By Nicole Bode
New York Daily News
June 16, 2009
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/06/16/2009-06-16_teen_molested_as_a_child_by_queens_baker_confronts.html
A Queens baker who admitted molesting a 10-year-old boy isn't going to prison - but he's been booted from the kitchen.
The Rabbinical Council of Queens banned Issac Ebstein, 50, from Queens Kosher Pita in Kew Gardens Hills after he pleaded guilty to luring the boy with cookies and abusing him in 2002.
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| The Queens Pita Bakery where a baker is accused of having lured a boy into the back of the bakery in 2002 and molested him.
Photo by DeCrescenzo |
The council told Ebstein, 50, he had to divest himself of ownership because he was convicted of a "crime of moral turpitude" - or the shop would lose kosher certification.
A council spokesman declined to comment, but a source said Ebstein agreed. Ebstein's victim confronted him in court Tuesday, describing how he turned to drugs to mask his secret pain.
"I've been wanting to do this since the day this happened," the boy, now 17, told Ebstein, who hung his head in shame.
"The pain that I've been through, words can't describe it. You ruined my life. It's not fair. It's not right." He listed the ways the abuse had destroyed his young life: "I lost my respect for religion, use of drugs, loss of self respect."
"If you have done this to anybody else, tell someone. Let the kids get help," the teen added. "I'm sorry," the defendant said.
The abuse came to light when the victim approached Rabbi Yakov Horowitz, a child abuse advocate who works with the Orthodox Jewish community and urged him to go to authorities.
Ebstein is getting a year's probation for attempted sexual abuse and attempted child endangerment.
He was released without bail and does not have to register as a sexual predator as long as he completes a year of counseling and monitoring.
Prosecutors said the deal spared the victim from testifying about his ordeal.
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