A Brooklyn teen yesterday took the stand against a prominent Orthodox
Jewish leader accused of sexually abusing her — and her gripping
testimony provided a rare glimpse into a cloistered Hasidic community.
The
now-17-year-old girl was just 12 when Rabbi Nechemya Weberman
(pictured), 54, began abusing her after her parents sent her to him for
counseling because she wasn’t following the strict rules of her
ultra-religious Satmar sect, prosecutors say.
The pretty blond —
whose testimony brought some female Orthodox observers in the courtroom
to tears — told the Brooklyn Supreme Court jury about the school
discipline problems that led her parents to bring her to Weberman.
“You
had to wear tights that are very thick so there’s no way anybody can
see your legs,” she said. “I was sent to the principal’s office every
day because my tights weren’t thick enough.”
She said her father
decided she needed the counseling because he thought she had spoken to a
neighborhood boy, and she asked teachers questions like, “How do you
know God exists?”
Because the Satmar sect provides no sexual
education to women until just before they marry, the teen said, she
didn’t understand what Weberman was doing during their first counseling
session. It was the first time she had been touched by a male outside
her family, she said.
During the alleged fondling, “My whole body froze,’’ she recounted tearfully. “I didn’t know how to fight back.”
The teen said her parents brought her to a rabbinical court in an unsuccessful attempt to convince her to drop the charges.
About
50 Orthodox Jews, many of them her supporters, packed the courtroom to
capacity. Women in long dresses cried during the graphic testimony.
“The
community needs to understand you can’t cover up sexual abuse anymore,”
said Ari Rubinstein, 42, an Orthodox Jew from Kensington who watched
the testimony yesterday.
“If the community sees him go down, they’ll realize they have to take action. It’ll be a wake-up call.”
The teen recently married, and plans to start college next year. She wore a Star of David necklace and black Ugg boots to court
Defense
lawyers say their client is innocent and have argued that the teen is
accusing Weberman only to retaliate for a bizarre incident in which he
and her father secretly filmed her having sex with her boyfriend in an
attempt to file statutory-rape charges.
jsaul@nypost.com
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