On Tuesday, a Brooklyn girl testified in detail about how she was sexually abused by a Hasidic rabbi and counselor for years. The teen, who is now 17 but was 12 when the alleged abuse started, claimed that Rabbi Nechemya Weberman had sexually abused her (including forcing her to perform oral sex on him) during their counseling sessions, which happened four times a week during a miserable three year period. During recess from the trial yesterday, the victim's lawyers say Weberman menacingly stared her down through a glass door. “He gave her an angry, threatening look and wouldn’t leave,” Rabbi Yakov Horowitz, a family friend of the victim and director of the Center for Jewish Family Life, told the Post. “She jumped up and said, ‘Get out of here!’ When I came in, her hands were shaking.”
The victim and her husband were in an interview room when the incident allegedly happened. Weberman's attorney, George Farkas, shot back: “We can’t control any alleged complaints. I’ll only say that it’s pure, unadulterated bulls--t." The victim previously testified that she had been sent to Rabbi Weberman for counseling after she started questioning the strict rules of her ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Satmar sect when she was 12.
Farkas claims the victim made up the abuse to get back at Weberman for betraying her trust, and telling her parents she had a boyfriend when she was 15. According to the News, her strictly religious parents were against her dating, and the victim allegedly confided in Weberman about the relationship; Weberman, who was a business partner of her father's, allegedly suggested the parents put a video camera in the girl's bedroom, and the boyfriend was busted on statutory rape charges (which were later dropped).
