Rabbi in Tzfat charged with rape, and New Square resident charged with child rape
A rabbi has been charged with sexually assaulting at least 10 women, and was arrested while trying to flee the country:
The Supreme Court cleared the publication of the name of a prominent northern rabbi accused of sexual abuse overnight Thursday, revealing his identity to the press as Rabbi Ezra Sheinberg, Rosh Yeshiva (dean) of Yeshivat (Torah academy) Orot Ha'Ari in Tzfat (Safed).So here's another man giving religion a bad name who makes things worse by trying to fly the coop. That's shameful. And so is the Skver Haredi in this next article who's on trial for child molestation:
Ten women have accused the rabbi of sexual abuse, up from earlier estimates of eight in Israeli media.
Since the scandal broke, Rabbi Sheinberg has been distanced from his yeshiva and from the Tzfat community for the sake of public safety. [...]
Rabbi Sheinberg was arrested while trying to flee Israel at Ben-Gurion Airport earlier this month. He was due to be identified by the press following a decision by the Nazareth District Court that revealing his identity was "in the public interest," but that decision had been frozen pending an appeal by his defense team.
A New Square man recalled in excruciating detail Friday how a neighbor instructed him to take off his pants and began molesting him on Sept. 11, 2001, when he was 8 years old.The victim has since wisely left the New Square neighborhood to live in Brooklyn. As in several other cases like these, many of the isolationists come out in favor of the defendant, but not the victim. And what's truly horrifying is how the molester did this to the victim on 9-11. That has got to be the most chilling thing about this whole case. The culprit is decidedly as evil as the jihadists who attacked the America that very day.
The alleged abuse didn’t stop until he moved out of the village more than five years later, the victim, now in his 20s, said as he took the stand for a second day in the trial of Moshe Menachem Taubenfeld, 55, a family friend.
Taubenfeld, also known as Mendel Zarkowsky, is charged with second-degree course of sexual conduct against a child, a felony. He has denied the charges.
The case is being closely watched in the Orthodox and Hasidic Jewish communities, which have long struggled with allegations that victims of sexual abuse – often children – are discouraged from reporting the crimes and people who do are treated as outcasts.
“I give the victim a lot of credit for coming forward,” said Rockland County District Attorney Thomas Zugibe, who observed part of Friday’s testimony in Rockland County Court in New City. “It’s a tough thing to do.”
The courtroom was packed with men who were there to show their support for Taubenfeld, a teacher and father of 20 who is well respected within the Skver Hasidic village.
His brother, Herschel Taubenfeld, pleaded guilty in 2013 to charges that he forcibly touched a young boy.
A few people appeared to be there to show support for the victim, including a man who complained to a court officer that another spectator had called him a Yiddish word for “snitch” during a break in the proceedings.
Labels: haredi corruption, Israel, misogyny, Moonbattery, New York, United States
