Sex abuse victim shamed during synagogue prayers

The New York Post/September 9, 2013

By Josh Saul

The brave Orthodox Jewish teen whose testimony helped convict the prominent Brooklyn counselor who had sexually abused her was driven out of her own synagogue on Rosh Hashana last week.

The married, 18-year-old victim was in the Williamsburg synagogue where her family has prayed for the past decade when a man yelled, “Moser, out of the shul!” the woman’s husband told The Post on Sunday.

The word “moser” refers to a Jew who informs on another Jew to secular authorities.

“They stopped the praying until she left,” said her husband, Boorey Deutsch, 26. “Some woman tried telling my wife to stay there and not leave. She shouldn’t care what they say. But my wife ended up leaving.”

“She felt horrible and mistreated. They treat survivors as if they are the abusers,” Deutsch fumed to The Post.

Deutsch and his wife have suffered harassment ever since she first accused Nechemya Weberman, 54, of sexually abusing her after she was sent to him for counseling as a 12-year-old.

“Several weeks ago, someone threw eggs at Boorey’s store,” a law-enforcement source said.

The gutsy victim testified at Weberman’s trial that she was afraid to report the abuse because he was “supposedly a god in Williamsburg” and nobody would believe her.

“Satmar would have kicked me out, and if Satmar kicks you out, nobody accepts you,” she said during the trial last year.
The pressure for her to drop the case against Weberman was at times overwhelming.

At one point, three Orthodox Jewish brothers, Jacob, Joseph and Hertzka Berger, tried to intimidate Deutsch and his then-girlfriend into dropping the case by ripping down the “kosher” certificate at his Williamsburg restaurant.

The men pleaded guilty in June in a deal that gave them no jail time.

Last month, Abraham Rubin, 49, also pleaded guilty to offering Deutsch and the victim $500,000 to leave the country so that the case against Weberman could be dropped.

Weberman — who is married with 10 children — is currently serving his 50-year sentence at the maximum-security Shawangunk Correctional Facility in upstate Wallkill.

Additional reporting by Reuven Fenton.

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