Daughter tells court of father's sexual abuse

from Child Abuse by exposemolesters

Rabbi Israel Weingarten listens as his daughter testifies during his federal trial for allegedly sexually abusing her starting when she was 9.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/03/02/2009-03-02_daughter_of_orthodox_rabbi_tells_court_o.html

Daughter of Orthodox rabbi tells court of father's sexual abuse

BY Scott Shifrel
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Tuesday, March 3rd 2009, 12:03 AM

• Rabbi held on molest charges

The 27-year-old daughter of an Orthodox rabbi tearfully described in Brooklyn Federal Court the day 18 years ago when her father began sexually abusing her.

"I felt alone, scared, confused," the woman said as her gray-bearded father sat on the other side of the cavernous courtroom shaking his head.

She said her mother was heating chicken soup and the family was gathering in the kitchen when her father, Israel Weingarten, called the girl to a bedroom and assaulted her.

She said she felt "confusion, deafening silence" after the initial incident, which she says was followed by years of abuse.

Wearing a bright orange scarf and a pants suit, the woman said music, books and long dresses were forbidden in the home and the tight-knit community she has now left.

Weingarten, defending himself against charges that he brought his eldest daughter between homes in Belgium and New York for sex, wore the traditional black leggings and long jacket of a Satmar as he gave a rambling and bizarre opening statement.

"I'm not used to talk to people like you," he said in heavily accented English. He praised his daughter, but said she changed after an alleged affair with a neighbor.

And he repeatedly tried to show that religious Jews are not that different, once even parting his jacket and exposing leggings he said are similar to those worn by George Washington.

"You see these pants, it remind you of something?" he said holding his jacket open during what was surely one of the strangest sights seen in a federal courtroom. "I'm not that much different when it comes to our forefathers ... the only thing is, we didn't want to change."

The testimony continues Tuesday, to be followed by Weingarten's eldest son and his ex-wife.

sshifrel@nydailynews.com

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http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--rabbiontrial0302mar02,0,5432855.story

Newsday.com

Daughter accuses NY rabbi father of sex abuse

By TOM HAYS

Associated Press Writer

March 2, 2009

The daughter of an ultra-orthodox Jewish rabbi tearfully testified Monday how her father molested her for the first time at age 9, starting a pattern of abuse that prosecutors say lasted several years.

Afterward, "I felt alone, scared and confused," the woman, now 27, told a jury at her father's sex abuse trial.

The testimony was part of an unusual scene in federal court in Brooklyn, where the rabbi, Israel Weingarten, has chosen to represent himself and could end up cross-examining his own daughter.

In a rambling opening statement, the jailed Weingarten said he had been falsely accused by a daughter who rebelled against a strict upbringing, and suggested that a neighbor was the actual abuser. He also asked jurors not to judge him by his conservative black clothing, comparing it to that worn by George Washington.

"I'm not that different when it comes to our forefathers who were fighting for freedom," he said.

Weingarten, 59, a member of the Satmar community in upstate Monroe, N.Y., was arrested last year on charges he traveled outside the country to have sex with a minor. Prosecutors have said that if convicted, he faces up to 210 months in prison under sentencing guidelines.

The daughter, the second of eight children, first told the FBI in 2003 that she was victimized while living with her family in Hasidic communities in Belgium, and on trips to England and Israel.

"For at least seven years, the defendant sexually abused his daughter on a weekly, and sometimes daily basis," court papers said. "He moved her to different countries in order to continue the abuse and to escape any threat he would be apprehended as word of his abuse began to spread."

The daughter took the stand as the government's first witness wearing an orange scarf and pants suit, and with her hair down _ a mainstream look she said Weingarten forbade while growing up. She claimed her father had told that wearing red, orange or purple was wrong because it "reminds you of a woman's period."

She testified he first violated her one Sunday night after dinner, when he called her into his bedroom.

The daughter was to resume testifying on Tuesday.