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  Sex-Rap Rabbi Is Busted in Brooklyn

By Nancie L. Katz
New York Daily News
December 8, 2006

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/478388p-402325c.html

A Brooklyn rabbi who is being sued for decades of alleged sexual abuse was busted yesterday.

Joel Yehuda Kolko, 60, likely will face felony charges in the most recent case - the alleged molestation of a 9-year-old boy - as well as the abuse of an adult man, a law enforcement source said.

"The streets of New York are safer tonight," said Jeffrey Herman, a Florida lawyer who is suing the rabbi for more than $40 million on behalf of three adult victims and the child. "If the allegations are true, he's been an active predator for 30 years. Finally, justice will be served, and the children of New York will be protected."

Special NYPD child abuse cops arrested Kolko at his Midwood home about 4 p.m. yesterday, just hours after the Daily News ran a story about the latest allegation against him.

"There was some concern he was going to flee," a law enforcement source said.

A $10 million lawsuit filed at Brooklyn Supreme Court on Wednesday accuses Yeshiva-Mesivta Torah Temimah on Ocean Parkway, where the rabbi taught, of harboring Kolko despite accusations that he has abused children in his care for years.

Kolko molested a boy of "early elementary age" at the school during the 2003-2004 academic year, the suit charged. Similar suits against Kolko and the Yeshiva that seek $30 million in damages were filed in May on behalf of men now 30, 40 and 50 years old who say the rabbi victimized them as children.

 
 

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