Rabbi Israel Weingarten listens as his daughter testifies during his federal trial for allegedly sexually abusing her starting when she was 9.Rabbi Israel Weingarten cross examined his own daughter, whom he is accused of molesting, bringing the now 27-year-old to tears.The ex-wife of a rabbi accused of molesting his daughter testified Thursday that she found them together in bed, and the teen revealed that she had been sexually abused.Faige Weingarten recalled a Friday night about nine years ago when they were living in Belgium. She had slept in another room after arguing with her husband. She heard their infant crying and went to the bedroom, where she found Weingarten and their then-16-year-old daughter in bed.
"He said, 'Look, we are dressed,' but with the covers half down, I saw the middle of his body was naked," she said in Brooklyn Federal Court through a Yiddish translator.
A few days later, the daughter confided to her she had been sodomized, according to Faige Weingarten.
"She became disgusted for the rest of her life - he made her life disgusting," she said.
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http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/03/05/2009-03-05_exwife_rabbi_israel_weingarten_halfnude_.htmlEx-wife: Rabbi Israel Weingarten half-nude with our daughter
BY John Marzulli
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Friday, March 6th 2009, 8:53 AM
Jane Rosenberg Rabbi Israel Weingarten cross-examined his daugther in court Tuesday.
The ex-wife of a rabbi accused of molesting his daughter testified Thursday that she found them together in bed, and the teen revealed that she had been sexually abused.
Before she began answering the prosecutor's questions, Faige Weingarten waived her spousal privilege and told the judge she wanted to testify against her ex-husband, Israel Weingarten, who prosecutors say began abusing the girl in 1990 when she was 9.
The case is being heard in Brooklyn because Weingarten is accused of passing through JFK Airport on the family's frequent travels to Belgium.
Faige Weingarten recalled a Friday night about nine years ago when they were living in Belgium. She had slept in another room after arguing with her husband. She heard their infant crying and went to the bedroom, where she found Weingarten and their then-16-year-old daughter in bed.
"He said, 'Look, we are dressed,' but with the covers half down, I saw the middle of his body was naked," she said in Brooklyn Federal Court through a Yiddish translator.
A few days later, the daughter confided to her she had been sodomized, according to Faige Weingarten.
"She became disgusted for the rest of her life - he made her life disgusting," she said.
The rabbi, who is representing himself in the case, complained to Judge John Gleeson that the translator misunderstood Faige's answer about his father's ailing health at the time of the alleged sexual abuse.
Gleeson was incredulous. "And you think that was the important part?" he shot back.
Earlier, the rabbi reduced his son to tears during a bizarre cross-examination about a suicide letter the boy had written.
"Is it possible it could get any worse than this?" said the defendant's legal adviser, Barry Rhodes.
jmarzulli@nydailynews.com
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http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--rabbiontrial0303mar03,0,5891609.storyRabbi cross-examines daughter at NY sex trial
By TOM HAYS
Associated Press Writer
March 3, 2009
A woman who says her ultra-orthodox rabbi father molested her for much of her youth confronted him Tuesday under tense circumstances: as he cross-examined her at his own sex-abuse trial. The defendant, Israel Weingarten, decided to be his own defense lawyer, setting up what a frustrated judge called an "awkward" and "fairly untenable" situation once he got the chance to directly question the government's star witness. The woman, now 27, initially turned her head and wept when her father stepped up to a podium normally used by lawyers in a Brooklyn courtroom. But she slowly regained her composure, even lashing out at him when he questioned why she didn't come forward as a teenager with the shocking allegations. "My feeling from your molesting me was utmost fear and blackmail and years of torture because you hit me, because I told my mother," she said. "Didn't I get hit enough?" Weingarten, 59, a member of the Satmar community in Monsey, N.Y., was arrested and jailed without bail last year on charges he traveled outside the country to have sex with a minor. In a rambling opening statement, he said he had been falsely accused by a daughter who rebelled against a strict upbringing, and suggested that a neighbor was the actual abuser. The daughter, one of eight children, told the FBI in 2003 that she was victimized since age 9 while living with her family in Hasidic communities in Belgium, and on trips to England and Israel. Prosecutors allege Weingarten sexually abused her, sometimes on a daily basis, and moved the family around to help conceal his crimes. The accuser has since changed her name, but came forward and identified herself in open court as the daughter of the rabbi on Monday when she first took the witness stand to detail the accusations. She has appeared in court wearing an orange scarf and pants suit, and with her hair down _ a mainstream look she said her father had scorned. She told jurors on Tuesday that once she grew up, she left the faith and hoped "to forget everything that happened to me," mindful that her father had warned her she "would never be able to prove it." But she went public with her charges at the urging of her mother, who was embroiled in a custody dispute with her father. Weingarten, though assisted by two lawyers, struggled with his cross-examination. His questions meandered, and he often interrupted his daughter's answers by scolding her, which visibly angering U.S. District Judge Gleeson. "I'm not sure where this cross is going, but I do know this: You are not going to lecture this witness," the judge told him. The father peppered his daughter with questions about her admission that as a teen she briefly fell in love with an older man living next door in Belgium. Though she claimed she never had sex with him, she testified she was thrilled "that I finally got to be with another guy besides my father." Her father reminded her that the neighbor was married with children, asking, "Didn't you feel that was wrong?" "I didn't do much thinking," she responded. "I went with my heart." The woman was to resume testifying on Wednesday. ===================================================================
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/03/02/2009-03-02_daughter_of_orthodox_rabbi_tells_court_o.htmlDaughter of Orthodox rabbi tells court of father's sexual abuse
BY Scott Shifrel
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Tuesday, March 3rd 2009, 12:03 AM
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.
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http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/03/09/2009-03-09_rabbi_israel_weingartens_daughter_claims.htmlRabbi Israel Weingarten's daughter claims mother was sexual abuser in trial
BY John Marzulli
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Monday, March 9th 2009, 9:33 PM
Jane Rosenberg Rabbi Israel Weingarten cross examines his daughter Chaneh, during his molestation trial on Monday in Brooklyn.
Enough already.
A federal judge refused Monday to allow a rabbi charged with molesting his daughter to turn the courtroom into the "Jerry Springer" show.
The defendant, Israel Weingarten, who is acting as his own attorney, called two grown daughters Monday to testify that it was their mother who was the child molester, not him.
When Weingarten said he planned to call three more children, ages 13 to 18, to take the stand in Brooklyn Federal Court, the judge had enough.
"Your 13-year-old son is going to testify about sexual abuse by your wife?" Judge John Gleeson asked.
Weingarten replied that the boy would testify to physical abuse by his mother.
"I'm not going to permit it," Gleeson snapped.
Earlier the judge had allowed Weingarten's daughters Chayeh, 23, and Chaneh, 20, to testify that their mother had sexually abused their older sister, who claims she was repeatedly sodomized by her father starting in 1990 when she was 9 and continuing until she was 18.
Chayeh Weingarten testified her mother had sexually abused the victim and that she was warned by the victim that the Mafia would get her if she came forward.
The defendant is charged with transporting his daughter across international borders for the purpose of committing sexual crimes against her.
In her closing argument, prosecutor Rachel Nash asked the jury to consider the humiliation and embarrassment the victim endured by speaking publicly of the abuse.
The rabbi and his wife are divorced and he has claimed that she fabricated the abuse allegations as part of the bitter breakup.
jmarzulli@nydailynews.com
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