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	Pix Investigates: a Groom's Dark Secrets? By Mary Murphy WPIX January 19, 2010 http://www.wpix.com/news/local/wpix-pix-investigates-groom-secret,0,1866633.story [with video] NEW YORK -- A Borough Park rabbi is knocking a newspaper report that a bridegroom who committed suicide this past November had told a friend the rabbi sexually abused him as a youth. PIX Investigates asked Rabbi Baruch Lebovits about the report in the New York Post, which quotes an unnamed, family friend of 24-year old Motty Borger. The friend's father told the Post Borger had pointed to Rabbi Lebovits as his abuser, before he died. "It's not true," Rabbi Lebovits told PIX Investigates from the front door of his Brooklyn home. "It's a lie." Lebovits is currently facing charges of abuse involving three, different boys in Brooklyn. He has pleaded not guilty. The Medical Examiner ruled Motty Borger's death was a suicide, and police say he jumped from the 7th floor balcony of a Borough Park hotel last November 5th, while his new bride slept inside their room. The couple had married just two days before. One family friend refuses to believe it was suicide: "He did not jump," Malki Sharf, one of the wedding guests, insisted. "He wasn't feeling well the night before. He took Motrin or Tylenol. He came out here and fell over." How did he seem at the wedding, PIX Investigates asked Sharf. "Perfectly fine," she responded. Another man claimed, "On the outside, he looked like the happiest man ever." But Dr. Asher Lipner from the Jewish Board of Advocates for Children told PIX Investigates: "Therapists in the community talk about many people who struggle with suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts, all stemming from the fact these people have been abused as children." Lipner did not treat Motty Borger for any psychological trouble, but he noted: "Oftentimes, there is a sense in our community that getting married will help people deal with a lot of emotional problems…and it's possible that somebody could have been pushed to get married and felt pressure from the community, before they were ready to." The insular, ultra-Orthodox, Hasidic communities have been reluctant to publicly discuss allegations of sexual abuse. But PIX Investigates has reported on the massive campaign, in the last year, to get families to report abuse to law enforcement--even without approval from family rabbis. 24-year-old Joel Engelman, who claims he was sexually abused by his principal when he was just 8 years old, has now formed the Jewish Survivors Network: He says this of surviving molestation: "It impacts you especially, just in general, in being able to trust someone….a lot of issues of closeness, intimacy, sexual dysfunction and general depression and anxiety."
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