Williamsburg rabbi
Nechemya Weberman is charged with molesting a 12-year-old girl over
three years after her parents sent her to him for counseling.
“It doesn’t sound like modern Brooklyn, it sounds like the Salem witch trials,” said Assistant DA Kevin O’Donnell. He
said the alleged victim’s parents sent her to Weberman after
she was shunned by the Satmar Hasidic community because she questioned
authority and acted immodestly. O’Donnell alleged that Weberman fondled the girl in his office and forced her to perform oral sex, “over and over again.”
Defense
attorney George Farkas noted the seeming strangeness to outsiders of
Hasidic Judaism, warning jurors not to judge Weberman on his adherence
to religious doctrine. “He looks different. He dresses different. He acts different than the rest of the citizenry,” Farkas said. The same, of course, can be said about Catholic priests, some of whom have been famously accused of child molestation. At least Rabbi Weberman did not apparently violate the commandment prohibiting lying down with a man.
The
defense team has argued that the girl’s accusation stems from a bizarre
incident where Weberman and her father secretly filmed her having sex
with her boyfriend — then turned the tape over to authorities in an
attempt to file statutory-rape charges against the boyfriend. They say she made the accusation to retaliate against Weberman.
Four Hasidic (the New York Post insists on calling them "ultra-Orthodox", even though Hasidism is a sect that, at the time of its creation, was kind of reform) men have been busted for allegedly intimidating
witnesses in the case. One was charged with offering the alleged victim
$500,000 to leave the country and drop her accusation.
You can read more here.
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