NEW YORK
New York Times
By MICHAEL POWELL
Published: November 11, 2013
Sam Kellner, a voluble whistle-blower against child sexual abuse in Brooklyn’s Hasidic community, received a much-dreamed-of phone call last week.
Two prosecutors with the Brooklyn district attorney’s office promised to drop all charges against Mr. Kellner. An already-weak extortion case had utterly disintegrated, with evidence falling away.
You’ll soon be free of the shadow of prosecution, Mr. Kellner’s lawyers told him.
That was last Wednesday.
Two days later, District Attorney Charles J. Hynes and his rackets chief and longtime friend Michael F. Vecchione reversed that decision and again vowed to prosecute Mr. Kellner.
They promptly demoted the two veteran prosecutors, Joseph Alexis and Nicholas J. Batsidis, who had handled the case against Mr. Kellner.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.