Rabbi Ordered to Pay $20 Million for Sex Abuse Allegation

By Daniel Tepfer
CT Post
May 19, 2017

http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Rabbi-ordered-to-pay-20-million-for-sex-abuse-11156883.php

A local lawyer has won a $20 million verdict against a prominent rabbi accused of sexually abusing a teenage student in 2002.

A federal court jury deliberated nearly two days before ordering New Haven Rabbi Daniel Greer and his Yeshiva of New Haven on Thursday to pay the plaintiff, Eliyahu Mirlis, now 28, $15 million plus $5 million in punitive damages.

“The justice system works,” said Mirlis’ lawyer, Antonio Ponvert III, of the local law firm Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder. “My client came forward showing great courage to right a wrong and to protect other children. Child abuse in all its forms must end and this is a step in that process.”

The lawsuit claims that beginning in the fall of 2002 and continuing for the entirety of the victim’s sophomore, junior and senior high school years, when he was 15, 16 and 17 years old, “Rabbi Greer repeatedly and continuously sexually abused, exploited, and assaulted him.”

Rabbi Greer “forced (the minor) to engage in acts of sex with him, including forced fellatio, anal sex, fondling and masturbation,” the lawsuit states. He frequently gave the youth alcohol and showed him pornographic films at the time of the rapes and assaults, the lawsuit adds.