NEW YORK
The Jewish Week
12/06/12
Young woman’s testimony reveals tactics of freelance ‘purity’ guardians in Satmar community
Hella Winston
Special To The Jewish Week
For more than a week, spectators and members of the press have been packing the Brooklyn courtroom where a prominent chasidic man is on trial for sexually abusing a girl from the Satmar community who was sent to him for counseling. The case is noteworthy for a number of reasons, chief among them the fact that the young woman pressed charges in the first place.
Indeed, ever since she reported the abuse, the alleged victim of Nechemya Weberman — an unlicensed “therapist” to whom, testimony has indicated, Satmar schools referred “wayward” girls for “help” — has been subjected to intense pressure to withdraw her claim, including intimidation, harassment, social ostracism of her family and even a reported $500,000 bribe. Last spring, members of the Satmar community held a lavish fundraiser for Weberman’s defense. Not long after, four men were arrested and charged with witness tampering in connection with the case. And last Thursday, four chasidic men were arrested for taking the young woman’s picture — which was then posted online — as she testified in the courtroom.
The case is also significant for the amount of public support the alleged victim has received, if not necessarily from mainstream members of her community then from her family, close friends and advocates, many of whom have used social media to spread the word about the trial and appeared in court. After all, it was only three years ago that the late judge Gustin Reichbach issued a stinging critique of the religious community from the bench, noting at his sentencing of a bar mitzvah tutor convicted of molesting two of his students “a communal attitude that seems to impose greater opprobrium on the victims than the perpetrator.”
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