Rabbi Cross Examines Own Daughter in Sex Abuse Case, Steve Bogart, WPIX, March 4, 2009

Rabbi Cross-Examines Own Daughter in Sex Abuse Case

By Steve Bogart
WPIX
March 4, 2009

http://www.wpix.com/landing/?Rabbi-Cross-Examines-Own-Daughter-In-Sex=1&blockID=230396&feedID=1404

Rabbi Israel Weingarten rambled on for hours on Tuesday in the cross-examination of his now 27-year-old daughter.

NEW YORK (WPIX) -- A Brooklyn rabbi acting as his own attorney brought jurors to tears as he cross-examined the daughter he's accused of molesting for years.

According to the New York Daily News, Rabbi Israel Weingarten rambled on for hours on Tuesday in the cross-examination of his now 27-year-old daughter.

Jurors were transfixed, some crying, as the young woman detailed years of abuse by her father as he shuttled her between homes in Belgium, Israel and New York.

At one point she told him from the witness stand, "my feeling of your molesting me was at most fear and blackmail and years of torture. Fear because you hurt me because I told my mother. Didn't I get hit enough?"

Weingarten was arrested and jailed without bail last year on charges he went out of the country to have sex with a minor. The daughter told the FBI five years ago she'd been sexually molested since age 9 as her father moved her around the world.

The cross-examination continued Wednesday.