Pimping its girls


It’s not just Ireland, it’s not just Saudi Arabia, it’s not just Pakistan. It’s New York City, too. The New York Times sets the scene.

The abuse began when the girl was 12 years old, prosecutors in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn said on Monday. She was sent to a prominent man in her ultra-Orthodox Jewish community for counseling, and prosecutors said the man sexually molested her over the next three years.

But lawyers defending the man, Nechemya Weberman, 54, of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, told a far different story during the opening arguments of his trial. The girl, a defense lawyer told the jury, had hatched the sordid tale of abuse as an act of revenge against Mr. Weberman and against a religious community she found stifling and rulebound.

Community community community. “Her ultra-Orthodox Jewish community” – meaning, the one she was born into and could not escape. It’s more a prison than a “community.”

Both the prosecution and the defense informed the jury that the Satmar Hasidic community, to which Mr. Weberman and the girl belonged, was so rigid that questions from a young girl about something as simple as the proper length of a skirt could lead to mandatory counseling, and even expulsion from school. The accuser in this case, both sides said, was just that kind of girl: a free spirit whose questioning and challenges to authority landed her in trouble.

“She was going off the path,” said Kevin O’Donnell, an assistant district attorney. “She was being a little bit different.” In response, Mr. O’Donnell said, she was branded a “heretic” by her Satmar girls’ school, the United Talmudical Academy in Williamsburg, and her parents were required to send her to therapy.

There it is again – the community to which they both “belonged” – that sounds cozy, but it’s more like being drafted. And how can her parents be “required” to send her to “therapy”? Required by whom? On whose authority? And what do you mean “therapy”? Weberman is not a therapist.

The Times a couple of days ago:

Dressed in the traditional long black coat and white shirt of the Satmar Hasidim, Mr. Weberman testified that he had first begun counseling his accuser in 2008, not in 2007, as she had claimed. He testified that he billed $150 an hour to see her, and also charged her family $1,500 for a trip upstate that he took alone with her. He denied that anything untoward had happened.

The parents were “required” to send her to him, and he charged them $150 an hour, but he’s not a therapist. Not a bad racket, from his point of view, even without the sex.

Beyond the details of the accuser’s case, the testimony also shed light into the way the Satmar Hasidic community enforces its strict religious rules. Ms. Gluck testified that masked men from the religious modesty committee, based in Monroe, N.Y., had come into her bedroom at night when she was 15 or 16 years old to take away a cellphone that she was not permitted to have. The same committee, Mr. Weberman testified, regularly referred young boys and girls to him for counseling.

Mr. Weberman testified that as an unlicensed counselor, he was not obligated to report allegations of child abuse to secular authorities, nor was he legally bound to respect the privacy of the young people he was counseling. As a result, he shared information given to him by the teenagers with their parents and schools, he said.

The New York Jewish Week goes deeper.

…many people with ties to the chasidic community believe there is something even more important about the Weberman case — namely, what it exposes about the larger communal role played by chasidic “modesty committees” in communities like Williamsburg, Borough Park and Kiryas Joel. These groups — to which, sources say, Weberman was connected — originated years ago to guard the “purity” of the community by enforcing strict dress and behavior codes that characterize the insular chasidic lifestyle. But, insiders say, the tactics of these self-appointed, freelance modesty patrols have evolved from public shaming to extortion and threats.

The narrative to emerge from the trial testimony so far is that a chasidic girl, perceived as “acting out” by the standards of her chasidic school and family — defying the community’s dress code, communicating with boys, asking questions about the existence of God — was sent to Weberman for therapy. She was 12 at the time, and the move apparently came at her school’s insistence and under threat of expulsion.

So that’s what “required” means. It’s not quite as savage as the Magdalen laundries, but it’s not a million miles away, either.

According to Yerachmiel Lopin, who blogs at FrumFollies and has been reporting on the case for two years, “UTA was in effect, extorting money for Weberman. I strongly suspect they kept some of it. Given widespread rumors about his sexual misconduct, Satmar was in effect pimping its girls to Weberman, adding insult to injury by making the victim pay to be victimized.”

And pimping its girls to Weberman as punishment for growing up and developing their own ideas. That’s the “community.”

H/t No Light.

 

 

Comments

  1. bobo says

    A young jewish woman recently wrote a book about the abuses she suffered while growing up in a Satmar community in NYC…

    The comment thread on yahoo was full of people claiming to be from the Satmar community and how ‘she is lying!’ ‘she is just trying to make a buck’ ‘the Satmar community is perfect she made it all up’ and so on.

    I have also seen some programs about sexual abuse within orthodox jewish communities – sexual abuse no different than what you hear coming out of the RCC.

    These communities are more worried about their *image* of purity and godlyness than about what happens to these poor children. They will do anything they can to protect the abusers, b/c image > all.

    So what is happening to this young woman, and the victim smearing comments on yahoo are, sadly, no surprise!

  2. Rodney Nelson says

    charged her family $1,500 for a trip upstate that he took alone with her. He denied that anything untoward had happened.

    A middle-aged man goes alone on a trip with an unrelated young girl and claims nothing “untoward” happened. Pull the other one, Reb Weberman, it’s got bells on it.

  3. Hamilton Jacobi says

    masked men from the religious modesty committee … had come into her bedroom at night

    !! WTF?

  4. No Light says

    I had to laugh, and by “laugh” I mean “become incandescent with rage”, when the principal of the school took the stand and declared that the Va’ad HaTznius (Modesty Patrol) did not exist.

    Apparently the gallery was rocked with laughter. It’s like a Catholic priest saying “Confession? No idea what you mean”. The problem is that lying to the goyim (gentiles, who are no more than talking animals according to a lot of chassidim) is just fine and dandy. If they notice? Just scream “Blood Libel!” and run.

    This young woman has been brave beyond belief. Her cult let her down, NYPD let her down, and I’m hoping that the jury will reverse that trend.

    For anyone interested in an inside glimpse, the book Hush is available on the Kindle store. It’s written by a young woman using the pseudonym “Eishes Chayil”, which means “Woman of Valour”, a title given to every wife. It’s about a young girl suffering the fallout of silence about sexual abuse.

  5. &drew says

    “then the principal of the school took the stand and declared that the Va’ad HaTznius (Modesty Patrol) did not exist.
    Apparently the gallery was rocked with laughter. It’s like a Catholic priest saying “Confession? No idea what you mean”. The problem is that lying to the goyim (gentiles, who are no more than talking animals according to a lot of chassidim) is just fine and dandy.”

    Wasn’t the principal under oath? Can’t he be charged with perjury or somesuch?

  6. No Light says

    Wasn’t the principal under oath? Can’t he be charged with perjury or somesuch?

    He undoubtedly could, but he doesn’t care. Goyish laws are irrelevant to him, and he isn’t covered by them. That’s the mindset that pervades these communities.

    If he’s charged he’ll become a martyr, and proof of the evil anti-Semitic ways of the erev rav (the others, the multitudes).

    Weberman happily admitted in court to running a fake charity, using the money to fund his lifestyle, and reaping benefits such as tax exemption. Everyone does it, that or welfare fraud. It’s their equivalent to what the FLDS call “bleeding the beast”, taking from the government/public purse.

    Another good example is nearby Kiryas Joel. It is the poorest town in the entire US, per declared earned income and welfare claims. Go to Google Earth and take a virtual stroll around the streets. From the govt stats you’d expect something that looks like a First Nations rez, but you’ll see.

    National laws do not bother them. When the Skverer sect of New Square had a man firebombed and almost killed for daring to go to a. nursing home on shabbes/the Sabbath, to pray with some isolated elderly Jews (you need a minimum of ten men for a minyan/prayer quorum), instead of the community Shul/synagogue, the media descended.

    During an interview someone shouts “But we don’t live in America, this is Jewland”. In a way though, he’s right.

    Nobody speaks English – Yiddish is the mama loshen/mother tongue, then they learn Hebrew, and only the woman and girls are English speakers. That’s only because the women need to work full time, sometimes out in the ‘World’, while men ‘learn’ (read and study Torah) full time. Laws, customs, language, dress, all are influenced solely by religion. State and national laws are ignored or completely unknown about.

    Sorry that got long, but context helps to understand just how complex this whole thing is.

  7. says

    Linked in the Jewish Week thread:

    http://daattorah.blogspot.com/2012/12/weberman-case-calling-police-for-abuse.html

    This rabbi writes how he has had to explain how calling the cops on Weberman was halachically justified, because 12-year-olds are considered “adults” in that “community.” Also, “she said nothing for years and continued going back to him.”

    First commenter decides to blame the wives of abusers for standing by them, calling them “witches.” Subsequent commenters debate the religious legality of fucking an 11-year-old girl one has “bought” from her father. The blogger demands evidence for the assertion that “most 11-year-olds who are married (in Yemen, in Africa) are terrified and suffer from the abuse.” Numerous links do not convince him that there’s something inherently wrong with the idea of child brides.

  8. Gordon Willis says

    OK, so if someone thinks that Moses didn’t talk to God they need therapy. I mean, they must be seriously mentally disturbed, mustn’t they? to think such thoughts. It’s like saying the sky is pink, isn’t it? Just what they thought in communist Russia, I seem to remember — dissidents obviously need to be in mental hospitals. So, in this case, we should obviously send our children to a man like Weberman who has opined that “as an unlicensed counselor, he was not obligated to report allegations of child abuse to secular authorities, nor was he legally bound to respect the privacy of the young people he was counseling.” Notice, no sense of a moral obligation towards his patients, as in “this person claims to have been abused, so maybe we should look into it” or “this person is confiding in me, and maybe respecting a person’s privacy is no different from respecting the person” and “trust matters — doesn’t it?”. But of course, why respect mad people who think there’s no God, for goodness’ sake!
    .
    Sounds like BIG BROTHER to me.

  9. left0ver1under says

    Weberman […] charged her family $1,500 for a trip upstate that he took alone with her. He denied that anything untoward had happened.

    That’s odd, a catholic priest said the same thing, he denied anything improper was going on….

    http://www.wtsp.com/news/national/article/268664/81/Cops-Priest-chases-boy-down-street-in-underwear-after-abuse

    The other day another FtB writer talked about female genital mutilation. I stand by what I said there: It would not surprise me in the least if ultra-orthodox jews started mutilating girls and women in the same way muslims and christians do in Africa as a means of controlling women via permanent injury. Is that what the “trips” alone were for?

  10. left0ver1under says

    &drew (#9)

    Wasn’t the principal under oath? Can’t he be charged with perjury or somesuch?

    Yes, but he’s a man.

    In that “culture”, women are untrustworthy and cannot be trusted. In that “culture”, men should be taken at their word and not challenged.

  11. 'dirigible says

    “The problem is that lying to the goyim (gentiles, who are no more than talking animals according to a lot of chassidim) is just fine and dandy. If they notice? Just scream “Blood Libel!” and run.”

    Your use of the language and tropes of Jew-hatred is mechanical enough that I do have to ask whether you’re not just trolling.

    Assuming you’re not, reading the archives of this blog will show you that couching your critique of the abuses of organised religion in anti-semitic terms isn’t constructive.

    Or sane.

  12. No Light says

    Nice ableism there, thanks for that.

    I don’t need to read the archives thanks, been here since FTB started. Notice the h/t at the end of the article?

    Here’s the thing, before you accuse someone of being an anti-Semitic troll, you may wish to consider the following:

    -How that person knows so much about haredism and Hassidism

    -The person’s posts. and. history here. This username is the second, the first was dropped after an accidental reveal which could have put me at risk.

    -Why the person may have very good reason to want to expose what’s going on.

    There is nothing I’ve said, nothing you’ve quoted, that isn’t true. Goyim/gentiles are considered to exist purely as future servants to the Chosen when Moshiach (the Jewish messiah) arrives. Kids in chederim (primary schools) are taught that gentiles do not have higher souls in the way that Jews do, that they are inherently filthy and unclean.

    Here are some of the specific teachings. “The nations” (lit. English translation of “goyim”) refers to non-Jews:

    This is from the Tanya, the core text of by far the largest (and most moderate) Hassidic dynasty, the Lubavitchers –

    The souls of the nations of the world, however, emanate from the other, unclean kelipot* which contain no good whatever

    From the Gemara, the Talmud, which all Orthodox life is lived by-

    The kindness of the nations is sin … all the charity and kindness done by the nations of the world is only for their self-glorification

    Every single child is taught “Esav sonai Yaakov”. Literally that is “Esau hates Jacob”. Metaphorically speaking “the gentile hates the Jew”.

    The dynasty that is closest to my own is Skver. This is from a teaching resource for middle school-aged kids.

    Question: Is it appropriate to not love, or to hate, a gentile?

    Answer: A Jew is intrinsically good. A Jew is a part of God above. Even if at times he strays it is not because he has become evil. It is only that there is evil within him that he has to cleanse.
    However, to separate with a million degrees of separation, a gentile is an impure thing. The entire essence of the gentile is evil and impure. Even if he occasionally does good deeds he does not thereby become good … even such a one who is very careful in his actions does not obtain any degree of holiness thereby.

    As is also well known, even educated gentiles who guarded themselves because of their clear understanding of what is right, nonetheless failed when they were tested, because a gentile has no power for goodness within him.

    On the contrary, the evil thoughts of gentiles contaminate the world’s atmosphere and create ordeals for Jewish children … the thoughts of gentiles, even when they are dead, still linger in and contaminate the atmosphere.

    He says that to be protected from this there is only one solution; to completely despise the thoughts of gentiles and to realize that all their thoughts are only evil. (Hate doesn’t mean wanting to do something to a gentile, but it means not being able to tolerate him, not being able to stand him, because of his great impurity, especially when one realizes how harmful this {impurity} is {to Jews and to the world}.)

    Understandably, loving a gentile is the exact opposite of this … for a person to be totally protected from evil he must hate the thing that has caused him to sin. This is why God commanded to uproot the trees of Midian. Since the Midianites caused the Jews to sin with the Peor idol, so therefore Jews must hate everything connected to Midian. Consequently, gentiles, whose thoughts bring upon us ordeals, may be hated.
    So also the Holy Light of Life {i.e., the author of the book Ohr HaHayyim} writes, in the portion of Vayigash {in his book entitled Oh HaHayyim}, that the nature of the righteous ones is to hate gentiles.

    Speaking of gentiles it is worth mentioning two points. First, with respect to conversing with a gentile: a gentile is impure, as we have mentioned, and he defiles one who speaks to him and this brings evil upon a person.

    Especially if one converses with friendship, because the texts tell us that when two people speak with affection then a portion of each one’s soul becomes connected to the other and no one wants to become connected to a gentile, God forbid.

    (Understandably, when one must converse one must do so like a human being. However, in his heart one should not love him. And it is worth knowing that “it is a well-known law that Esau hates Jacob.” The gentile hates you. It is only because of his ulterior motives that he is talking in a friendly manner, because it is in his best interests to do so at this moment, because of his job or for tens of others reasons. Even the righteous gentiles among the nations are often so because they hate inhumanity and murder but not because they love Jews.)

    The second point is; one is not to concentrate on the face of a gentile. As is written in the Talmudic passage, “it is forbidden to look upon the face of an evildoer”, because the sitra achra (the devil)cloaks himself in the guise of an evildoer and it is a danger to look at him.

    Certainly, beyond any doubt, a gentile whose whole nature is essentially evil, looking at his appearance is defiling.

    That’s less than half of the lesson.

    They consider themselves “Or l’goyim”, a light unto the nations/Gentiles. That’s why my name is “No Light”, because I refuse to believe that being born of a Jewish mother makes me a superior being.

    When you’ve been force-fed this stuff, told how righteous haredim and Hassidim are compared to the evil tainted goyim, while simultaneously witnessing welfare benefit fraud, domestic battery, rape, incest, child sexual abuse and more. When you know that men pray every day “Shelo asani isha/ Thank you for not making me a woman”, when three year old girls are covered from neck to toes, where females past menarche are “pots of filth”, would you not rage at it? Would you not be horrified to hear. that people believe that orthodox Jewish life is simple and pure, like Fiddles on the Roof?

    Light needs to be shone, children need to be saved, arranged marriage of teenagers needs to be stopped, and the sexual abuse that makes the RCC look like amateurs, needs to be exposed and the perpetrators destroyed.

    If that makes me a self-hating Jew? Great.

  13. No Light says

    And I missed my *

    Kelipot are impurities. The literal meaning is shells or husks, because it’s thought that divine sparks become imprisoned in layers of contamination. Only when these husks are smashed open can the magic holy sparks do their thing. It’s a kaballistic thing, Lubavitchers are steeped in kaballah.

  14. Ermine says

    *waits for dirigible’s “Whoops, I guess I was -totally- wrong, I’m sorry for speaking from such utter ignorance!” reply.*. Now why do I think it’s going to be a long wait?

  15. No Light says

    Zie’s not the first, won’t be the last. The last one was ‘brenda’ about six months ago, and b couple before that. My breath is in no danger of being held!

    People seem to have this very romantic, idealised view of orthodox Judaism, and don’t quite realise a) what’s really going on, and b) that they’re playing directly into the hands of the likes of Satmar.

    But now, awesome news:

    NECHEMYA WEBERMAN FOUND GUILTY!!

    I’m crying so hard, it’s amazin. Sentencing on January the 9th. A great Chanukah gift for his victim.g. I just hope nobody hurts her.

  16. No Light says

    Education and knowledge is power Brian. Just like the RCC, it’ll trickle out slowly at first, then the gush will start.

    A Royal Commission is underway right now in Australia, they’re going after the RCC and Hassidic sects too, Hopefully they’ll bleed money and adherents until they’re milk-white, shrunken corpses,

    Today’s result is a huge, huge leap.

  17. No Light says

    I know! I’m positively giddy. Of course the usual cries of “Tainted jury!” and “Bilbul!”(libel). His lawyers are claiming that “the court was prejudiced by only hearing a sanitised version of events”. That makes about as much sense as kosher cheeseburgers!

    This is big though, so big., because it not only proves that there are active cover-ups perpetrated by arrogant men, but it says loud and clear to victims “We care, we know you’re trapped in there, we can help”.

    To kids who are led to believe, from toddlerhood, “It’s dangerous out there, they hate you, they’d kill you in a seconds” that is literally revolutionary info, because it often triggers then to think “So what else is a lie?”

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