CONNECTICUT
New Haven Independent
by CHRISTOPHER PEAK | May 17, 2017
Hartford — After two full days of testimony from the plaintiff’s witnesses, Rabbi Daniel Greer’s team presented a short-winded rebuttal Tuesday morning in a civil trial here over accusations of long-running sexual abuse.
Defense attorneys called only two witnesses — Greer and his longtime secretary, Jean Ledbury — and wrapped their questioning after less than 45 minutes.
Throughout the trial, the defense lawyers have tried to slight the rabbi’s accusers, Eliyahu Mirlis and Aviad Hack, as a troublemakers with ulterior motives. Mirlis filed the suit in U.S. District Court charging that Greer, a prominent rabbi who built an Orthodox community and renovated homes around a yeshiva in New Haven’s Edgewood neighborhood, repeatedly sexually abused him from 200 through 2005. Greer invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when asked on the stand about those allegations.
On Monday, Sarah Greer, the rabbi’s wife, testified that she never liked her husband’s accuser, from the time he started at the Yeshiva of New Haven. On Tuesday, Ledbury recounted an episode when Mirlis stole and made a copy of the school’s keys. More recently, she added, she saw Facebook pictures of him waterskiing, allegedly showing him apparently unfazed by his the trauma of his teenage years.
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