NEW YORK
Failed Messiah
Shmarya Rosenberg • Failedmessiah.com
He may finally go to prison.
Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, a haredi teacher and camp counselor with a long history of alleged child sexual abuse covering four decades, escaped a prison sentence in 2008 when Brooklyn’s ethically challenged District Attorney Charles Hynes gave Kolko what some observers say was the sweetheart plea deal of the decade.
Kolko, who allegedly fondled the genitals of two first graders while rubbing his erect penis against their clothed bodies, got 10 years probation and escaped sex offender registration because, Hynes claimed, neither of the victims’ families wanted their little boys to testify in court.
But that appears to have been a lie, as Hella Winston reminds us in The Jewish Week:
…The Jewish Week reported at the time [of the plea deal] that both families claimed they were willing to have their sons testify. The paper also obtained a letter to the district attorney, written by one of the fathers to the district attorney and dated one day after he signed off on the plea deal, that “[m]y son was ready to go to trial and we feel he would have done an excellent job and I am sorry to hear that [the case against] Joel Kolko will not proceed further.”…
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