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New Age guru Marc Gafni allegedly molested two NYC teen girls during the 1980s, denies sexual misconduct allegations

By Larry Mcshane
New York Daily News
January 02, 2016

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/marc-gafni-denies-sexual-misconduct-allegations-article-1.2483567

Marc Gafni, in an emotional interview with The News, denied the accusations of sexual misconduct made by two women.

An online petition, “Stop Marc Gafni from Abusing Again,” was launched, calling on Whole Foods to end its support of Gafni’s work.
Photo by David Paul Morris

His address changed across the decades: Brooklyn, Israel — and now, California. His name changed, too, from Mordechai Winiarz to Marc Gafni.

For two women from his past, there was one constant for the Jewish scholar-turned-New Age guru — he was the man who shamed and molested them as teens during the 1980s.

The pair — one was 13, the other 16 — shared their stories last week with the Daily News as Gafni’s alleged 20th century indiscretions crashed hard into his 21st century incarnation.

Gafni, in an emotional interview with The News, denied the accusations of sexual misconduct made by the women.

“This is sexual McCarthyism,” insisted Gafni, who provided polygraph tests to support his position. “What they’re doing is social media rape.”

Other Gafni critics went public last week, with an online petition citing the “trail of pain, suffering and trauma” left in his wake. And one of his three ex-wives wrote a blistering piece for The Times of Israel about her former spouse.

But his tale began nearly four decades earlier, when the religious young man met two teenage New York City girls a few years apart at the start of his career.

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One of the two women, speaking on condition of anonymity, said she recounted her still-painful tale to sound an alarm.

“I want to prevent other women from being harmed by him, stop this kind of behavior once and for all,” said the woman, who was 13 when she met the then-rabbinical student.

Gafni was never charged with a crime in either instance. And he stated that both women — although sexually inexperienced teens obeying the Jewish law of “ shomer negiah, ” or no physical contact with men until marriage — were willing partners.

“What they’re doing is a terrible thing,” Gafni said. “It’s an affront to all true victims. They claim victimhood in a way that’s not right, that’s false.”

Judy Mitzner, the other woman involved with Gafni, said his current position atop a West Coast think tank called the Center for Integral Wisdom is “flabbergasting.”

Mitzner says she was targeted while living with Gafni and his wife in 1986 to escape the turmoil of her own home.

It started with compliments and extra attention, eventually leading to the night when the rabbi appeared in her basement bedroom.

“You look like you need a hug,” he told her.

Gafni wound up on top of the stunned 16-year-old, his hands wandering under her nightgown, despite her repeated protestations, Mitzner said.

Their second encounter went further, with Gafni removing their clothes before he “took my hand and forced me to help him climax. I had never even seen a man naked before.”

Mitzner said the abuse left her suicidal, and Gafni made her promise to stay silent. When the terrified teen spoke out, she recalled, her parents put the blame on her.

Gafni charged that Mitzner spun her story from “20 minutes of fooling around” — and claims he spurned her invitation to sleep together.

“A one-time mistake,” he claimed. “There’s a difference between a mistake and predatory (behavior).”

Mitzner, who has told the same story for decades, said she was not surprised by Gafni’s subsequent success as a spiritualist, speaker and author — while she lives burdened by the past.

“Basically, he’s your typical narcissistic sociopath,” said Mitzner. “He’s got the charisma, he’s got the intelligence, to rebuild, re-create and reinvent himself.”

The other sexual abuse charge involves the woman who was 13 when she first met then-19-year-old Gafni in 1979.

Rabbi-in-training Gafni met the girl at her parents’ Sabbath dinner table. She recalls, like Mitzner, Gafni taking her under his wing as a “special” friend.

Later, he “brainwashed” her into remaining silent with a warning that she would bear the blame and the shame if anyone discovered what had happened.

The first incident allegedly occurred when Gafni was an overnight guest of the girl’s parents, slipping into her room and ignoring her pleas to stop touching her.

“I pushed him away repeatedly,” she says. “I remember saying ‘No! No! No!’ I knew intuitively that it just wasn’t OK with me... ."

“Week after week, he would come into my bedroom and wake me up in the middle of the night, and I would fight to keep him from touching me. All were the most horrifying, degrading and painful experiences for me.”

Gafni’s version is the exact opposite: “The truth is, I deeply loved her. I didn’t know there was a problem with this relationship, a challenge to its goodness, until 20 years later.”

He claimed the woman even sent him a touching love letter after they parted ways.

“I deny that I sent him a love letter,” she told The News. “If I would ever send him a letter, it would say ‘Stay away from me and my family.’”

Gafni has taken fire from others in recent days. An online petition, “Stop Marc Gafni from Abusing Again,” was launched last week — calling on Whole Foods to end its support of Gafni’s work.

By Saturday, there were close to 1,900 signatures — many of them from rabbis.

A Whole Foods spokesman did not return an email for comment. But Gafni said the petition was part of an “organized and premeditated” conspiracy to smear him and his work.

His ex-wife, in her scathing piece for the Times of Israel, detailed his philandering during their six-year union and echoed the desire to warn others about Gafni.

“He’s still out there,” said the woman who made the first charge. “And he’s still the same guy who molested a 13-year-old. He’s not a different person.”

Contact: lmcshane@nydailynews.com




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