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Frum Follies
Breaking- Nuchem Rosenberg Curtailed By Judge in Lashing Out at DA for No-Jail Deal for His Bleach Assailant
Today (6/18/14) was the sentencing of Meilech Schnitzler for throwing bleach into Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg’s face and almost blinding him. In return for his guilty plea, the office of the DA allowed Schnitzler off without a single day in jail.
Below is the prepared text of Rabbi Rosenberg’s Victim Impact Statement delivered this morning. Rabbi Rosenberg was not allowed to share the entire contents of this statement.
Judge Joseph Gubbay restricted some of the text relating to the issue of sex abuse and the impact of this attack and plea deal on the community. Judge Gubay missed the fact that this attack sent shock waves through the community of anti-abuse activists. It signaled that even as we won a conviction for Weberman, others would attack activists with impunity. The no-jail plea bargain confirmed that fear. I fully expect a celebration for Schnitzler in Williamsburg.
Your Honor,
Good Morning.
My legal name is Nathan Rosenberg but I am known in Hasidic Williamsburg as Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg.
Defendant Meilech Schnitzler, with premeditation, threw a cup of bleach in my face and almost blinded me.
For over nine years I have publicly fought for protecting my community’s children from sexual abuse. I operate a Yiddish language hotline with recorded weekly lectures about how to prevent and prosecute child molestation. My hotline draws several thousand listeners each week from all over the world.
My assault was not a random event and its timing was not an accident. Schnitzler threw that cup of bleach into my face one day after the fifty-nine-count jury conviction of a Satmar Hasid, Rabbi Nechemya Weberman, for sexually assaulting a girl for two and half years, starting when she was twelve. I supported the victim who testified against Weberman, something that made me very unpopular in my Hasidic community.
In spite of what the defendant’s attorney [Israel Fried] claimed in an interview with the New York Times, his attack did not grow out of a heated exchange between me and Schnitzler.
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.