Tag Archives: Satmar

Nechemya Weberman’s 103 Year Sentence Vacated, Resentenced to 18 Years

The hearing began with the judge stating that he would be granting the motion to vacate Weberman’s original sentence. Weberman had originally been sentenced to 103 years, but that sentence had been reduced by law to 50 years because of caps on incarceration. Weberman was then given an opportunity to address the court and his victim, who was present in court with her husband, her lawyer, friends, and advocates.  

Weberman read from a prepared statement saying that he was not there to revisit the past. He said that he stood ready to take full, unconditional responsibility for the harm he caused. He said that he had misused the position of authority that was given to him and had desecrated God’s name. Turning to his victim he told her that she deserved a protector, and instead he had violated her. He told her that she had done nothing to deserved what had happened to her, that she had been an innocent child.

He then said that his time served – 13 years – had paid his debt to her, and that he stood before the court as a changed man. He pleaded to his victim, saying that he wasa truly, and deeply sorry.

The ADA, Joe Alexis, then asked Weberman to be more specific about what he was apologizing for. He asked Weberman if he accepts that his victim was 12 years old, and Weberman said he didn’t remember exactly, but that she was a child. The ADA then asked Weberman what specifically he had done to his victim. Weberman said it was sexual abuse. When asked to be more specific, Weberman bristled, saying he didn’t want to get graphic. His family was sitting in the courtroom, including two of his children.

He said that he’d been in jail for 13 years and couldn’t remember the specifics well enough to graphically say what it was, but it was sexual abuse, and that he didn’t want to think about it.  The ADA asked him if he didn’t remember anything about it, and he said that he remembered what he’d said – that it was sexual abuse, but that he wouldn’t be using graphic language and it wouldn’t be true if he said it was this or that. The ADA asked him what he did remember. Weberman said “let’s call it sexual abuse.” The ADA pushed him, saying that Weberman kept saying that, but what did it specifically mean.

Weberman again, getting impatient, repeated that it was sexual abuse, inappropriate touching, inappropriate things, sexual abuse. The ADA then asked him if he had put his hands on his child victim’s breasts. Weberman said that he wouldn’t remember exactly how and where the abuse was. The ADA asked him if he was saying he didn’t remember if he did that. Weberman said that he would paint a picture of it, but not exactly say specifics, but that he knew what he did was wrong. The ADA cut him off and said he was glad Weberman was saying it was wrong, but pushed him again asking if Weberman had put his hands on his victims breasts while she was a child.

Weberman, who participated in the hearing remotely and had one lawyer with him and one in court, turned to the lawyer next to him instead of answering. His court lawyer objected saying this wasn’t an allocution, he was already convicted. The judge seemed upset at the games being plated and forcefully said that while Weberman didn’t have to say anything he can do what he wants, but that the judge had to decide where justice lay and that Weberman was making his job harder.

After a long pause, Weberman answered yes to the original question. The ADA then asked if Weberman had only said that because of what the judge said. Weberman said that it happened, he put his hands on her breasts. The ADA then asked if Weberman had put his hands on his victim’s buttocks. Weberman said he didn’t remember. The ADA, expressing credulity at that, moved on, asking Weberman if he had placed his hands on her vagina. Weberman said he didn’t really remember.

The judge, looking annoyed, said that he found it hard to believe that Weberman didn’t remember, but that they didn’t have to ask any more questions. The ADA asked to continue to make a record, and then asked if Weberman remembered putting his mouth on his victim’s breasts. Weberman said that he did. The ADA asked if Weberman had put her mouth on his penis. Weberman recoiled and denied doing that. The ADA remarked for the record that Weberman had said he never did that. Someone in the crowd audibly said “Baruch Hashem” and the court officer snapped at him to be quiet.

After a long pause Weberman admitted to putting his victim’s mouth on his penis. The ADA then asked where this had taken place, and after a short back and forth Weberman said that it had happened in his office. The ADA asked if Weberman’s victim had been his patient, and Weberman said that she wasn’t a patient because he wasn’t a rabbi, he was a rabbi and she had come to talk to him. The ADA followed up clarifying if she had come for counseling, and after another back and forth Weberman said that she had been coming for rabbinic counseling.

The ADA then asked if in addition to the crimes they’d already discussed he had also committed an additional crime in her home when he was laying in her bed with her. Weberman looked confused and disdainful, and took a long pause before asking if the question was if he had done anything in her home, and then answered yes. The ADA then pressed on, asking if he had rubbed his penis against her vagina while laying in bed. Weberman said no, and turned to his lawyer to talk briefly before asking for the question to be repeated. After a long pause he said yes.

After that tortured exchange, Weberman’s victim spoke.

She started out describing how Weberman wouldn’t flinch when he burned her. His need for control and power over a child, she said, turned him into a monster who had violated her body, her emotions, her soul, and her wellbeing as a child. That violation, she said, didn’t stop, but followed her into adulthood. The cruel psychological and sexual abuse was so severe, she said, that 10 years of therapy hadn’t erased the wounds. She said she was grateful to God for creating the life that she now finds worth living, but that she’d be lying if she said that in that life worth living she didn’t experience turmoil in such important areas of her life.

She said that she accepted that what she experienced may never go away, that the scars were too deep from the abuse she experienced while she was developing. The impact, she said, was woven into her developing soul. She then said that it was our responsibility to protect the public interest, to protect vulnerable children. She invited the judge to see the bigger picture, that this wasn’t just a case about one violated child, but about an older man who was well aware of what he was doing, and strategically placed himself in positions of power, including on the advisory board of her elementary school, taking an elitist place in the community as a member of the Malachim, and placing himself in a position of rabbinic authority in the community.

Additionally, she continued, placing himself as a counselor working without a license to work with children, teens, and vulnerable adults and couples, all arranged by himself to get access to not one but dozens of struggling children, teens, and adults. His highly regarded position, she continued, gave him authority of them, and there was no question he used his position to sadistically violate and control his victims for years.

Both throughout and after the trial, she said, she received many messages from women, girls, and men, all of whom were survivors of Weberman. Many, she said, came to the trial in quiet support, wishing to testify but barred by the statute of limitations. Other, she said, were still within the statute of limitations but were too scared to come forward because they had seen what the community had done to her, harassing her father, ostracizing her family, closing their businesses, throwing relatives out of yeshiva. They were scared they wouldn’t survive, she said.

Weberman, she said, matched the description of a God complex, behaving with a deep sense of control over others, using threats, coercing, and messing with the minds of children while sexually abusing them. His uncontained need for control, she said, led him to burn her while laughing, mocking her when she started to bleed as he penetrated her, utterly without care for the human being he was shattering.

This case, she said, was not the kind of case where a judge would be showing mercy to an innocent man suffering for a crime he’d long paid for. Weberman, she said, earned every moment of the 103 years, and even then, there was no doubt in her mind, she said, that there’s a specific place in hell for him and his supporters. Society, adults, this court’s obligation, she said, was to keep others, especially young, at-risk kids safe, and anyone turning a blind eye, or helping those dangerous to the public held deep responsibility.

The first sentencing, she said, was the first time she saw that perhaps the world was not corrupt, that maybe there was some justice and safety. Despite knowing, she said, that not everyone in the system was corrupt, it took only one judge to make a decision against the corruption and demonstrate an unwavering commitment to protecting children. She said she was well aware that God was the ultimate judge and that he has messengers. She said she was confident the honorable judge would consider this and choose to protect children above all.

In closing she shared one comment from researcher Carl Hanson who wrote an 2024 article about the likelihood of recidivism by the 5% highest risk sex offenders. They had the following features, she said: first, sexual deviance, and pedophilia. Second, antisocial traits, including engaging in a pattern of disregard for the wellbeing of victims without remorse. Third, manipulation, grooming, and controlling people to serve their power or interests through a deliberate process to build trust and gain control of people for the purpose of abusing them. Fourth, cross-age and cross-gender victimization. Weberman, she said, had all 4 risk factors, and was clearly in the highest risk category for offenders.

Many offenders, she said, have a low risk of reoffending, but the top 5% had over a 40% chance, and the top 1% had over 67% chance of reoffending. Weberman, she said, would continue to molest if released, especially due to the fact that he had and has community support, will be welcomed back, and will be trusted by the community. He may resume mentoring, she said. It would be a tragedy, she said, if someone else is back in front of the judge in 5 years describing similar abuse. Addressing the judge she said, you can prevent that.

Weberman’s video had cut out at some point toward the end of the victim’s statement, and it took a while to get him back. When he got back on, the lawyer with him said that the video had cut out in the middle of the statement. The judge asked if he wanted the rest of it read out from the court reporter. Weberman asked if it was very long and said he didn’t really care. The judge read out the portion of the statement that Weberman had missed.

Addressing the victim, the ADA said that she was remarkable in every regard, that she had survived unspeakable crimes while a child, and that her abuser was a fully grown man who had abused his position of power and authority to prey on her. He said that there were no words to describe the courage she showed during every moment of these crimes. Turning back to the judge the ADA said that they stood by the conviction, and said that candidly he had come to court with prepared remarks, but that he was going to deviate from them.

Weberman had read a prepared statement, he said, but when asked specific questions about what he’d done his memory failed, and he voiced a series of denials only to then eventually admit it. 103 years, the ADA said, was disproportionate, which was why they didn’t oppose the 440 motion. In preparing for the hearing, he said, they had reviewed sentencing for defendants convicted of similar crimes and the average time was between 15-25 years. The ADA said that he had been authorized to recommend 15 years but that he wouldn’t be doing that. Instead, he said, he would be leaving it to the court to determine an appropriate sentence between 15 and 25 years.

He followed by saying that the defense answers to questions saying he couldn’t remember was confusing to him because no one could forget something like that, and he found it troubling that Weberman had said he couldn’t remember. Especially, he continued, since Weberman’s victim could never forget them.

It should be noted that Weberman, in his brief, had been seeking a resentencing to 13 years, essentially the time he’d already served, and was hoping to be let out of jail today. The DA’s office authorizing the ADA to ask for 15 years was not much different. A sentence of 15 years, 13 and change of which had already been served, would have been immediately eligible for parole, so while they would put on a good show of pretending that they weren’t just rolling over and caving to Weberman, in fact they would be. Weberman could have been out within weeks if the sentence had been 15 years. Weberman took that away from himself by acting with contempt and sneering at the questions being asked by the DA about what he’d done to his victim.

Finally, Weberman’s court lawyer, Donna Aldea, argued against the recommendation made by the ADA. Her arguments largely centered around the sentence being disproportionate to other sentences for similar crimes committed in recent years. She referenced letters by a number of judges submitted along with the motion saying that Weberman’s sentence had been disproportionate, and brought up flaws in the arguments raised by the cases cited by the victim’s lawyer. She also fiercely contested the narrative that had been built around the additional victims who had come forward during the original trial saying that those were hearsay, and wondering out loud where they’d been for the last 10 years if there was any substance to their claims.

Weberman’s lawyer even went as far to cast doubt on the victim’s trial testimony saying that she had been unable to remember specific details about incidents while testifying and on cross examination. She then referenced the character letters submitted on behalf of Weberman, She concluded asking the judge to sentence Weberman to time served, a sentence proportional to other sentences in similar cases.

Weberman then spoke again briefly to reiterate that he took full responsibility for repeatedly sexually abusing his victim. He said he was really sorry that he didn’t answer right away, and that he’d been shocked by the questions.

Finally, the judge rendered his sentence. He started by saying that they were there to achieve justice, but that justice wouldn’t be done that day because there was no undoing the harm that had been caused. He said that he’d read in an article that there is perhaps no moment in the work of a judge more harrowing and morally demanding than sentencing, the moment at which he or she decrees the suffering of another person. Then again, he said, we can’t just look at justice as ideal because it is a weighty reality. The offender’s actions, he said, can’t be the final word. Where does justice lie?

Listening to everyone’s submissions, he said, it’s obvious to the court that the original sentence of 103, even as it was reduced to 50 years, is unduly harsh and severe even given the horrible physical and emotional betrayal. It doesn’t reflect a proportionate balance of justice, he said. Therefore, he continued, he sentenced Weberman to 18 years, plus 10 years of supervision, which he said remained a substantial and meaningful penalty that recognizes the seriousness of the offense, promotes and achieves respect for law, and is proportional.   

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I Have a Dream

In my last post I referenced a Mishpacha article that characterized the bloggers who cover sexual abuse in our community as “angry.” In the response I wrote to Mishpacha I explained that the anger that the community sees in those bloggers is the result of years of indifference toward survivors, and the outrage at the lengths to which the community goes to quiet survivors and protect abusers. I would characterize myself as an angry blogger. I try being a little more moderate most of the time, but I can’t help it sometimes; sometimes I just can’t hold it all in; I can’t see the situation objectively and dispassionately, and the anger I try to keep in check explodes outward, channeled into the biting words of a caustic blog post.

I didn’t start out as an angry blogger. When I first got involved in the subject, I was warned by the people I worked with not to get involved with those bloggers. They explained to me the dangers of descending into that tar-pit. Once mired, I was warned, it would be very hard to extricate myself. I heeded their advice and tried reaching out through my writing to the very organizations that my now colleagues spat on in their posts.

The first big project I undertook was trying to get a meeting with the powers that be at Agudah—the bane of every blogger in the abuse-coverage world. Agudah. Mere mention of that organization can bring some people to apoplexy. The way I saw it, though, they were doing a disservice to the very people they were trying to help. While it’s true that the Yeshivish world seems very closed to dealing with abuse, and seemingly prefers believing that it can’t happen rather than acknowledging and dealing with the issue, their children are in no less danger than the children of people who do know how to properly handle abuse and abusers. While the stories I’d heard at the time did gall me, and I was inclined to be upset with the community for causing that pain, those children helped focus me on reaching across the aisle.

I was a young idealist at the time. As a young frum Jew who looked like a part of the community I was trying to change, I figured that Agudah would sooner deal with me than any of those ”angry bloggers.” I reached out to an Agudah spokesperson; we exchanged a few emails, and set a time for a phone conversation. We covered everything from the community’s aversion to mentioning anything related to sex, be it abuse or between consenting people, why I believed the community so adamantly refused to believe that abuse was an actual issue, to the psak that had been issued at the Agudah convention a few years ago which permitted reporting only after a rabbi had been consulted. The spokesperson was very sympathetic to both my experience and those of my friends, but said that there was little he could do to affect change. The conversation concluded with this admonition from him: “Tafasta meruba lo tafasta,” which translates roughly as “take what you can get.”

I was furious when I hung up the phone. I thought I had gotten close, and all I had gotten was “take what you can get.” I went on Facebook and immediately became what I had sworn I’d never be. “Agudah’s official policy on abuse: Tafasta meruba lo tafasta.” I had become an angry blogger. For the next few months the articles and Facebook posts I wrote could have been featured on FailedMessiah. It was open season on Chassidim and anyone from Lakewood. I was burning the skeletons of bridges I had been trying to build.

Honestly, it feels good to cut people and communities down to size. It feels powerful. I get to sit in judgment from behind my keyboard on other people; I get to take the high ground and condemn them. The moral high ground is a great place to be. People loved my writing; I garnered praise from those in the blogger/activist community. The validation and praise felt euphoric. I felt drunk on the hatred of those around me, and the anger and frustration I held within me. Those children I had set out to protect had taken a back seat to my need to vent and inflict pain on those who had hurt me.

In all my writing, however, in all the cleverly worded barbs and sharp admonitions, there is a certain emptiness, a feeling like I am wasting my time and accomplishing nothing. The people who harbor the same hatred and anger lap up my writing and beg for more, and the people who I set out to educate stay uneducated. I feel like a dog chasing its tail.

This post was supposed to be completed and published on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but I got sidetracked in a Greenwich Village bar, and then by the inevitable hangover that followed. That being said, it’s never too late to talk about MLK.

It’s the 1960s, close to 100 years following the emancipation proclamation, and blacks, while not quite still in the cotton fields, are still treated like animals. Signs forbidding their entrance to whites only shops are still common. A white man and a black man are still forbidden from sitting on the same bench, or sitting in the same section of the bus, or even drinking from the same water fountain. They are “separate but equal,” perhaps the most tongue in cheek bit of institutionalized racism in history. To quote MLK in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, in response to why he felt he couldn’t have waited for a more opportune time to hold his protest in Birmingham:

But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim;…when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”;…when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”–then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.

I can empathize with how MLK must have felt, sitting in a jail in Birmingham for the crime of not waiting for a permit to protest the injustice he and his people had been suffering for centuries. While I’ve never suffered the way the blacks did for centuries in this country, I have seen friends of mine become suicidal, self injurious, develop eating disorders, and suffer with PTSD while waiting for their community to help them. My first emotional reaction to seeing that is sadness. Then intense anger. Then pure hatred.

The only time I’ve ever managed to overcome that hatred and write something I feel was actually constructive, was in my post titled Olam Hafuch Ra’isi. That post took weeks to write. I discarded paragraph after paragraph, countless hateful, scathing criticisms of my fellow Jews. I can’t count how many times I started writing that piece and then stopped because I couldn’t stop the hate I feel so often from coming through in my writing. After weeks, I finally managed to write that post, and it was the most popular piece I have ever written. Everyone liked it. My fellow anti-abuse activists, fellow survivors, and even people who usually dismiss “angry bloggers” with disgust, read my piece and walked away thinking. I am prouder of that piece than anything I have ever written, and I wish I could do that with every piece I write.

After finishing that piece, I understood, to a point, how MLK must have felt writing his letter from that Birmingham jail. If you have not yet read it, please do. To me, it, paired with his I Have a Dream speech, is the activist’s manifesto.

I can’t imagine that MLK never hated the white people for what they were doing to his people, but he realized that his cause could only be furthered and realized through peaceful protest, education, and most importantly, a willingness to accept white people as equals if they were willing to accept blacks as true equals. His movement was not about revenge, or making the whites suffer for what they had done once blacks gained equal rights. He envisioned a world where “little black boys and girls will be holding hands with little white boys and girls.”

That was his dream. Not a world where anyone who had wronged him would be brought before his people and be made pay for what they had done. His message was one of forgiveness, acceptance, a willingness to embrace those who had wronged him should they be willing to embrace his people in the same way. His iconic speech on the steps of the Lincoln memorial end with these words, words that make me cry every time I hear them:

[W]hen we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

This is my dream. That one day I will be able to live in my community, secure in the knowledge that abusers will be brought to justice, survivors will receive the help and support they need and deserve, bust most importantly, that all that hatred I feel toward fellow Jews will be gone, and that I will feel as comfortable around them as I do around fellow activists. My dream allows for the existence of Agudah, Satmar, Lakewood, and Skver. In my dream they all acknowledge the faults within their communities, rectify those faults, and ensure the safety and support of all survivors. In my dream the “angry blogger” has no place, not because he serves no purpose, but because his necessity becomes obviated by mutual understanding, proper education, and a commitment to safety and justice.

In the meantime I will commit to do what I can, to overcome the hatred I feel, and help foster the love and acceptance I want to exist. It will not be easy, but I will make an effort.

This is my dream. I may go my whole life never seeing my dream realized. But a man can dream, can’t he?

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