NEW YORK
AFP
By Sebastian Smith (AFP)
NEW YORK — The mother of a girl who says she was abused by a powerful and respected spiritual counselor in a New York community of ultra-Orthodox Jews testified Monday that she never suspected the accused man, given their sect’s radical restrictions on sexual behavior.
In a dramatic moment, Rachel Krausz took the stand in the trial that has upended the normally closed Satmar branch of Hasidic Jews and pointed across the Brooklyn courtroom at Nechemya Weberman.
Weberman, a heavyset 54-year-old with a traditional Hasidic beard and dark clothing, is alleged to have repeatedly abused Krausz’s daughter for three years starting in 2007, when she was 12.
Krausz said she could never have known what would happen when she sent her daughter to Weberman for counseling sessions, given his standing and the community’s strict separation of the sexes.
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