Hynes Credits Task Force for Intimidation Crackdown
By Adam Dickter
Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes is weighing charges in as many as four more cases of possible intimidation of Orthodox sexual abuse victims as a result of a newly formed task force, he told The Jewish Week. And he reiterated a warning, first made in May, that rabbis who “cross the line” and discourage people from taking complaints to authorities may be charged with obstructing governmental administration. In a wide-ranging interview, an often testy Hynes — stung by widespread criticism of his handling of Orthodox abuse cases — and his top prosecutor for sex crimes, Rhonnie Jaus, seemed to confirm that all cases involving sex abuse in the Orthodox community are considered part of the Kol Tzedek program regardless of whether they came about through the hotline initiative, which was intended to pierce a wall of silence in close-knit Orthodox communities . The DA, who was elected in 1989, said he is seeking support from fellow district attorneys for legislation that would require religious leaders to report any knowledge of abuse, while protecting the sanctity of communication between clergy and those who seek their counsel. Below are excerpts from the interview, which took place in Hynes’ office on June 27. A longer edited transcript of the interview appears on The Jewish Week web site (www.thejewishweek.com). Jewish Week: Can you clarify what constitutes a Kol Tzedek case? Rhonnie Jaus: We have at least 103 cases, maybe 104, because we just got another arrest. Basically Kol Tzedek cases involve sexual assault, not child sexual assault [as sometimes reported in the media]. Most of the cases, to be honest, involve allegations of child sexual assault, meaning adults looking back to child sexual assault, but they are child victims involving the ultra-Orthodox community. The majority of the cases involve victims and defendants being Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox, but there are cases where it’s just the victim and some where just the defendant [are]. We started working on Kol Tzedek pretty much at the end of 2008. We formally announced it in 2009. There are three components of the program: it’s designed to encourage members of the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox community to come forward to report allegations of sexual assault. In order to do that, the first component is community outreach and [community liaison] Henna [White] and [social worker] Chana [Widawski] are very instrumental in that, getting out to the community and educating the public about what the criminal justice system is and the fact that their names won’t be disclosed. Hynes: In fact civil rights law precludes the disclosure of a name. Jaus: The second component is we are putting measures in place the make the criminal justice system more responsive to the needs of the community … so we have the ultra-Orthodox social worker we have a hotline and we allow we encourage people to come to our offices to report the allegations instead of going to the precinct; that’s been a very big component of the success because people are fearful of being seen in the 9-0 [in Williamsburg] or the 6-6 [in Borough Park] talking to the police officer … The third component of this is we try to maintain the cooperation of the victims. The cases can drag on for two years and so that is very difficult, and very often there’s threats and all kinds of terrible things happening to them during that two-year period. So we have to refer cases to the rackets bureau and utilize social workers and Henna is very important in the program and that’s how we are able to keep people’s cooperation. Some of the cases we had worked on in ’08 were still open when we had a press conference in ’09 for the program. Hynes: I’m just curious. Why is it that that’s so terribly important in the scheme of things, unless there’s a suggestion that we’re making this thing up? I mean, for 19 years we had a handful of cases because victims were disclosed almost immediately and whether we had 47 or 147 — what’s the point? The defendants were being named and that would lead to a relentless chase to the victims. By the way, and this is my fault because I didn’t articulate it correctly … We are not embargoing names, we can’t tell the courts not to publicize the names, every time a case appears on a court docket it’s public. What we are trying to do and have been effective at doing is making it more difficult for defendants’ friends and relatives to find out names of victims; it’s that simple. Our examination of some of the Kol Tzedek cases shows that some took place before the program was launched. Jaus: We had a few cases that were still in existence before we formally announced Kol Tzedek … [they are included] because they were in existence and we utilized the services of the case worker, for example Chana Widawsky, Henna White and myself were working very closely with the victims, because one of the most important components is to maintain the cooperation. Some critics have questioned the timing of the recent arrests of four men from Williamsburg for bribery or witness tampering charges, saying or implying that it is politically motivated because of recent press reports. Hynes: That’s amateurish. That’s like saying in 2004 you have been district attorney for 14 years, why did it take so long to indict a county chairman or three corrupt judges or a corrupt assemblyman? That’s just a misunderstanding of what investigations are all about. The plain fact is that we put together a task force and the first meeting was in mid-May and one of the first cases we looked at was this one. We looked at cases that had been under previous investigation. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect the reason this young man decided to cooperate was when they ripped his hecksher off the wall. [Editor’s note: Hershy Deutsch, the boyfriend of a girl who claims she was abused by Nechemya Weberman, who was then a counselor in her school, alleges that he lost the kosher certification for a Williamsburg cafe he manages as a result of his advocacy for the victim.] I think that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, but I mean, isn’t that really silly that suddenly out of nowhere I find a case because I am being pressured by the media? I think it’s among of the most ludicrous things I’ve ever heard. Did new information come out because of the media attention? Hynes: It came about as a result of a conversation I had with Ed Koch; he said, why don’t you put together a task force and I thought that made some sense. I mean up until this time, at the beginning of these stories I thought we were doing a pretty god job and witness intimidation did not become a problem for the most part with all prosecutions we were able to achieve with Kol Tzedek, but having a task force made sense and one of the things we agreed, because Chief [Michael] Osgood [of the NYPD’s Special Victims Division] sits on that task for with me, I chair the taskforce, was that we would look at all cases where there have been allegations of intimidation and an inability to get cooperation and this was the first case that we reinvestigated. If the task force was instrumental, why wasn’t it formed earlier? Hynes: I just told you why, you don’t accept the answer. I said, Ed Koch suggested it to me and I also told you, if you were listening, I thought we were doing a pretty good job and didn’t have to worry about witness intimidation, that we were circumventing the problem. But didn’t you say witness intimidation has always been a concern? Hynes: Yes, but we closed that loophole with Kol Tzedek. You have made a policy of not disclosing Kol Tzedek suspects to protect their victims in the close-knit Orthodox community, but what about cases where the victim is not Jewish? Hynes: We’ve had allegations about non-Jewish victims being approached to be bribed. That’s one of the areas we are pursuing. Can you say anything about any upcoming witness intimidation cases that are pending? Hynes: The investigation of political corruption, of which I have some experience, or this kind of investigation, requires very, very hard work and some luck. Am I optimistic that we’re going to get other cases? Not just because of the existence of the task force, but more because of the existence of an indictment charging people from that community with some serious charges. Intimidation aside, what is your impression about how often rabbis are discouraging people from coming forward when asked for advice? Hynes: What I’ve said to [Agudath Israel vice president] Chaim Dovid Zwiebel is that his suggestion that rabbis have to screen is wrong for two reasons: One, rabbis have no expertise in this area to determine what reaches a level for reporting, and what he’s doing is putting the rabbis in a very dangerous position; because one of these days a rabbi is going to make a mistake, cross the line and tell someone under no circumstances are they to report abuse and they are going to be indicted for obstructing governmental administration. I made it very, very clear to Dovid that was my position.
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