NEW YORK
Gothamist
A Brooklyn girl testified yesterday in detail that she was sexually abused by a Hasidic rabbi and counselor for years. The teen, who is now 17, but was 12 when the alleged abuse started, had been sent to Rabbi Nechemya Weberman for counseling after she started questioning the strict rules of her ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Satmar sect. “I wanted to die rather than live with myself,” the woman said about the attacks. “I didn’t know how to fight. I was numb.”
She claims Weberman, who is accused of 88 counts of sexual abuse of a minor, forced her to give him oral sex and inappropriately touched her from March 2007 to March 2010. Prosecutors say the victim grew up in an ultra-religious community that labelled her a “heretic” because she asked questions about God’s existence and wore thin tights: “You had to wear tights that are very thick so there’s no way anybody can see your legs,” she said. “I was sent to the principal’s office every day because my tights weren’t thick enough.”
So her parents sent her to Weberman, who met her at his home; those sessions lasted up to four hours each, multiple times a week, for three years. During the first one, she didn’t understand what Weberman was doing when he allegedly forced her to give him oral sex. “My whole body froze,’’ she recounted tearfully.
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