

Jewish Principal Convicted of 75 Sex Abuse Counts

Emanuel Yegutkin of Elite High School Targeted Boys

The principal of a private Jewish high school in Brooklyn was convicted of sexually abusing three boys over the course of a decade, authorities said.

Emanuel Yegutkin, 33, the principal of Elite High School in the Bensonhurst section, was found guilty of 75 counts of sex abuse.

He faces up to 25 years in prison on each of several counts when he is sentenced on December 17.

“This violent sexual predator faces the remainder of his life behind bars,” Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes said. “This should serve as a clear message that those who would sexually abuse children in this county will be punished severely.”

Yegutkin became a close friend of the victims’ family after attending the school where the victims’ father worked, and visited their home frequently. The victims did not attend Yegutkin’s school, the prosecutor’s office said.

From 1996 to 2005, Yegutkin sexually abused two of the boys when they were ages seven to 15-years-old, and in 2008, exposed the third boy to pornography. He forced them to perform sex acts including fondling and oral sex, authorities said.

 http://forward.com/articles/167180/jewish-principal-convicted-of--sex-abuse-counts/#ixzz2E2xygfo0

PSY GANGAM STYLE - PIDYON SHVUYIM - VER GAHARGET CONCERT!

BROOKLYN CRIMINAL COURT — Three Orthodox Jewish men who allegedly took photographs in court of a young woman who accused Rabbi Nechemya Weberman of sexually assaulting her were arraigned after the Sabbath began Friday evening.

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

Intimidation of sexual abuse victims in the ultra-Orthodox community is common



Nechemya Weberman AKA The Animal

Photos of Accuser on Stand Disrupt Sexual Abuse Trial

The trial of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish counselor accused of repeatedly molesting a girl was disrupted on Thursday afternoon when four spectators in a Brooklyn courtroom were accused of taking pictures with their cellphones of the accuser on the witness stand.

The four men, identified by prosecutors as Joseph Fried, Yona Weisman, Abraham Zupnick and Lemon Juice, were arrested and charged with criminal contempt in the second degree, a misdemeanor that carries a sentence of up to one year in jail.

The accuser, who is now 17, has testified that she and her family had faced a pattern of intimidation from the Satmar Hasidic community in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, since she alleged last year that Nechemya Weberman, the unlicensed therapist her parents had sent her to for counseling, repeatedly forced her to have oral sex during their sessions together from the time she was 12 until she turned 15.

In June, prosecutors charged four Williamsburg men with attempting to silence her by offering her a $500,000 bribe through her boyfriend to drop her participation in the case. Intimidation of sexual abuse victims in the ultra-Orthodox community is common, prosecutors say, because going to secular authorities with charges against another Jew is considered treasonous. But arrests for intimidation are rare.

Mr. Weberman’s accuser had already been provided with increased security after onlookers said they spotted Mr. Weberman staring at her threateningly through the window of a conference room as she rested during a break in the court session on Wednesday, said Jerry Schmetterer, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office. The defense denies that Mr. Weberman did this.

Then at about 2 p.m. Thursday, court officers spotted a man taking a picture of the teenager as she testified, Mr. Schmetterer said. The judge, Justice John G. Ingram, ordered the jury cleared from the 20th-floor courtroom in State Supreme Court, and the cellphones of all onlookers in the courtroom were confiscated.

The phones of the four men arrested had photos of the teenager that had been taken in the courtroom, and one photo appeared to have already been posted to Twitter, Mr. Schmetterer said. David Bookstaver, a spokesman for the court, said that Judge Ingram also admonished the men before allowing the trial to continue.

While the district attorney’s office did not comment on motive, Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg, an advocate for abuse victims who was in the courtroom, said that the men arrested were Satmar Hasidim, some of whom supported Mr. Weberman. “This is intimidation,” he said. “The government should not let this slide away, because this is not an accident. It is done deliberately in an effort to keep the law system from functioning.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/30/nyregion/in-ultra-orthodox-sexual-abuse-trial-4-arrests-for-photos-of-witness.html?ref=nyregion&_r=0

DAY 3: Trial of Child Rapist Nechemya Weberman

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

Teen Takes Stand in Abuse Trial Against Orthodox Leader

In this May 16, 2012 image taken from video and provided by WCBS-TV, Nechemya Weberman attends a fundraiser on his behalf in Brooklyn.

After months of anticipation, a 17-year-old girl took the stand in the sexual abuse trial of a respected counselor from an ultra-orthodox Jewish community that authorities say has historically avoided such prosecutions by keeping members quiet.

In a packed courtroom filled mostly with her supporters, the teen took the stand against Nechemya Weberman, an unlicensed religious counselor in the Satmar community, an ultra-orthodox sect of Judaism.

Weberman is accused of sexually abusing the girl dozens of times in his home and office over a three-year span beginning when she was 12 years old. The girl, who turns 18 next week, is not being identified because she is the victim of a sexual-abuse crime.

The teen testified she was taken to see Weberman after school leaders deemed her a problem after she questioned her religion.

“I had a lot of questions about religion. … How do you know God exists?” she said, adding that in response her teacher “yelled at me and sent me to the principal. It happened to me a lot of times.”

She started seeing Weberman in March 2007, first twice a week and sometimes up to four times a week.

Speaking in almost inaudible tones and at times struggling to hold back tears, she described the alleged abuse in detail for more than three hours.

“I just froze,” she said about their first encounter. “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to respond. I didn’t know how to fight back. I was numb.”

“He would continue touching me all the time,” she said, adding later, “I wanted to die rather than live with myself.”

The testimony brought many in the audience to tears, with court officers having to quiet attendees for whispering loudly during breaks in testimony.

The case is one of the few that Brooklyn prosecutors say they have been able to bring to fruition because going after sexual predators in the community has been difficult without cooperation from residents.

In the lead up to the trial, District Attorney Charles Hynes said prosecutions in the community can be more difficult than even organized-crime investigations, in which he can at least offer a witness-protection program.

The case has caused deep divisions among Williamsburg’s Hasidim, with some rallying behind Weberman, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for his defense and subjecting the accuser to threats and name-calling.

Four men were charged earlier this year after they allegedly tried to buy the silence of the girl and her now-husband. The girl was married in October.

On Tuesday, the girl talked about what a difficult decision it was to have to testify against Weberman.

The girl testified that her parents had suggested she drop the case as recently as six months ago, taking her to a Rabbi, who tried to get her to drop the case.

When asked by a prosecutor what was the benefit of proceeding, she answered, “peace.”

Asked about the pressure to drop the case, she gave several examples, including “intimidation,” “intimidation of my parents,” “loss of business,” “having my nieces kicked out of school.”

Defense attorneys have argued that the girl has singled out Weberman and the Satmar religious community because of its ultra-orthodox policies.

Tuesday is the second day of a trial that is expected to last a week. Weberman is also expected to take the stand in his defense.

Prosecutors finished their direct examination Tuesday morning. The girl is back on the stand Tuesday afternoon, being questioned by Weberman’s attorneys.

http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2012/11/27/teen-takes-stand-in-abuse-trial-against-orthodox-leader/

At Abuse Trial, Support for Orthodox Jewish Girl

The young Orthodox Jewish woman who took the stand to testify in her sexual abuse case in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn on Tuesday faced an inscrutable jury but also a crowd of sympathetic observers.

Her extended family, friends, victims’ advocates, and some who said they were sexually abused within the Orthodox Jewish community filled the three rows of seats. More supporters waited outside.

At the same time, the prominent ultra-Orthodox Jewish man from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Nechemya Weberman, who stands accused of molesting the young woman, had only a few family members and supporters present in the courtroom.

Abe Rubenstein, an audience member whose son had testified as a victim in a high-profile Orthodox Jewish sexual abuse case in Borough Park, Brooklyn, two years ago, remembered how that courtroom had been packed with supporters of the defendant. That experience, prosecutors said, was typical of a community that had tried for years to intimidate sexual abuse victims into silence.

“Only I was there,” Mr. Rubenstein remembered. “When my son testified, he said he felt alone in the jungle.”

This time, people said that they came because they had read on victims’ advocacy blogs that the victim needed support or heard about her case through publicity surrounding a fund-raiser for Mr. Weberman in May.

Though the young woman’s parents had asked her to drop the case as recently as this spring, the victim testified, about 20 members of her family came to show their support in court.

“The anger has reached a level where people have decided to put an end to making the victim into the villain,” said Judy Genut, an advocate for abuse victims in Williamsburg.

The testimony of the young woman, who turns 18 next week, lasted for hours.

She recalled in detail her first meeting with Mr. Weberman, now 54, at an apartment he used as an office. Her father, she testified, had brought her there for counseling at age 12 because he falsely believed she was having a physical relationship with a 16-year-old neighbor named Shimmy.

Mr. Weberman, she testified, locked the door to his office as the session started, spoke to her, and, later, asked her to stand up.

“He asked me, ‘Did Shimmy kiss you like that?’ ” she said. Then, she testified, he kissed her. “He asked me, ‘Did he touch you on the breast?’ And he did that. And then, he kept going down.”

“I just froze,” she said. “I didn’t know how to fight back.”

She said nothing to her father when he came to pick her up, she testified under cross-examination. Nor did she tell her family she wanted to stop going to sessions, though she said the abuse went on for years, in four-hour sessions that sometimes were held several times a week. In 2011, she reported being abused to a licensed therapist, who brought her to the police.

George Farkas, a defense lawyer, argued Monday that the young woman, who often got into trouble for flouting strict Satmar dress codes and other rules, was making up the abuse story because she wanted revenge against Mr. Weberman, who she believed had told her parents about a boyfriend she had when she was 15. The boy, then 18, was subsequently arrested, though the charges were later dropped.

Michael Farkas, another defense lawyer, asked the young woman if she sometimes felt a deep anger at her religious community and those who enforced its strict rules. She said she did.

But when prosecutors asked her whom she blamed for the boyfriend’s arrest, she did not say Mr. Weberman.

“I blamed my father,” she said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/28/nyregion/at-sexual-abuse-trial-support-for-an-orthodox-jewish-girl.html?ref=nyregion

Teen Accusing Orthodox Jewish Leader Of Sex Abuse Testifies ‘I Wanted To Die’

Accuser: Man Who Was Supposed To Be Counselor, Molested Me For 3 Years

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — A teen alleging a prominent member of Brooklyn’s Satmar community sexually abused her over three years took the stand Tuesday to describe her alleged ordeal.

In a quiet, controlled voice, the now-married 17-year-old said she endured years of abuse at the hands of 54-year-old Nechemya Weberman.

The teen’s father had taken her to Weberman for counseling because he thought she had a boyfriend, which was prohibited in the community, 1010 WINS’ Juliet Papa reported.

However, the teen claimed the counseling turned into undressing, touching and other sexual contact.

The teen told a packed courtroom that from her first meeting with Weberman in an office next to his Clinton Hill apartment, the much-respected Orthodox Jewish leader sexually abused her.

In fact, she said it happened every time they met from 2007 — when she was 12 — and continued through 2010.

The accuser said that Weberman would triple lock his door before the abuse, which allegedly took place twice a week for the three years.

At one point, the teen said she stopped eating for three days. The accuser said she was so depressed she couldn’t stop or even talk to Weberman.

The teen also described another incident in which she claimed Weberman came to her home.

“He got into bed with me and I wanted to die,” the teen stated in court.

She said she was eventually was able to tell a school counselor what was taking place.

Weberman has pleaded not guilty to charges of committing a criminal sex act, rape, endangering the welfare of a child and sexual abuse.

Lawyers for Weberman have argued that the allegations being brought against their client are false.

Weberman is expected to testify in his own defense later in the week.

Earlier this year, a controversial fundraiser was held in the Hasidic community to raise Weberman’s legal funds.

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/11/27/teen-accusing-orthodox-jewish-leader-of-sex-abuse-testifies-i-wanted-to-die/

Sexual Abuse Trial of Brooklyn Man Begins

Nechemya Weberman after the opening of the sexual abuse trial against him in Brooklyn. Prosecutors say he molested a girl, starting when she was 12.

The abuse began when the girl was 12 years old, prosecutors in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn said on Monday. She was sent to a prominent man in her ultra-Orthodox Jewish community for counseling, and prosecutors said the man sexually molested her over the next three years.

But lawyers defending the man, Nechemya Weberman, 54, of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, told a far different story during the opening arguments of his trial. The girl, a defense lawyer told the jury, had hatched the sordid tale of abuse as an act of revenge against Mr. Weberman and against a religious community she found stifling and rulebound.

As proceedings began during the trial of Mr. Weberman, who is accused of 88 counts of sexual abuse of a minor, it became clear that the community itself, as well as Mr. Weberman, would undergo scrutiny during what is expected to be an emotional week of sexually explicit and culturally intricate testimony.

Both the prosecution and the defense informed the jury that the Satmar Hasidic community, to which Mr. Weberman and the girl belonged, was so rigid that questions from a young girl about something as simple as the proper length of a skirt could lead to mandatory counseling, and even expulsion from school. The accuser in this case, both sides said, was just that kind of girl: a free spirit whose questioning and challenges to authority landed her in trouble.

“She was going off the path,” said Kevin O’Donnell, an assistant district attorney. “She was being a little bit different.” In response, Mr. O’Donnell said, she was branded a “heretic” by her Satmar girls’ school, the United Talmudical Academy in Williamsburg, and her parents were required to send her to therapy.

What happened next is in dispute. The prosecution says that Mr. Weberman, the counselor whom the girl began seeing, forced the girl to perform oral sex on him on multiple occasions. He is also accused of touching her breasts and vagina during sessions, which were held mostly in his home office. The prosecution said he was unlicensed in any mental health profession.

“When you think about it,” Mr. O’Donnell said, the girl’s parents “were actually paying the defendant to have sex with their daughter,” which he did, “over and over again.”

The girl, who turns 18 next week, told a licensed counselor in 2011 at a new school outside of her neighborhood about the abuse allegations, and that counselor reported them, Mr. O’Donnell said. “She eventually got the courage to come forward,” he said.

Lawyers for Mr. Weberman, however, argue that the young woman fabricated the allegations because she was furious at Mr. Weberman for what she thought was a betrayal of her trust. At age 15, they said, she had revealed to Mr. Weberman that she had a boyfriend — a serious breach of the community’s stringent rules — and then, a defense lawyer said, she concluded that he told her parents about it.

“There was only one answer,” said George Farkas, the defense lawyer, “vengeance and revenge against Nechemya Weberman, and through this, to bring down the entire community that either supported him, or of which he was a part.”

Mr. Farkas also argued that the girl’s family had a business dispute with Mr. Weberman that may have also played a part in a desire for revenge.

Mr. Weberman’s accuser is expected to testify on Tuesday. Mr. Weberman is expected to take the stand in his own defense as early as Thursday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/27/nyregion/sexual-abuse-trial-of-nechemya-weberman-of-brooklyn-begins.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y&_r=0

14 life sentences for child rape for this "medical professional" & he does not live in Toronto

Uninformed sources claim that Dr. Bradley will be the "surprise" featured keynote guest speaker at this year's Agudath Israel convention - session will be moderated by David Zweibel, Avi Shafran and Lipa Margulies. Topic - Molesting Kids With A Kapittel Tehillim.

DOVER, Del. (AP) — A judge approved a $123 million settlement Monday in a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of young children who were sexually abused by former Delaware pediatrician Earl Bradley.

The settlement approved by New Castle County Superior Court Judge Joseph Slights III resolves claims against Beebe Medical Center, a southern Delaware hospital where Bradley had hospital privileges; the Medical Society of Delaware; and five physicians accused by the plaintiffs of not reporting suspicions about Bradley to authorities.

"Although no amount of monetary or non-monetary compensation can atone for Dr. Bradley's atrocities, the settlement approved today provides Dr. Bradley's victims with means by which to facilitate the healing process," wrote Slights, who held a fairness hearing on the settlement last week.

Bradley, 59, is serving 14 life sentences for child rape after being convicted last year by a judge who viewed more than 13 hours of homemade videos showing sex crimes against more than 80 victims.

Slights approved the settlement in the civil lawsuit after attorneys for the plaintiffs agreed to reduce their fees to 22.5 percent of the proposed settlement, down from 25 percent. Attorneys will receive about $27.8 million in fees and another $2.1 million in expenses, leaving about $90 million available for victims of Bradley. Beebe also has agreed to provide up to $1 million in medical care over 15 years to plaintiffs included in the lawsuit.

The judge agreed with attorneys that without the settlement, Beebe would be staring at bankruptcy while victims would face years of costly and uncertain litigation involving a "race to the courthouse" and young children would be compelled to talk about what happened to them.

"The settlement provides a sizable fund to compensate all victims injured by Dr. Bradley's abuse through an orderly claims administration process," Slights wrote in a 54-page opinion. "And it marks a welcomed early end to litigation that, once fully activated, would have caused great distress to class members, given the tender age of the victims and the vulgar nature of Dr. Bradley's treatment of them."

Thomas Rutter, a former Pennsylvania judge who served as a settlement arbitrator in the bankruptcy of the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington — a case prompted by liabilities stemming from abuse by pedophile priests — will serve as claims administrator in the Bradley case.

Rutter will be responsible for determining which claims have merit and for separating claimants into five categories, based upon the alleged harm suffered and the evidence presented. Children within each category would receive the same compensation, but it's unclear what the range of payments could be among categories.

Criteria for the five injury categories are:

— clear and convincing evidence of sexual intercourse;
— significant evidence of sexual abuse;
—evidence revealing a probability of sexual abuse;
—no evidence that would allow one to conclude that the child was abused;
—evidence that would allow one reasonably to conclude that the child was not abused.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs have received more than 900 potential claims. The deadline to submit a claim is Dec. 14, but attorneys have agreed to allow a late-filing period of 90 days for claimants who can demonstrate extraordinary circumstances. They also agreed to set aside $3 million from attorney fees to establish a fund to cover latent injury claims. Those claims would be allowed to be filed over the next five years on behalf of children who appear healthy now but later develop symptoms requiring medical or psychiatric treatment.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/11/19/delaware-child-abuse-case/1715867/

This case may turn out to be the worst ever seen involving the abuse of deaf children.

“I used to say that not every priest was an abuser, that there were some bad ones, but now I think that those who were not pedophiles must have known what was going on and they didn’t say anything. Damn them all.”

Lawsuit alleges dozens of clergy abused children at Montreal school for deaf

MONTREAL — Another chapter of Quebec’s dark history of the sexual abuse of children in church-run institutions was aired this week by Radio-Canada. But this was not just any chapter. It threatens to be one of the most horrifying in an already heartbreaking record.

It deals with the sexual abuse of young boys, already vulnerable because of their age but doubly or triply so because they were also deaf and mute. Their alleged abusers were educated men who promised to set the boys free from their silent world.

Clerical and lay members of a much-admired Roman Catholic teaching order, the Clercs de Saint-Viateur, these men did not set the boys free. The boys who say they were abused ended up in a living hell, terrified of telling anyone what was happening to them. They remained trapped in that hell in adulthood, unable to erase the grotesque images in their heads of masturbating priests and anal rape.

This case may turn out to be the worst ever seen involving the abuse of deaf children. Unlike the previous record, held by a single Roman Catholic priest, Lawrence Murphy of Wisconsin, in Quebec more than 30 clergy are alleged to have abused the deaf children in their care, sometimes one after another. (Murphy, who may have sexually assaulted as many as 200 children at a school for the deaf in Wisconsin, was denounced in 1996 to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. The Vatican took no action against Murphy, who died in 1998.)

In Quebec, the alleged victims of the Clercs de Saint-Viateur were given permission by Superior Court in March to pursue a class-action suit against the religious order. Named in the suit are 28 priests and brothers and six lay workers. More than 60 former students have signed on to the suit, all alleging sexual abuse. They are seeking $100,000 each in damages.

Radio-Canada’s investigative program Enquête called its program The Perfect Victims. The boys came as boarders to the only school for the deaf in the province at the age of 7 or 8. Many were thrilled to be at the school, where for the first time they would be taught to communicate with other children and learn to read and write.

Speaking of the abuse in public for the first time in his life, Denis Chalifoux told Radio-Canada that he arrived as an 8-year-old at the Institut pour des sourds de Montréal in 1968, happy to be with other deaf children. The happiness was not to last long. Within short order, Chalifoux found himself in a priest’s bedroom, with the priest’s penis in his face.

“I wanted my mother,” he said. “I so badly wanted to see my mother.”

Chalifoux said the abuse went on for years, until he left school at age 14, unable to read or write, fit for nothing but prostitution, he said. He worked as a prostitute until he was 30 and said he is haunted by that part of his life. He never told his parents about the abuse. He became hysterical every time he was forced to return to the school after a vacation, but according to his brother Marcel Chalifoux, the family put it down to homesickness. “I don’t think my parents would have believed him,” Marcel Chalifoux told Radio-Canada.

“Quebec was like Ireland,” said Carlo Tarini, communications director for a not-for-profit support group, the Association des victimes de prêtres. “The church totally dominated Quebec. It owned the hospitals and the schools. You didn’t have a prayer going up against a priest.”

Tarini thinks this domination may be in part why outside society failed to help the boys no matter how obvious it was that they were being abused. Former student Rock Savoie, who was at the institute in the late 1950s, told Radio-Canada he was anally raped a number of times. He would be sent to hospital with a torn anus, treated and then sent back to the institute. “The nurses gave me candy,” he said. (Savoie and Chalifoux communicated using sign language which an interpreter then translated into speech.)

Tarini said the allegations of abuse at the school stretch from 1942 to 1982.

“I used to say that not every priest was an abuser, that there were some bad ones, but now I think that those who were not pedophiles must have known what was going on and they didn’t say anything. Damn them all.”

Tarini also thinks the Clercs de Saint-Viateur have no right to the money they were paid, $7 million according to Radio-Canada, when they sold the former institute to a private developer. “That money was raised by the community,” said Tarini. “The priests would come around saying, ‘Give generously,’ and now they’re keeping the money.” The Clercs de Saint-Viateur did not respond to a request for reaction to the allegations aired on Radio-Canada.

France Bédard, 65, is helping to organize a protest demonstration Sunday by men and women who say they were abused by members of religious orders. She expects a large turnout. Bédard said she herself was raped by a priest and became pregnant as a 17-year-old when she worked in a presbytery. She did not see the son she gave birth to for 30 years.

As part of her own struggle for justice, during which she stumbled over a Quebec law requiring victims file complaints within a prescribed period, Bédard founded the association for victims of priests as a support network for victims. “Three times as many men call us as women,” said Bédard, who said that hundreds of victims have sought the association’s help. “These boys were abused while doing their studies,” she said. “That’s proof that priests were involved. They were the teachers. For men to come forward and say they were abused is very, very difficult. It raises the taboo of homosexuality. But what matters is to not be silent any longer.”

http://www.montrealgazette.com/literacy/raiseareader/Lawsuit+alleges+dozens+clergy+abused+children+Montreal+school+deaf/7602508/story.html#ixzz2DIaO1yMV

The prevalence of sexual abuse among all boys 17 and under has been variously estimated to be as low as 5 percent and as high as 16 percent.

In Close Relationship Between Player and Coach, Potential for Sexual Abuse

It was the summer before high school, and Christopher Gavagan, then 13, was preparing to leave the safe familiarity of the friends he had known during his boyhood. With a plan to excel at ice hockey, he began training on inline skates, moving through his New York City neighborhood, up and down the streets until, he said, “I turned down the wrong street.”

Gavagan, now a filmmaker, was one of eight panelists who participated Friday in a discussion about young athletes who have been sexually assaulted or abused by their coaches. The panel was part of the MaleSurvivor 13th International Conference, held this year at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The conference brought together men who have been sexually abused, as well as psychologists, social workers, academics and members of the legal community.

A dour procession of stories about sexual misconduct by coaches toward their male charges has come to light in recent months. Jerry Sandusky, a former assistant football coach at Penn State, was sentenced in October to 30 to 60 years in prison on 45 counts of child molesting. Sugar Ray Leonard wrote in his autobiography last year that he was sexually molested by an Olympic boxing coach. The N.H.L. players Theo Fleury and Sheldon Kennedy were sexually abused as teenagers by their hockey coach Graham James.

The prevalence of sexual abuse among all boys 17 and under has been variously estimated to be as low as 5 percent and as high as 16 percent. For some of the millions of children who participate in sports nationwide, and their parents, sexual assault in a sports context has its own dynamic.

“Sports is a place where parents send their boys to learn skills, to learn how to be teammates and how to work together — to make boys stronger and healthier,” said Dr. Howard Fradkin, author of “Joining Forces,” a book about how men can heal from sexual abuse. “It’s the place where we send our boys to grow up. The betrayal that occurs when abuse occurs in sports is damaging because it destroys the whole intent of what they started out to do.”

When Gavagan, now 38, turned down that fateful street, and stepped briefly into the house of a man recommended as a hockey coach by a couple of female acquaintances, what greeted him, he said, was “a young boy’s dream come true.”

The dream Gavagan glimpsed was embodied in the trophy room of the house.

“It was everything I wanted to be right there,” recalled Gavagan, who is working on a feature-length documentary on sexual abuse in youth sports, in which he interviews other sexual-abuse victims and his own attacker, against whom he has never pressed charges. In addition to the shiny relics that seemed to give testimony to the man’s coaching prowess, Gavagan said, the trophy room had pictures of hockey teams the man had coached and workout equipment — the physical tools promising the chance to get bigger and stronger.

“To a skinny 13-year-old, it was like winning the lottery,” Gavagan said.

Christopher Anderson, the executive director of MaleSurvivor, said sexual abuse — basically nonconsensual touching or sexual language — is devastating under any circumstance, but coach and player often have a special relationship.

“Especially as you progress higher and higher, the coach can become just as important in some ways to an athlete as the relationship with his parents might have,” Anderson said. “In some cases, it’s a substitute for parents.”

He added: “There’s also a fundamentally different power dynamic. When you’re a young star, the coach can literally make or break your career as an athlete.”

But caution has to extend beyond coaches who guide future Olympians, Gavagan said, noting that his coach was not of that caliber.

“The entire grooming process was so subtle,” Gavagan said. “It’s not like when I first went into his house that he tried to grope me.”

First, Gavagan said, the coach said it was all right to curse in that house. On another visit it was fine to have a beer, which led on another day to Playboy magazine and on subsequent days to harder pornography and harder liquor. It was six months before the coach laid an explicitly sexual hand on him, Gavagan said.

“I didn’t feel like a sudden red line had been crossed — the line had been blurred,” Gavagan said, explaining that he avoided his parents when he returned home with liquor on his breath by telling them he was exhausted and going straight to his room. (Unlike many sexual-abuse victims, Gavagan said his parents, with whom the coach had ingratiated himself, were supportive of their son, and his was a loving family. He said that if he had approached them about the coach, they would have listened.)

Another aspect of sexual abuse in sports is the environment, which emphasizes a kind of macho ethic.

“What is most different about abuse is the sports culture itself,” Fradkin said. “It is a culture that promotes teamwork and teaches boys to shrug it off. When a boy or man is abused, he risks being thrown off the team if he should speak the truth because he’ll be seen as being disloyal — and weak.”

At 17, after four years with his coach, Gavagan said he “aged out” of his coach’s target age.

“At the time I had no idea of how it would impact my life, but the unhealthy lessons about relations, trust and the truth set a time bomb that would detonate my relationships for the next 10 years,” Gavagan said.

As a word of caution, Anderson said the lesson for parents should not be that sports are dangerous.

“It should be that there are sometimes dangerous people who gravitate to sporting organizations and our safeguards aren’t good enough yet to adequately protect our children,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that we should be pulling our kids from soccer and baseball and basketball. What it means is that parents need to be vigilant.”

He added: “They need to be proactive with athletic organizations to make sure that policies are in place — such as doing criminal background checks on staff and having a procedure where young athletes can complain about inappropriate behavior — that make sure children are protected.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/19/sports/malesurvivor-conference-examines-sexual-abuse-in-sports.html?src=rechp