NEW YORK
The Huffington Post
By Meredith Bennett-Smith
NEW YORK — The alleged abuse started when the victim was 12. The girl, a member of the Satmar Hasidic community, had been sent to the office of Nechemya Weberman because she had questioned the existence of God in school and rebelled against her ultra-Orthodox Jewish community’s strict modesty codes.
Weberman, an unlicensed counselor in their Williamsburg, Brooklyn, neighborhood, had a reputation for helping people get “back on the spiritual path,” according to the Associated Press. Prosecutors contend that Weberman abused his young client for the next three years, forcing her to perform oral sex and touching her breasts and vagina, according to The New York Times.
On Tuesday, the newly married girl, now almost 18, testified against Weberman in New York State Supreme Court in Brooklyn. Her former counselor is charged with 88 counts of sexual abuse of a minor, according to the Times.
“I wanted to die rather than live with myself,” the alleged victim told the courtroom, according to the New York Daily News. “I didn’t know how to fight. I was numb.”
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