Haaretz - In English & Press Release From The Ministry of Justice!

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....."Where questions of religion are concerned, people are guilty of every possible sort of dishonesty and intellectual misdemeanour".....Sigmund Freud; The Future Of An Illusion.

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'I planned to murder Mondrowitz'

By Aviva Lori

Tags: pedophile, Haaretz

"I wanted to murder him. Or to kidnap him and beat him to within an inch of his life and then dump him somewhere. Or to drag him to the American embassy and then send him back to the United States." The speaker is T., who says he is one of the victims of Avrohom Mondrowitz, the alleged pedophile from Brooklyn who styles himself a rabbi and psychologist, and whose misdeeds were described recently in these pages ("In the basement, behind a closed door," Haaretz Magazine, November 16). T. says that last year he paid someone who came to Israel to come up with an operative plan to assault Mondrowitz. "I sent someone to Israel. An American guy who came on one of the educational programs for American Jews, someone who is not afraid of anything. He did not work alone. He has connections with a few guys in Israel, who were going to do the actual deed."

Then why didn't it happen?

T.: "Mondrowitz was very careful and never went into the street alone. He knows that someone will finish him off one day. Someone who will decide that he doesn't care if he spends the next 50 years in jail. The person I sent on the mission is still in Israel. He sat for four months, preparing a plan - how and where. We found out everything about him, where he lives and how he behaves, but it is very hard to get close to him without anyone seeing, so after four months the guy said he was giving it up."

Would you really send someone to assassinate him?

"If it could be done without being caught, I would definitely do it. I don't want to, but all I know is this: If the law didn't manage to bring him to justice after so many years, the feeling is that no one cares. He isn't just some crook who robbed a store. He destroyed people's lives. I am still going to therapy twice a month. I have problems. I don't trust anyone, don't believe anyone, I am a very suspicious person. I talk to my children about it every week, and it's very hard to tell children not to be friendly with people. In our synagogue there was someone who went over to children and hugged them. Most people thought he was just being sociable, but I went over to him in the middle of the synagogue and gave him a real beating. I said to everyone, 'I am not going to wait around until he does it to one of my kids.'"

T., now 38 and living in New York, was almost 13 when he first met Mondrowitz. Since then he has been haunted by nightmares. "My life today does not exactly follow some 'golden way,'" he says in the Hebrew he learned during his stay in Israel. "I have no doubt that it started there, in that disastrous meeting with Mondrowitz. For some reason, I never told anyone the whole truth."

T.'s parents, Holocaust survivors, settled in Brooklyn's Williamsburg section. After his bar mitzvah he was to enter the Bais Yisroel yeshiva run by the Gur (Gerer) Hasidic sect in Borough Park, Brooklyn. To prepare him for yeshiva life, his parents sent him to a summer camp run by the Gur Hasidim in the Catskills, where he met Mondrowitz for the first time. "He would show up in his car, an Oldsmobile that was as heavy as a Merkava tank. That summer he started to buy me things. He asked me what I liked. I still have a set of books he bought me. He would take me to a pizzeria. I asked him if that was all right, if I was allowed to leave the camp, and he said, 'Yes, of course, I will get you permission.'"

T. doesn't recall Mondrowitz trying to touch him at camp. But he still remembers vividly what he later saw in the yeshiva. To mark the anniversary of the death of the Admor of Gur (the sect's founder), the students made a torch from wax candles, which they cooked in a large pot in the yeshiva's basement kitchen.

"I went down to the dining room, where the kitchen was," T. relates. "It was a bit dark and no one was there, but suddenly I heard noises. I looked around and then I saw them. A boy from the yeshiva, my age or maybe a year older, was leaning on a table. Mondrowitz was on top of him and both of them had their pants down. I was flabbergasted. It was like a nightmare.

"I ran upstairs, into the classroom, and told the teacher what I saw. Straightaway he went out of the classroom with me, and in the corridor he saw the boy and Mondrowitz coming up the stairs. So he saw that I wasn't talking nonsense." (Years later, T. says, "I found out that the boy never did well in life, that he was mentally ill.") The teacher then took T. to the principal and told him what happened. "I remember the principal shouted at me in Yiddish that I was a boy with a filthy mind. We went back to the classroom as though nothing had happened. At around 4 o'clock, Mondrowitz came and said he wanted to take me to his office, that he had to talk to me. He was an authority figure and I couldn't object. I went to his car, and he stopped at a store on 16th Avenue, took me into the store with him and said that the tzitzit [ritual undergarment worn by Orthodox Jewish males] I was wearing was not Hasidic enough and that I needed a more expensive one, made of wool. My father was poor and bought me a simple tzitzit. Mondrowitz then bought me a Coke and for the first time took me to his home, where he started to explain to me that every person needs a different form of therapy and that some children need to have a good feeling. As he was talking, he stuck one hand into my pants and the other into his pants. If I remember well, his wife was home. I went into shock. He asked me if I felt good. I said no, but he kept on and then he said I was too young, that one day I would find out what was really good for me."

The next day, T. told his teacher what had happened at Mondrowitz's home. The teacher promised to deal with it. "The following day, my father got a letter from the yeshiva saying that I was unsuitable and they should look for a different institution for me."

Before the age of 14, T. was sent to a Gur yeshiva in Israel, but was soon expelled, without any explanation. Maybe because he told his friends what he had seen in Brooklyn: "I discovered that there were six kids in the yeshiva whom Mondrowitz had treated."

After that T. stayed with his sister and with another relative, trying to get accepted to other yeshivas, but to no avail.

T. became a street urchin. He slept in the Jerusalem Central Bus Station, sold pictures that he drew, and lived a hand-to-mouth existence. "The Jerusalem bus station was my home. Sometimes I went into a synagogue to sleep. At the age of 21 I was married. I worked for a solar-heating company, rented a place in Ramat Gan and forsook religion.? After 10 years in Israel, T. was divorced. He returned to the United States, found religion again - "I don't believe in religious people, I believe in God" - remarried and raised a new family.

Road to extradition

Avrohom Mondrowitz, 60, a Gur Hasid, was indicted in the United States on charges of sexual abuse, including sodomy, against hundreds of children, mainly Haredim (ultra-Orthodox), in his neighborhood of Borough Park, Brooklyn, in the early 1980s. The investigation began in 1984, following an anonymous phone call to Patricia Kehoe, a detective in the Brooklyn police sex crimes unit, about Mondrowitz's behavior. But by the time an arrest warrant was issued, Mondrowitz had disappeared. He and his family settled in Jerusalem. He was indicted in 1985, and Israel was asked to extradite him. This was not possible, because at the time the extradition agreement between the two countries did not define sodomy as a felony that mandated extradition. Mondrowitz lived comfortably in his Jerusalem home in the colorful Nahlaot neighborhood, teaching (until he was fired this year), praying three times a day in a local synagogue and, in his leisure time, apparently collecting and watching pedophilic movies and selling fake academic degrees from various universities to all comers.

Last May, local police raided Mondrowitz's home and found four pedophilic films. Two months ago, he was detained and questioned, but released under restrictive conditions. In September, the United States renewed its extradition request after the agreement with Israel was amended at the beginning of this year, so that sodomy is now an extraditable offense. But nothing happened. The police said they were in the midst of an investigation; the Justice Ministry refused to divulge information about its intentions. Mondrowitz continued with his regular routine.
Two weeks ago, on Friday, the day after the article's publication (on Thursday, in the Hebrew version of the Haaretz Magazine), Mondrowitz was arrested for the purpose of extradition. Three days later, he was brought before the vice president of the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court, Judge Shimon Fineberg, who extended his remand by a week and wrote that the findings of the investigation "create a reasonable suspicion that [Mondrowitz] is still an active or potential pedophile. The fact that he does not have a police record of sexual abuse in Israel does not render the danger void. It is well known that with offenses such as these, particularly in the Haredi sector, to which the respondent belongs, the victims and their families often do not file complaints with the police owing to their desire to try to solve the problems without involving the police, in order to avert shame in the family. By this I do not find that the respondent committed offenses in Israel, but neither do I find the opposite."

The news of Mondrowitz's arrest was widely reported - more than 70 items appeared all over the world: in The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, Pravda, The New York Daily News, the news agencies and, of course, in the Jewish press. The reports prompted more people who said they were Mondrowitz's victims to come forward.

One of them is B., the mother of M., an apparent Mondrowitz victim, who committed suicide last year. B. had long agonized over whether to go public. The latest round of reports gave her the impetus she needed. "Before this I didn't know that he had molested so many pure, innocent children," she says.

An Orthodox Jew, B. believes that God took her son in order to alleviate his unbearable pain, which, she says, was inflicted on him after a year of intensive "treatment" by Mondrowitz. Of B.'s three sons, she says two were victimized by Mondrowitz. They were sent to him for therapy when she and her husband were going through a divorce. M. was then nine and a half; G., his brother, was 11.

G., now 38, also takes part in the conversation. He says he was lucky: "He didn't really manage to hurt me, because I ran away. This was in 1981. My parents had just been divorced, and my mother sent me and my younger brother to him for professional help. I remember him as a very impressive person. He smoked a pipe and had a convertible sports car, which attracted a lot of attention. He was cool, you know. The first time I came to him he sat me on his knees and started to kiss me on the lips and fondle me in all kinds of places. I jumped up in a fright and escaped. He told me that if I told anyone, he would hurt me."

In what way?

G.: "I don't know, but he had a terrible look in his eyes and I was really scared."

Did you understand that what he did was wrong?

"I knew that I had a teacher in school who did [bad] things to me, so I knew it was wrong."

G. did not show up for the next session with Mondrowitz. He walked around the building for an hour, but did not go in. Two weeks later, he informed his mother that he would not go again. "We had a big fight. She wanted to know why. I only told her that I didn't like him. She was deeply involved in the divorce and didn?t press the issue."

His younger brother, M., continued to see Mondrowitz. It was not until 10 years later that he disclosed that the man had abused and raped him.

In 1988, during a visit to Jerusalem, G. and his brother saw Mondrowitz at the Western Wall. "I ran to him and started to hit him," G. recalls. "My brother restrained me and separated us. I shouted that this man is an animal who has to be arrested, but in the meantime he ran off."

G. has the names of eight additional people who say they were victims, who contacted him after the article appeared. They decided to urge the U.S. authorities to pressure Israel to extradite Mondrowitz.

"[My brother] M. married but wasn't able to have sexual relations with his wife," G. says. "He got divorced and became a homosexual."

Because of what Mondrowitz did?

"Obviously. Two weeks before his death, he told my father: 'I am not sure that even if Mondrowitz is brought to trial it will ease my suffering and reduce the pain.' We knew that something was not right with him - he did not behave normally. He became sentimental in his relations with people.

He had a problem with religion: He didn't understand how someone could teach religion and do things like that. He couldn't abide the hypocrisy. He used drugs and sank into even more pain. The drugs helped him cope. One day last year he took pills and didn't wake up again. He died in his sleep."

M. was 35 at the time of his death. His mother cannot forgive herself for having sent him to Mondrowitz.

"He was so popular, everyone recommended him," B. relates. "I heard him on his radio program and was impressed by the advice he gave. I was sure that I was helping my children. You don't expect a rabbi to do things like that. Now it turns out he was not a rabbi at all, that everything he told about himself was untrue. That man persuaded me to leave my children alone with him. That way, he said, he could help them more. But one day M. broke down and told me everything. I couldn't believe it. I was in shock. I hugged him and we both sat down and cried and cried without end. I told him, 'Don't ever dare look at that man again, ever. I will see to it that he pays for what he did.' But by the time I figured out what to do, he had already escaped to Israel."

Did you feel that something was amiss with M.?

B.: "I am sure that if I had felt that, I would have done something, but [Mondrowitz] hypnotized him. Afterward I found out that he would convince the children that each of them was unique and special, and that he loved them more than anything in the world, even more than their parents did. He would fill their head with all kinds of crazy things that influence children of that age. He would buy them things and seduce them."

B. says she does not understand why the other rabbis kept silent and did nothing. "It is very hard for me to understand why they protected him. Now I understand that there were too many rabbis who did the same thing. It destroyed the children; even those who remained alive are not really living. It is hard for me to believe that he didn't do it to children in Israel, too, because it's a sickness. Why didn't the police arrest him long ago? Never in my life have I had such a strong urge to kill someone as with this man. The only way to deal with him is by cutting off you know what, and do it very slowly. Let it hurt him, let him suffer like the gentle and pure children whose lives he destroyed. That is the pain I want him to feel." *******


Press Release - Received From The Minister Of Justice:



On November 16, 2007, Abraham Mondrowitz was arrested by the Israel Police, at the direction of the Department of International Affairs of the Office of the State Attorney. Mondrowitz was indicted in the United States on five counts of Sodomy in the First Degree, eight counts of Sexual Abuse in the First Degree, and one count of Endangering the Welfare of a Child.

Yesterday, the Department of International Affairs of the Office of the State Attorney filed a petition to Jerusalem's District Court requesting that Mondrowitz be declared extraditable to the United States. In light of the gravity of the crimes for which Mondrowitz has been charged and the concern that he may attempt to flee from Israel and poses a danger to the public, the Department of International Affairs requested that Mondrowitz remain under arrest until the court decides whether or not he is extraditable.

On September 5, 2007, the United States authorities requested that Israeli authorities extradite Mondrowitz for the crimes listed above. After a thorough review of the extradition request, Israeli authorities decided to commence extradition proceedings against Mondrowitz in Israel.

According to the Request for Extradition, an indictment was issued against Mondrowitz in 1985 in New York for the commission of serious sex offenses against five minors between January 1, 1980 and September 15, 1984. The victims were all male, ages nine to fifteen at the time of the commission of the offenses against them.

Mondrowitz fled from the United States to Israel in 1984. The United States authorities sought his arrest at the time; however, Mondrowitz's extradition was only possible after January 2007, when the Protocol amending the Israel United States Extradition Treaty went into effect. Prior to the amending Protocol, the above-mentioned offenses were not extraditable crimes.

Mondrowitz's extradition case is being handled by the Department of International Affairs of the Office of the State Attorney (prosecutors Nili Gesser and Marlene Mazel-Herskowitz) and in cooperation with the Israeli Police's Interpol Department.

Sincerely,
Merav Haviv Assistant to the spokesman - Ministry Of Justice

The Criminals - Gedolim - At The Agudath Israel Could NOT Care Less About You Or Your Children!

A father's plea for help - from the UOJ archives

At the outset, please forgive me for making the assumption that I have something meaningful to offer the survivors of sexual abuse, which I am not, or to the chachomim of this city, also which I am not. I am not an accredited professional. I am however, a father of an innocent child to whom these acts have been committed and, as such, I feel I may have a relevant contribution.

I have learned to see victims of abuse as people that have gone through an individual holocaust. Each victim having been through an event or chain of events that has forever changed not only the victim, but also reaches out to affect families, relatives, schools, communities ,and even into the next generation. The price we pay has nothing to do with the thousands of dollars spent in therapy for so many different issues both related to the assault(s) and their outgrowth (family disunity, Yidden off the derech, drug abuse, promiscuity, and poor school performance), but the toll it is taking on Klal Yisroel's future.

We must choose to understand the nature and scope of the dilemma and plan a clear path forward. As in all matters of Torah, the motivation must be the search for emes. Those who seek to accuse, blame, seek their pound of flesh, desire kavod or satisfy gaivah need not, no-must not be a part of the problem solving and the development of relevant answers for the needs of our community.

We must admit to ourselves what currently exists in our community in order to appropriately respond to those who perpetrate abuse and those who have suffered from it, as up until now the response has been inadequate and inappropriate.

I believe we must understand what the abuse is and is not. Sexual abuse is not an act of inappropriate or misplaced sexual desire. It is an act perpetrated by one in need to control and overpower another individual. Many times this is accomplished by manipulation and at other times by brute strength. Ultimately the result is the same. The victim is left feeling totally powerless in their world, afraid and intimidated by the prospect of a recurrence, guilt ridden, and feeling totally alone while being unable to share what has happened to them with those who care and love them.

It is a criminal act and not one between consenting individuals, even if somehow the perpetrator has manipulated the victim into thinking that the act was desired by the victim. It is the debasing of another human being to satisfy the lust for power and control ;it expresses itself as a sexual act. It robs innocence, it robs self esteem, it robs confidence, it robs one of closeness to G-d, it robs one of families, it robs ones ability to express love and intimacy in appropriate ways, it robs youth, it clouds judgment, it is spiritually, physically, and emotionally painful. It is extremely rare to find a perpetrator that acts only once. It is extremely rare to find a person who has been victimized who is not aware every day of their life of the continuing effects the abuse has had.

Who are the perpetrators? They are almost always males. When this is perpetrated by individuals outside of our community, we try to understand and make it understood that within the world at large, unfortunately, there are goyim such as these. It isn't easy, but the door is left open to understand the events within a Torah context, utilizing daas Torah to help us understand the machla and refuah. The most pressing issue we must cope with is what happens if the perpetrator is from within our own community? Brothers, fathers, cousins, uncles, friends, rabbeim, baalei battim, people we know and would otherwise respect, yeshiva trained or poshuta Yidden. Neighbors, business associates, baalei tsedakah, black hat or kipah srugah. They are here. They who have committed these atrocities are among us.

What are we to say to our beloved when the trust instilled in us of our own community is violated? So many have been robbed of the single most important asset we can use to interpret and understand and reach out to those in need of help.

Many of the accused seem to be protected, their crime hidden from public awareness. Some leave town, only to perpetrate again within another community. There is denial on the part of many that those accused are guilty. When the victim is a child or the accusation comes years after the crime, the testimony is often suspect. Often times, we can only reach the conclusion that there was a victim, something happened, but the details become an issue of debate due to an inability to substantiate the facts.

We must decide how to handle the confirmed perpetrator. It is important to remember that a crime has been committed by a person with a sickness. If I was prone to seizures and drove a car and damaged someone, G-d forbid, I would not expect my rov to get me out of the legal obligations I would have, nor would I expect him to remain quiet if I wanted to transport children in my car at a later time. It would be expected that I would notify people that I was unable to do certain things due to my condition and I would be expected not to put myself in another situation where the safety and well being of another person would be compromised. A person with a cancer can only hope that with G-ds help, he will live his 120 years in remission, but with the realization that once discovered, the disease is forever at risk of re-emerging.

We must come to terms with those who carry within themselves the depths of understanding and knowledge of Torah, yet, have turned their bodies from holy vessels to impure receptacles by an action(s) that seems to refute their outward appearance of being yiray Shomayim. Just as Moshe Rabeinu was not reprimanded for breaking the luchos instead of bringing them into the midst of the unfit Bnai Yisroel at the time of the golden calf, it is understandable to feel that the perpetrators are not worthy of the gifts of Torah they hold and the kavod due them as holy vessels. However, today we lack the Leviim ;those tzadikim who are so pure that they are worthy and able to rid us of the unholy and tainted.

Perpetrators must come clean. They must first admit to themselves, then to their victims and the community at large, what they have done. This is always the first step. It must be public because the victim must have the validation that they were victimized. They have been abused and too often feel responsible and ashamed. When the abuser confesses, enough of the victims self doubt can be removed to allow the door to recovery to begin. We can deal honestly with the abuser and not allow him to be in situations that may cause him to stumble. We can watch, counsel, teach, and guide a person who understands and accepts his failings. We can take this Yid's shortcoming and use them to enhance our community. How many times has the government taken ex-criminals and put them to work preventing the same criminal behavior in others? They speak, they teach, they make aware. They have insight we lack. This is how they can do tshuva. Of course they may NEVER be around children again!

Who are the victims? They are our children, siblings, parents, extended families, friends, neighbors, our kehilas, and our community. We all suffer. The energy expended in the fallout of the effects of abuse is without end. Victims often suffer in silence for years due to fear, shame, and/or guilt. They may repress their horror or be emotionally unable to confront their reality, doubting their own credibility. This is a personal holocaust. Who is going to believe such a thing could happen? How is anyone else going to understand the pain?

The victims often feel it is easier to live in pain than to be forthcoming and be written off as a crank, a liar, a crazy person. Their pain and suffering exhibits itself in ways seemingly unrelated to the abuse. Many become problems academically and behaviorally at school. Their interactions with loved ones may deteriorate. They may not trust. Not just strangers, but even those closest to them. They may carry and exhibit irrational anger. They feel betrayed by their loved ones and others who have the responsibility and obligation to protect them from harm. We often lose them as b'nai mitzvas. We often lose them as members of our families and communities. We lose them to drugs and promiscuity. We may even lose them to be perpetrators themselves, having learned from the criminal behavior of their abuser how, through a warped and sickened perspective, to gain some control into their own out of control lives. The cycle continues. We all suffer.

We must feel it is as much an obligation to educate, inform and warn our children parents, neighbors, and congregations of the threats to our physical and spiritual safety as it is for all other types of criminal activity, whether Torah based or secular statutes.

We understand from Shlomo Hamelech that there is nothing new under the sun. It is our obligation to delve into Torah and find ways to help. The answers are there. We must find the needed refuah for the victims, the perpetrators, and our community. We must not give up on nor lose those we love and those who need our love.

The Agudah's response to the allegations of sexual abuse in their summer camp is way too little and too late. Where were you for forty agonizing years? We, who believe in the Divine involvement in every single act that occurs on Earth and all the galaxies, have to believe that the fire that destroyed the main building at Camp Agudah, the exact day that the Agudah's pathetic counter to the New York Magazine article on sexual abuse among the Orthodox Jewish community was published, was Hashem saying to Klal Yisroel "enough is enough."

May we all be zoche to be closer to Hashem through our efforts.



Posted by The Un-Orthodox Jew - "UOJ" at Saturday, June 24, 2006

TEAM UOJ - AT WORK - MONDROWITZ PHOTOS!

I Urge all readers of the blog to take the time, immediately, and whenever possible, to contact Sol Werdiger and let him know the message we want him to convey to the Gerer Rebbe: that we are not going to tolerate any more coverups and whitewashings for Mondrowitz; that this man must face justice for abominable crimes; that anyone who aids or protects a criminal is morally as culpable as the criminal himself; and that we will be sure to expose anyone guilty of coverup just as we are succeeding in exposing the story of Mondrowitz. They might mention Pirkei Avoth, 4:5: "Whoever is mi'chalel Hashem in secret will be chastised publicly."

DO IT NOW. Time is of the essence. We may never have such a good chance to ensure that this worst of cases may finally see some justice.

Contact info for Sol Werdiger:

SWERDIGER@OUTERSTUFF.COM

Outer Stuff Ltd.
1370 Broadway 15th Fl
New York, NY 10018
Phone: 212-594-9700
Fax: 212-695-6396


I think this man should hear as much as possible from as many people as possible who are tired of the coverup of Mondrowitz.

Mondrowitz is being held until NOVEMBER 27 (which is his 60th birthday, by the way) when there will be another hearing to determine whether he is to remain incarcerated or released with an electronic tracking device. His lawyer, David Ofek, argued today that the court will have to determine whether he can be held because of the "statute of limitations."

We have to be disciplined and focused in our response. So, for right now... let's hit Werdiger. Hard, and repeatedly. I want him to be so stunned in the next few days he'll be asking the rebbe to do something, anything to get him out of trouble.

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TRANSLATION OF JUSTICE SHIMON FEINBERG’S DECISION


CASE No. 011944/07



HONORABLE JUSTICE SHIMON FEINBERG





THE STATE OF ISRAEL,

REPRESENTATIVE OF THE GOVERNMENT



VS.



AVROHOM MONDROWITZ,



RESPONDENT





APPEARING BEFORE THE COURT:



For the Plaintiff: Nili Gesser, Esq. and Marilyn Mazal-Hershkovitz Esq.



For the Defendant: David Ofek, Esq. and Tzivia Golovik Esq.





DECISION



1. In the matter of the request to extend the detention of the Respondents pursuant to Article 7 of the Extradition Law of 1954 (“Extradition Law”).



2. In 1985 the Respondent was issued an indictment in New York, United States on the charges of sodomy and other sexual assaults against five minors between the ages of nine through fifteen. The authorities of the United States issues an arrest warrant against him. However, before they were able to execute the warrant the Respondent fled to Israel. That year, the American authorities requested that the Israeli Government extradite the Respondent back to the United States. At that time the treaty between the two countries did not allow extradition for the crimes the Respondent was accused of. The State of Israel decided to remove him from the country. During that process, the Respondent appealed to the Israeli Supreme Justice Court and the State of Israel decided to abandon the proceedings of his removal. From that time on, the Respondent has been living with his family in Israel.



3. During the course of the past year the protocols of the extradition treaty were modified in a manner in which the crimes that the Respondent stands accused of by the courts of New York became extraditable crimes. In September 2007, the United States authorities requested the extradition of the Respondent from the State of Israel.



4. The Respondent was arrested on November 11, 2007 pursuant to Article 6 of the Extradition Treaty. The Requester now asks for an extension of the Respondent’s incarceration for an additional 12 days for the purpose of obtaining an updated extradition request to amend the request filed many years ago.



5. A hearing of the allegations was held before this Court on November 16, 2007. The Representative today introduced the following additional facts. In May of 2007, a search was conducted of the Respondent’s home where four films containing child pornography were discovered. The Requester also argued that the likelihood of the Respondents fleeing is high if he is not detained, because of his recent knowledge of the change in the Extradition Treaty which now allows his return to United States. The Requester further argues that the Respondent is a threat to the public as evidenced by the above material discovered in his home.



6. The Respondent argued that there are issues of statute of limitations and extensive period of time that has passed since the initial extradition request was made and denied. The Respondent requests that he be released in a manner which assures that the Respondent will reappear once the extradition proceedings commence, even suggesting that the Respondent be released to house arrest and monitored via an electronic monitoring bracelet.



7. The first question to consider is if the Respondent is a candidate for extradition based upon the revised extradition treaty? (See paragraph 6 of the extradition treaty.) We need to answer this request in a positive manner. The treaty between the two countries today states that these offenses are extraditable crimes. The Requester holds affidavits given on behalf of the victims/complainers against the Respondent about the crimes that the Respondent committed. All this evidence is the basis for the indictment against the Respondent, by the Unites States government.



8. Regarding the Respondents claim as to the statute of limitations and the large amount of time that has elapsed, Paragraph 2B (a) 6 of the extradition law, the upholding of the law is conditioned upon the time of the crime or its punishment not exceeding the statute of limitations according to Israeli law. According to paragraph 9 (a) 2 of the Israeli criminal code of 1982, a person cannot be prosecuted for a crime (except in death penalty or life in prison cases) if a period of ten years has past since the day the crime was committed. According to paragraph 9 (3) the statute of limitations commences either from the time of the last day of the investigation, or the day of the indictment or the last day of the proceeding in a court of law, whichever comes last. In our case, all of the proceedings as stated in paragraph 9 (3) above, occurred over ten years ago. The Representative of the government expressed that the statute of limitations might be an issue, however the courts in previous verdicts have recognized other cases where the statute of limitations was frozen where the accused has escaped before prosecution. Based upon paragraph 94-1 (3) of the criminal code, we can come to reject the claim against the statute of limitations.

(See criminal appeal 739-07 (supreme) Yonatan Efrat vs. Attorney General)

I have reviewed this case and concluded that there is a solid basis for the Requesters request regarding the statute of limitations; however this issue has some effect on my decision as to keeping the Respondent incarcerated as I will explain.



9. Another question that paragraph 6 of the extradition law raises is if there is a probable cause that an extradition request shall be filed? To that we answer in the affirmative, and the United States government has declared specifically that it will do so.



10. According to the previous decisions, in a hearing where the subject is in accordance with paragraph 7 to the extradition law, the court shall consider the regular arguments for keeping a person in custody, among them being the safety of the public, the concern of interfering with the investigation and primarily the fear of the accused fleeing, which is a permanent concern in a case of an extradition proceeding. In addition, the court shall consider the commitment that Israel has towards the requesting country – a commitment that is established in an international treaty that is the basis of the extradition law- to extradite the suspect and allow his extradition to the requesting country. This last consideration is a crucial one in a sense that at times it is justified to keep a person in custody even though general custody considerations state that he is to be released, because of the extra dimension that is as a result of Israel’s duty towards the requesting country. [Hon. Justice D. Banish (aka) see case #4422/03 Yitzchak Cohen vs. Attorney General.] These considerations are brought into account also during a proceeding of a requesting of incarceration prior to declaring a person extraditable [See case Jerusalem 11287/04 attorney General vs. Zev Rosenshtien.]



11. In our case, consideration for continued incarceration evolved from danger to the public and fear of the accused fleeing from justice. As to the consideration of danger to the public, findings of the investigation against the Respondent by the Israeli Police Department create a probable cause that the accused is still an active or potential pedophile. The fact that against the accused no criminal offenses have been brought does not negate the known danger of these offenses, especially in the ultra orthodox sector that the accused belongs to, because the victims and their families very often do not complain to the police because of the will of that sector to attempt to solve those problems internally without police involvement, to avoid humiliation to the family. I am not establishing that the accused has commenced any crimes in Israel, but I am not ruling that out either. The fear of fleeing from justice evolves from the revised treaty that allows the extradition of the accused to the United States, a situation that did not exist during the entire period of the accused’s stay in Israel. Additionally, one must bring into account the commitment of the State of Israel towards the requesting country that was established in an international treaty that is the basis of extradition law.



12. All of the above leads me to the conclusion to grant the Representatives request and to hereby order the continued incarceration of the accused. Nevertheless, due to the legality of the statute of limitation as I stated above, there is no room to rule out a potential alternative to incarceration as suggestion by the accused council.



13. Therefore, I hereby extend the incarceration of the accused as requested until November 27, 2007 at 12:00 PM. I am ordering a recommendation report of the Probational Service Office for consideration of a substitute for incarceration including house arrest with an electronic monitoring device. The report shall additionally consider the danger that the accused possesses. The report shall be submitted before the end of the term of incarceration. The report may be used by this court if an additional request for incarceration is filed according to paragraph 7A of the extradition law or if there is a request to declare the accused as extraditable.

14. The secretarial office shall send a copy of this decision to the probation service office.



Given today November 18, 2007 in the presence of all parties.



Shimon Feinberg, Judge

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Opinion Polls & Market Research

I came across this a while ago and finally found it again. This applies to all of us. May we all be blessed for it with continued success health and happiness. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world.Indeed it's the only thing that ever has.
Mark Weiss - Survivor - Activist




Ex-Brooklyn rabbi Avrohom Mondrowitz faces extradition to U.S. on kid-sex rap!

BY MATTHEW KALMAN
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS

Monday, November 19th 2007, 4:00 AM

Avrohom Mondrowitz (this summer - left ---- In court - right )

JERUSALEM - A Jerusalem magistrate Sunday ordered a former Brooklyn rabbi accused of raping several boys 20 years ago to jail while American and Israeli officials finalize a U.S. request for his extradition.

Avrohom Mondrowitz, a father of seven, faces extradition to stand trial in New York to answer a 1985 indictment on four counts of sodomy and eight counts of sexual abuse in the first degree.

Mondrowitz, 60, once a popular child psychologist and youth counselor in Borough Park, allegedly sodomized the boys after befriending them or after taking them on trips to the movies and amusement parks.

The U.S. extradition request, resubmitted in September after a change in the treaty between the U.S. and Israel, was delayed after one of the five complainants withdrew from the case.

The U.S. Justice Department is expected to file an amended request this week.

Mondrowitz was arrested early Friday morning at his Jerusalem home and arraigned the same day.

Judge Shimon Feinberg, vice president of the Jerusalem Magistrates' Court, found that Mondrowitz was a possible candidate for extradition and rejected defense arguments that the statute of limitations applied to the offenses, even though they were allegedly committed more than 20 years ago.

Feinberg granted a prosecution request to extend Mondrowitz's imprisonment until Nov. 27 after the prosecution told the court that an Israeli police raid on Mondrowitz's home in May had netted four pedophile movies.

Mondrowitz is due to appear in court again Nov. 27, when Feinberg will decide whether to extend his jailing until the end of the extradition proceedings, which could take several months.

Mondrowitz's wife, Raizel, declared his innocence.

"People can come up 25 years later and say all kinds of things about anybody. No one's had any complaints about him for the last 25 years. This is all old stuff," she said.

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Rabbi Yosef Blau Comments!

The debate about whether the Haredi or modern Orthodox leadership has been more negligent in dealing with sexual abuse and which abuser is worse is at best a side show. Thr Mondrowitz case has raised serious questions about how the Orthodox rabbinate responded to the many accusations that emerged twenty plus years ago in Brooklyn.

Since almost no one has denied his guilt, minimally a public statement should be made expressing sympathy for his apparently many victims (my sources say that he sexually abused essentially all the boys that were sent to him)and support for his being extradited. It is also neccesary that there be a thorough investigation of the reports that various rabbis discouraged Jewish children from cooperating with the police and were complicit in his fleeing to Israel after being indicted. If these allegations are false then no one should be afraid of the facts being uncovered.
Yosef Blau

Steve....Kicks Shafran Where It Should Hurt If He Had Any.....

That is part of why the Torah-observant population is greatly underrepresented in the realms of societal ills like rape, AIDS, prostitution and marital infidelity that affect their less repressed neighbors.

WOW!! Don't we all feel so much better now!! Thank you Avi! UOJ, there is no need for this blog anymore. Tell Elliot Pasik that there is no need for all the fuss about background checks, fingerprinting, registry and mandatory reporting. After all, we are "underrepresented" when it comes to such things as child molestation! Tell all the victims of clergy sexual abuse that they really don't matter, you are "underrepresented".

How this moron continues to write such gibberish and gets away with it is beyond me. It's been a year and a half since that article he's referring to, and forty years since Kolko started his molestation career. Do we have anything in place from the Agudah or Torah Umesorah that will give our children one iota of protection? Why is it that public school children have this protection and our children have nothing? Will Avi L. Shafran or the Agudah ever address these questions head on, or will we continue to hear how wonderful the Orthodox world is, and that we are "underrepresented"? It's like the false prophets before the first Temple destruction, telling the people how wonderful they are.

Until there is a tremendous outcry from the community and a demand for change, we will continue hearing from these false prophets. If you care about your children and grandchildren, start putting pressure on the Agudah, Torah Umesorah and your local politicians. Mandatory background checks, fingerprinting, sex offender registry and mandatory reporting MUST BE ENACTED IN THE YESHIVA SYSTEM AT ONCE!!! I am sorry to say that we are underrepresented when it comes to people crying out for the children. Avi, you are wrong, we have more than our fill of perverts!!




Opinion - In child pornography, fight harder By Ernie Allen

Mon Nov 26, 3:00 AM ET

Alexandria, Va. - Millions of children around the world are being sexually abused and molested. Billions of dollars are changing hands as part of a growing crime wave of child pornography. This is anything but a victimless crime. Children – some as young as infants – are being barbarically assaulted for the sexual gratification of their abusers and those who view their photos.

While inroads have been made in the fight against child pornography, the problem remains severe. We have much more to do.

The Internet has become a child pornography superhighway, turning children into a commodity for sale or trade. Analysts at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) have reviewed 9.6 million images and videos of child pornography on the Internet just since 2002. There are millions more such images in cyberspace that we have yet to find.

Law enforcement agencies are cracking down on this crime wave. In November, the chief operating officer of the National Children's Museum in Washington was arrested and charged with distributing child pornography over the Internet. Also this month, police across Europe announced they had arrested nearly 100 people linked to a network that allegedly produced and sold child pornography videos to 2,500 customers worldwide.

In 1998 Congress asked NCMEC to create a "9-1-1 for the Internet." We established CyberTipline (www.cybertipline.com), which has received more than 500,000 reports from the public and Internet service providers regarding child sexual exploitation. More than 460,000 of those reports involved child pornography.

What is child pornography? It goes far beyond nude pictures of children. It is the visual depiction – whether in still photos or video – of children being sexually assaulted. In some instances, rapes of children have been shown live over the Internet to paying customers. In 1982, the US Supreme Court held that child pornography is not protected speech but child abuse.

Some suggest that many people who view child pornography just "look at the pictures." But our work on these cases has led us to conclude that for most of those who view these images, sex with children becomes a compulsion and evolves into physical acts with real children.

When NCMEC analysts scour the Internet for child pornography, they determine whether website content is illegal, use search tools and techniques to identify and track down the distributors of child pornography, and then provide the information to the appropriate local, state, federal, or international law enforcement agency.

Law enforcement agencies and NCMEC have managed to identify almost 1,200 of the many children who appear in child pornography. We have found that 35 percent of the photos were taken by a parent, 15 percent by another family member, and 20 percent by someone close to the child or the family. We have provided more than 12,000 evidence reports to prosecutors and law enforcement officers to assist in prosecutions of those accused of these crimes.

Sadly, NCMEC has found that the children being used in these images are getting younger and younger, and the images are becoming more graphic and more violent. Of the children in pornographic photos and videos who have been identified, 58 percent had not yet reached puberty.

To stop the use of credit cards that fuel the child pornography industry, NCMEC created the Financial Coalition Against Child Pornography. Today this coalition includes 90 percent of the US payments industry, with growing international involvement. The 30 companies in the coalition include MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Bank of America, Citigroup, Microsoft, America Online, Yahoo, Google, and many others.

Thanks to the participating companies and extraordinary leadership from federal, state, and local law enforcement, we have virtually eliminated the use of credit cards in child pornography transactions. Although credit card logos still appear on some sites, now when consumers attempt to use credit cards, they either become victims of identity theft or are redirected to another method of payment.

In too many places around the world, the possession of child pornography is handled as a relatively minor offense. In fact, in 136 countries it is not even a crime.

Children depend on adults to keep them safe. We need to do more to protect them from dangerous, cold-hearted predators who want to harm them for pleasure and profit. We need to recognize child pornography as a crime against humanity that must be attacked more forcefully and that deserves harsh punishment.

Ernie Allen is president and CEO of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, a nonprofit charitable organization based in Alexandria, Va.

In The Basement, Behind A Closed Door - The Ger Hassid Avrohom Mondrowitz - The Pedophile From Brooklyn!

NEWER POSTINGS WILL BE AT THE END OF THIS ONE!******************************************
AVROHOM MONDROWITZ - ARRESTED!!!!!!
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Last update - 14:43 16/11/2007

Israel Police arrest alleged child molester wanted in the U.S.

By Aviva Lori, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service

tags: pedophilia, Israel, Gur Hasid

Avrohom Mondrowitz, a Gur Hasid suspected of sexually abusing Haredi children in the United States, was arrested Friday morning pending extradition orders to the U.S.

Mondrowitz fled the U.S. over 20 years and has been hiding in Israel ever since. The U.S. Justice Department two months ago submitted a request to Israel to extradite the suspect.

The spokesman of the Justice Ministry confirmed the arrest.

Mondrowitz, a member of the Gur Hasidic sect who styles himself a rabbi and a psychologist, was a highly influential figure in the Gur community of Brooklyn in the early 1980s.

Police suspect Mondrowitz sexually abused children brought to him as patients, including with acts of sodomy. In many cases, the parents were waiting in the next room for the treatment to end, so they could take the children home. Those are the facts as collected by the Brooklyn police and told by the children.

An arrest warrant was issued for Mondrowitz in 1984, but when police arrived at his Brooklyn home to arrest him, they found it empty. An indictment was drawn in 1985, but Mondrowitz was able to evade arrest due to the complications of extradition.
**********************************************

For the full feature on Avrohom Mondrowitz, read this weekend's Haaretz's Magazine: In the basement, behind a closed door

In the basement, behind a closed door

By Aviva Lori

tags: Judaism, Israel

A few years ago, A. came to Israel with one mission: "To find him and kill him." He didn't think twice, he says; he really intended to do it. "My wife understood. She knew what I felt and she called friends in Israel, who never left me alone for a minute. They saved me from myself. If not for them, it would have ended in murder for sure."

A. is not the only one to have harbored thoughts of cold-blooded murder for more than 20 years. There are several hundred others, he says: men now in their thirties and forties who two or three decades earlier were students at yeshivas in Brooklyn. They say they were victims of Avrohom Mondrowitz, who lives in Jerusalem's colorful Nahlaot neighborhood.

Mondrowitz, a member of the Gur Hasidic sect who styles himself a rabbi and a psychologist, was a highly influential figure in the Gur community of Brooklyn in the early 1980s. He had a yeshiva and a private clinic in which he treated mostly children in distress. But the Brooklyn police suspect that instead of educating and helping, he sexually abused his pupils, his patients, children in the neighborhood and friends of his own children. The venues were varied: his office, his home, the yeshiva, his car, the family's summer cottage in the Catskills, amusement parks and public parks. In short, everywhere. Day and night. The respected rabbis of the community modestly averted their gaze. They knew, they saw, they were silent.

A., now about 40, was born and raised in an Orthodox family in Brooklyn. At the age of seven he was sexually assaulted in the street by an unknown assailant. "That already marked me," he relates, "and it was like a prelude to what came after." What came after was fomented by two respected figures. The first was a revered teacher in Brooklyn. The second respected figure was Mondrowitz. He kept the horror to himself and turned inward. "I became a troublemaker," he says. "I was thrown out of one yeshiva and then out of another. I became a nomad. I lost my self-esteem and didn't care about anything. The hardest part was when I told the rabbis in the yeshiva what the teacher did to me. They just ignored me and did nothing."

When A. was 15, the rabbis persuaded his parents, who did not know how to deal with their wayward son, to send him to the man who presented himself as a psychologist, a certain Avrohom Mondrowitz, who lived on 60th Street in Brooklyn's Borough Park section. "I was forced to see him three or four times a week, because I was a very special case," A. says. "From the very first, something about him bothered me. I didn't like the way he looked at me. After the first time, I came home and told my mother than I didn't want to go to him anymore, but he came to our place and spoke to my parents, and they persuaded me to go back."

A. went to Mondrowitz for two months. But the treatment immediately assumed a peculiar form. "It didn't take more than two visits, and he stopped taking an interest in my problems and started to mess with me."

A. recalls that at first he was very moved and opened up to Mondrowitz, telling him what the teacher had done to him, but instead of being supportive, Mondrowitz began to touch him. "I was in a state of shock. I didn't know what to do. The place you are meant to trust and where you go for help, attacks you. I froze and bottled up completely. I was drained of feelings. I called him 'Herr Doktor,' like Mengele, who also did experiments on Jewish children."

Did you understand what was going on?

"I understood immediately. It was like a game. It's hard to explain - only someone who has gone through an experience like that can understand. The assailant knows that you are easy prey, that he can play with your feelings because you are at your weakest point. He will not mess with the tough kids, only with the weak and the miserable. And that's how it went on, every time I went to him. He didn't even try to pretend that he was treating me. He got down to business right away. He took me to movies, for walks, and he kept touching me all the time."

Why didn't you run away?

"I have asked myself that question hundreds of times. I feel suffocated when I think about it. It drives me crazy. I didn't run because I thought there was something wrong with me. That I was a whore. I believed that that was my fate. That that is what I deserved - the fact is that it happened more than once. Deep inside I knew it was wrong, but I couldn't control it. I tried to fight with my parents, told them I didn't want to go to him, but they made me, so the yeshiva would agree to take me back - that was the rabbis' condition, for him to say I was cured. And in fact, two months later the yeshiva took me back and I stopped going to him. I told my parents I wasn't going there anymore and that was the end of it."

But two weeks later, he was expelled from the yeshiva again. That summer his parents sent him to a camp, but there he got into trouble again. Desperate, his parents called Mondrowitz and asked him to help. "I was an angry, rebellious adolescent," A. says. "I was angry at the religion, at the system, at the establishment and at everyone who represented the establishment. I hated the whole world and I fought everyone. Mondrowitz came to the camp, and when I saw him from a distance, I ran. My father didn't understand what was going on. 'He just wants to help you,' he said, and I remember telling him, 'He is a faggot, get him away from me.'"

In his senior year, A. fell apart completely. He did not attend school and lived in the streets. Most of the time, he saw the world through a haze of alcohol and drugs. His parents could not communicate with him. And then he was thrown a lifebelt: "Someone took me in, looked after me and saved my life. I told him everything, and he believed me. He asked what he could do to lessen my pain. I told him, 'That won't happen until I drive the last nail into the coffin of all the people who hurt me. I want justice to be done.'"

A. says he had clear, graphic, highly detailed dreams about killing them. The dreams recurred every night and turned into an obsession. "They absolutely took my life from me."

You wanted revenge?

"It's not a matter of revenge. Those people are sick, and there is only one way to deal with them - to eradicate them, like stray dogs. Otherwise they will go on doing what they did. They took from me something that will never be returned, and I can never forget, and maybe should not forget. People like me have to spread the word that these monsters are still walking the streets. I have been given the task of warning people about them."

With the help of the young man who befriended him, A. went to the police and filed a complaint against Mondrowitz. "I didn't know then that there were also other children he had hurt. I thought it was just me. Today I know at least 20 people who were his victims, but I know there were hundreds."

It was only then that A. told his parents about what Mondrowitz had done to him. "They felt terribly sorry and guilty for having sent me to him. But a few days later I learned that he had fled to Israel and was living the comfortable life of a respected Jew in Jerusalem." A. is now married and has children of his own. He leads a religious life, though when he was in the lower depths, wandering the streets, he removed his yarmulke and spurned religion. Even though his wife and children know about the sexual abuse he endured, he insists on remaining anonymous. He still has doubts, he says: he feels afraid and threatened by the religious society in which he grew up and was educated. He is not the only one who feels persecuted. Most of Mondrowitz's alleged victims live a secret life, fearing exposure.

A community psychologist

Avrohom Mondrowitz, 60, was probably born in Poland and settled in Israel with his family after World War II. He grew up in Tel Aviv, but in the 1950s the family immigrated to Chicago. He attended the Telshe Yeshiva, in Wickliffe, Ohio, run by the Lithuanian branch of Orthodox Jewry. In the 1970s, he came to Brooklyn, saying he held a master's degree in the sciences, a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Columbia, and another Ph.D. in educational administration from the University of Florida, in addition to being an ordained rabbi. The Jews of Brooklyn were impressed, and Mondrowitz began to acquire social status. He wrote articles on education for the Haredi press, had a radio program on which he gave listeners advice on how to treat children, established a yeshiva for children in distress and was active in Ohel, a large New York organization for orphans and children from broken homes. Finally, he hung a "psychologist" sign on his door and started to receive patients.

"He made a name for himself and was very respected in the community," says a Brooklyn Hasid. "Children were referred to him, hard cases from Ohel, and he treated them. Rabbis also referred children to him for treatment. His expertise was treating children who had been sexually molested."

Children who visited his office, which was located in the basement of his home, remember him boasting about the "bragging wall," on which hung his diplomas and certificates, all finely framed, which attested to his qualifications as a therapist. But according to Patricia Kehoe, a retired New York Police Department detective, "his diplomas turned out to be fakes, including his rabbinical ordination."

The police suspect that in that office, behind a closed door and drawn curtains, he sexually abused children, including with acts of sodomy. In many cases, the parents were waiting in the next room for the treatment to end, so they could take the children home. Those are the facts as collected by the Brooklyn police and told by the children.

I understood what happened

Mark Weiss, 40, from Chicago, grew up in a strictly Orthodox family, but in adolescence began to feel constricted by the rigid religious lifestyle. When he was 12, the family spent a sabbatical in Israel, and at 13 he was sent to a less strict yeshiva in San Francisco. He did not do well in his studies and felt out of place. A year later, the yeshiva informed him that he would not be able to continue his studies there, and his worried parents sent him to New York for instant counseling by a renowned psychologist.

"I was 14, and my parents sent me by plane," he said in a telephone interview. "They knew Mondrowitz's parents from Chicago - sometimes I went with my father to his father's synagogue. Mondrowitz himself attended the yeshiva in which his father was a rabbi. He was well-known. I was sent to him for a week, a week and a half, to get my head straight."

Mondrowitz went out of his way to make Weiss' stay a pleasant one. He picked him up at the airport, took him out to eat, then to an amusement park and finally to his place on 60th Street. "His family was away in a cottage in the Catskills and I slept with him in the house. At first it was terrific fun. He took me to all kinds of places and I took in every new thing: it was a perfect trap. At night he asked me where I wanted to sleep, in his son's bed or with him. I remember that he created this queasy atmosphere about his son's bedroom, so I said I wanted to sleep with him. During the night he suddenly touched me. From start to finish, including sodomy. I was naive, I didn't understand what was happening, I thought it was part of his niceness, that this is how he wanted to make me feel good."

What happened in the counseling sessions?

"Almost nothing. It was all one big fraud. In the morning, he was downstairs in the basement, receiving patients, and when he didn't have patients he went with me to all kinds of places, and at night he would come on to me, and on the weekend we drove up to the family's cottage."

When he was 16, Weiss was sent to a boarding school in Kiryat Tivon, near Haifa, where he spent two years, before returning to Chicago. He repressed the Mondrowitz experience successfully. He told no one, and it was as though it had never happened. But one day, during the Sukkot festival, he saw Mondrowitz in the synagogue. He was about to go over to him, when he suddenly understood what had happened to him a few years earlier.

"I froze, turned around and ran home," he relates. "On the way I started to cry, and my mother asked me what was wrong. I told her, but she found it hard to accept. Then my father came home and my mother told him, and he couldn't believe it, either. He tried to find out if maybe I was mistaken. Afterward I went to a friend and told him, but he couldn't believe it, and then I started to ask myself if maybe I was wrong. But a week later I got a call from a rabbi who asked me to see him at his home. I entered his office and he asked me, 'Would you send your children to Mondrowitz?' It was like a bomb went off in my head. I was in a state of shock. It took me a few minutes to reply, 'No, I wouldn't.' He asked why, and I told him, but again, nothing happened."

Weiss, who is married and has three children, lives in New Jersey, where he installs home movie systems. In 2001 he saw an ad in a religious paper about a conference of rabbis in New York on the subject of sexual molestation. "I went there," he says, "but it was disgraceful. I realized within a few minutes that they had no idea about what really goes on. They think that with them it's not like with the goyim or secular people, and they think they know how to help children. The truth is that they don't have a clue, because they sweep everything under the rug. It's all because of the matchmaking, because if it ever gets out what these people went through, no one wants them."

Are you angry at the rabbis?

"They silenced a whole generation. When one of them destroys other people, they do nothing. These are far more important matters than the shmita year [the land lying fallow every seven years] or worms in lettuce."

A public beating

G., 44, from New York, married with children, a rabbi's son, knew Mondrowitz as the head of a yeshiva he attended for five years, from the age of 11. "He molested me for many years," G. says. "He collected vulnerable children from broken homes who didn't get along with their parents, and abused them. He took me to the mountains, where he had a cottage. He would bring rifles and play with us, we would have contests shooting air guns, and he would win so that he could later do what he wanted with us as his prize. There was a dirty film playing in Manhattan at the time, called 'Caligula,' and he took me to see it. I was 14, and during the movie he pawed me."

Did you know that was bad?

"I'm not sure I knew. He was an adult, the head of a yeshiva. He gave me a lot of money and bought me things. After I understood, I came to the school one day and went up to each kid and told them to keep their distance from him. Then he entered the classroom and in front of everyone he pounded me really hard with both hands, on my face and back. That was already the end of high school; I was 18 at the time. And the whole time he kept telling me that I was weird and would never marry."

Did you tell your parents?

"Never. I was afraid he would beat me."

How do you live with a story like this?

"It's very hard. I now have terrible guilt feelings that maybe I did something bad and deserved everything that happened to me. I get very aggressive toward people when they seem to be approaching my children. I overprotect them and I have become very suspicious. All these years I repressed everything, and only recently did I begin professional therapy."

245 years in prison

At the beginning of the 1980s, when Mondrowitz was at the height of his glory, married and the father of seven children, rumors started to spread in the Orthodox community about the type of treatment he was giving, and his yeshiva closed down. On November 21, 1984, Detective Patricia Kehoe received an anonymous phone call about Mondrowitz's many victims.

"I will never forget it, because it was my birthday," Kehoe says in a phone conversation. "I was working in the sex crimes unit. It was a horrific conversation, but even more horrific were the stories of the victims we found that night. My partner and I went there immediately, and on his block we met children, but not Jews. His street was mixed - Jews and Italians lived there. It turned out that he was the friend of all of them, and all the parents thought he was this great guy. They told us that he took the children for weekends and bought them bikes. That shook me, and I asked the parents to let me talk with the children alone.

"The first boy I talked to broke down and said straight off what happened, and so did all the other children on the block. That night we found five victims. From them we received the names of other children and went on investigating. Then we received another anonymous call from someone who said he was a rabbi, and he told me about Jewish children he had molested. I went to the yeshiva to question more children, but they wouldn't let me in."

Kehoe's investigation eventually yielded four complaints by children of Italian origin aged 11 to 16, which led to an indictment of 13 counts: five counts of sodomy in the first degree and eight of sexual abuse in the first degree. The maximum punishment for these offenses in New York State is 25 years for each count of sodomy and 15 years for each count of sexual abuse, a total of 245 years. Two weeks later, the District Attorney's office issued a warrant for his arrest. When Kehoe and her partner, Detective Sal Catalfulmo, arrived at Mondrowitz's home with the warrant, they found it empty.

"We got the warrant from the judge in the middle of the night, but when we got there he was already gone," Kehoe says. "In his study we found lists with the names of hundreds of children and a great deal of pedophilic material. It then turned out that his wife and children hid with relatives and he went to his parents in Chicago, from there apparently to Canada and then to Israel. If you ask me, the whole thing worked too slowly. The DA's office delayed and he was able to escape."

Was there nothing you could do to speed up the process?

"I was only a policewoman, not a politician like the DA. If it had been up to me, I would have issued an arrest warrant immediately after the children complained. I am very happy that these people have now decided to talk, because at the time, when we tried to reach them to question them, we did not get cooperation, but now, when they are parents themselves, they understand how important it is. That man should have been in prison for the past 23 years. It's very frustrating, especially after I heard all the stories about him from the children."

Kehoe learned that Mondrowitz continued to teach and was around children in Israel. "That is awful. Everyone has to be warned about him. I only hope that God will give me a point in my favor after all the efforts I made, even though, at the end of the day, I didn't succeed."

Fake degrees

Avrohom Mondrowitz doesn't leave his home much these days. The last place that employed him, the Jerusalem College of Engineering, has dispensed with his services. "He taught here until the end of last year," says the college spokesman, Daniel Berman.

Why is he no longer working there?

"Because of what you know. What you heard, we also heard."

Searching for a job, Mondrowitz offered himself to the Herzliya Municipality as director of the education, welfare, culture, youth and sports department. When that didn't pan out, he tried for a less prestigious position, as director of a home for the aged, also in Herzliya. He claimed to have considerable experience in treating the elderly.

Mondrowitz's CV is flexible, changing with the circumstances. With every job application he attaches a CV to fit the requirements, or as he himself put it on one occasion, he possesses "a rare talent for flexibility and adaptation."

So rapid is his adaptability that it's hard to follow. According to one resume, he obtained a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Columbia University in 1977, but elsewhere he wrote that in that year he completed a master's degree in educational administration at Long Island University and proceeded immediately to an MBA at Harvard. According to this version, he did not obtain his Ph.D. in psychology until 1984, though still at Columbia. But in yet another place he states that the 1984 degree is in developmental, not clinical, psychology, and is from Columbia University in Florida. And that is not the end. According to another CV, his doctoral degree in clinical psychology is actually from Heed University in Florida.

As far as the Israel Police know, Mondrowitz is currently devoting most of his energy, in the many leisure hours at his disposal, to the Internet. There he gratifies his deviant inclinations by watching clips of sadistic activity and pedophilic material. In his remaining time he makes a living by issuing bogus academic degrees to all comers, particularly to students from the Third World. He has emblems and logos from various universities, as well as seals, examples of signatures and registration forms. He refers most of the students to Thornhill University, in London, which grants degrees by correspondence and has a branch in Brooklyn. The letters that are sent out are signed by a Dr. George Coleman, who probably does not exist. A student who sought a Ph.D. in nuclear physics received a reply from Dr. Coleman to the effect that he was overdoing it, and that on the basis of his academic achievements the most that could be done for him was a degree in a less prestigious field such as education or psychology. In return for issuing a doctoral degree in theology and evangelism, for example, Dr. Coleman gets $2,000.

The Israel Police are taking an interest in Mondrowitz's various Internet occupations, and a month ago, on October 18, he was called in for questioning and released under restrictive conditions, says attorney Adian Daniels, from the law firm of Yigal Arnon, who is in contact with the police. "I am doing this pro bono, because I believe it is in the public interest," he says.

Avi Aviv, head of the computer crimes unit in the Israel Police, confirmed that Mondrowitz had been questioned, but declined to provide further details.

Extraditable

The indictment against Mondrowitz was drawn up in February 1985, and a court order was sent to his empty home in Brooklyn. However, it was not until September of that year that the Brooklyn District Attorney, Elizabeth Holtzman, sought his extradition from Israel. But that was impossible at the time. To begin with, it was not until 1988 that sodomy was recognized in Israel as full-fledged rape, including the sodomizing of males. In addition, at that time the extradition treaty with the United States included rape of a woman, but not sodomy against the will of a male.

"We were ready then to stretch a point and construe sodomy as an extraditable offense, on condition the Americans would also change it in their treaty, but they declined, so we decided not to extradite Mondrowitz," says attorney Irit Kahan, who headed the Justice Ministry's international department. "Recently the extradition treaty with the United States was changed, and now extradition is possible for any offense for which the punishment is more than one year in prison."

Despite this development, the Americans still did not rush to request Mondrowitz's extradition. The victims accuse the present Brooklyn DA, Charles Hynes. In the opinion of attorney Michael Lesher, who represents six of Mondrowitz's alleged victims, "This is an elected position. The Haredi community in Brooklyn has a great deal of electoral clout. Hynes was elected in 1989 with the support of the Orthodox, and no one wants to commit suicide because of some criminal who is sitting quietly in Israel."

In the past year, the community in Brooklyn has begun to seethe. The children of that period, those who see themselves as Mondrowitz's victims, organized and, through Lesher, put pressure on the DA's office to issue a new request for Mondrowitz's extradition. They all declared that if it proves necessary, they will testify in court. As a result, in February of this year the Brooklyn DA's office transferred all the material to the U.S. Justice Department.

"On September 6, the Justice Department issued an official extradition request to the State of Israel," a spokeswoman for the Justice Department said in response. "The statute of limitations does not apply here," Lesher says. "In the case of sodomy, you only have to be charged within five years of the perpetration of the offense, and he was charged but was not brought to court because he fled. There is also a time limitation from the time you are indicted until you are tried, but if the accused leaves his area of jurisdiction, that regulation is suspended. So there is no problem in extraditing Mondrowitz and bringing him to trial."

What stage have the extradition proceedings reached? The Justice Ministry says that the State Prosecutor's Office does not comment on extradition requests, "whether they have been filed or not."

Like poison

Dr. Amy Neustein, a sociologist from Brooklyn, has devoted the past 25 years to getting Mondrowitz arrested. She and other Orthodox Jews established a group with the goal of locating Mondrowitz and bringing him to justice. She also set up a research center in New York called Help Us Regain the Children (HURT), within the framework of which she is investigating the phenomenon of pedophilia within the closed Jewish society. The author of two books, she works with victims of sexual assault to help them cope.

"My aspiration to see justice done and get Mondrowitz tried became an obsession, because of all the molesters, he is the worst, according to the charges. He abused children in the light of day, perpetrated these crimes in front of his colleagues. I was told this by people who witnessed it in the yeshiva he worked in. Everyone knew, and they all covered up for him. As a sociologist I ask, if this is what happens when everything is in the open, what happens when things are less open?

It is perfectly clear that Mondrowitz is not alone. He is a microcosm of the Orthodox society, in which pedophilia is rampant, in which the use of pornography is thriving and known to everyone - but it is all hidden under the rug. In the 1980s, everyone was afraid that if he started to talk he would take down others with him."

Neustein and others in Brooklyn tell about three cases of young people committing suicide and one case, last year, of suicide by an adult. "All three went to Mondrowitz for treatment and afterward became deeply depressed, and the families believe that this was the reason for the suicides."

A. says that he can fully understand a boy who would want to commit suicide after undergoing abuse by Mondrowitz. "It is very hard to live with so much pain and guilt. I also have no doubt that some of these victims will do the same things to others. I am certain that it works like poison that was injected into you as a child and then you pass it on."

Mark Weiss has never considered suicide, but he too can understand those who contemplate the act. "I am still alive, and that is not to be taken for granted. There are some who killed themselves, and others who are wandering around like crazy people."

Reached by telephone, Avrohom Mondrowitz refused to comment. He hung up even before he heard the allegations against him.**************


Twenty Two Years Later, a Child Abuse Suspect’s Extradition Is Sought!

By TINA KELLEY- The New York Times

Published: November 16, 2007

Prosecutors in Brooklyn said yesterday they were pursuing the extradition of a man who fled to Israel more than 20 years ago after being accused of molesting young boys.

The man, Avrohom Mondrowitz, 59, was indicted in 1985 on eight counts of child abuse and five counts of sodomy involving four boys ages 9 to 15. He left for Israel before he could be arrested.

Michael Lesher, a lawyer for six other men who said they had been molested by Mr. Mondrowitz, said that Mr. Mondrowitz was believed to have sexually assaulted boys while posing as an educator or psychological counselor in Borough Park, Brooklyn.

Jerry Schmetterer, a spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, said that Mr. Hynes’s office had asked the State Department to extradite Mr. Mondrowitz.

Mr. Hynes’s predecessor, Elizabeth Holtzman, requested Mr. Mondrowitz’s extradition in 1985, but at the time the offenses did not qualify as grounds for extradition under Israeli law, according to a memo written by federal officials and obtained by Mr. Lesher. Mr. Schmetterer said that in January a new extradition treaty went into effect that allowed the request.

A State Department spokeswoman referred questions about the status of the request to the Justice Department. A spokeswoman there, Jaclyn Lesch, said the department did not comment on extradition matters.

Messages left for Mr. Mondrowitz on his cellphone and at his home in Israel were not immediately returned.

Amy Neustein, an author who is editing a book on rabbis and pedophilia, who has researched Mr. Mondrowitz’s case, said that Mr. Mondrowitz claimed to have a degree in psychology from a New York university but that the university stated in writing that he had never been a student there. She said that he also posed as a rabbi, but that his credentials were from a nonexistent rabbinical school.

Mr. Lesher said that the case was particularly troubling because Mr. Mondrowitz belonged to an ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect whose members were reluctant to report his offenses to secular authorities.

Rabbi Mark Dratch, who operates the Jewish Institute Supporting an Abuse-Free Environment, a nonprofit organization in New York, said, “Social pressure in the community had a real stifling effect, a silencing effect, not to cooperate with the investigation.” He said that such pressure allowed Mr. Mondrowitz “to continue his activities for a while and escape the jurisdiction.”

In a statement provided by Mr. Lesher, a man who said he had been one of Mr. Mondrowitz’s victims said: “It’s now over 20 years and nothing has been done! I know the pain and torture that I go through on a daily basis.”

The man, whose name Mr. Lesher did not release to protect his privacy, added, “Knowing that this monster is still out there among children just adds insult to injury.”

Mr. Lesher said he hoped that the case against Mr. Mondrowitz, if resolved, could help prevent future molestations.

“I want it to be an example of what it looks like when you do try to sweep something under the rug, and 23 years later it comes back from the dead,” he said. He added, “Had we looked at this kind of case differently to begin with, and said, ‘Let’s go to the police and stop this man as soon as we can,’ how many of these men wouldn’t be victims at all?”
********************************************


FUGITIVE 'PERVERT' RABBI HELD

By PHILIP MESSING

Jailed in Israel after 22 yrs.November 17, 2007

A disgraced self-proclaimed rabbi who police suspect molested hundreds of children in Brooklyn is finally behind bars after evading justice for more than 20 years, authorities said.

Avrohom Mondrowitz, 60, fled the United States for Israel in 1985 after he was indicted for sexually abusing four children in his Borough Park community, where he reportedly worked as a counselor with bogus credentials.

"My reaction was, 'Finally!' " said one of Mondrowitz's alleged victims, Mark Weiss, 40. "We have a monster that has been taken off the streets."

Mondrowitz, who once hosted a radio show in the city, was arrested in Jerusalem yesterday.

He will go to court tomorrow to be remanded until his extradition hearing, said a spokesman for the Israeli Justice Ministry, Moshe Cohen.

The case against Mondrowitz represented one of the most shocking allegations of sexual abuse by a respected Orthodox Jewish religious and community leader in the late '70s and early '80s.

According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Mondrowitz has worked odd jobs as an educator and fund-raiser while in Israel.

Ex-Brooklyn rabbi likely to be dragged back to Brooklyn to face kid-sex charges

BY MATTHEW KALMAN in Jerusalem, JOE GOULD and DAVE GOLDINER in New York
DAILY NEWS WRITERS

Saturday, November 17th 2007, 4:00 AM


An Ex-Brooklyn rabbi accused of raping several boys more than 20 years ago has been arrested in Israel and could finally face justice.

Avrohom Mondrowitz, 60, a married father of seven, could be headed back to Brooklyn because a new agreement with the U.S. allows extradition for the sodomy and sex abuse counts he faces from a 1985 indictment.

"I don't see it as a moment for celebration," said Michael Lesher, who represents six adult men who claim to have been abused by Mondrowitz.

"This is a moment of gratitude to victims who came forward, who were willing to expose their pain."

Mondrowitz has a hearing in an Israeli court Sunday that could clear the way for him to be returned to Brooklyn for trial.

The case was jump-started a few weeks ago after the U.S. and Israel agreed to extradite suspects who face at least a year in prison.

Mondrowitz was once a popular child psychologist and youth counselor in Borough Park, where he was especially well-known among ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jews.

He fled to Israel after several boys filed horrific complaints claiming he sodomized them after befriending them or taking them to amusement parks and movies.

Sometimes, he would rape them in his counseling office even as their parents waited outside, the boys claimed.

"Finally, justice will prevail," said Rabbi Mark Dratch of J-SAFE, a child-abuse prevention group.

Mondrowitz's wife insisted he would fight extradition.

"He's absolutely innocent," she said at their Jerusalem apartment.

Mondrowitz's case attracted controversy because critics claimed District Attorney Joe Hynes put the explosive case on the back burner under pressure from Hasidic community leaders. His office has emphatically denied that charge and insisted it was pushing for a legal way to try Mondrowitz.

dgoldiner@nydailynews.com