New York Rabbi Who Has Helped Expose Child Sex Abuse ...

Daily Mail
December 13, 2012

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2247039/Nuchem-Rosenberg-New-York-rabbi-helped-expose-child-sex-abuse-doused-BLEACH.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Victim: Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg was hospitalized after being splashed in the face with what is believed to be bleach on a Brooklyn street

Polarizing: Rosenberg has been an outspoken advocate for victims of child sex abuse in the Orthodox community of Williamsburg through his blog and hotline

Injuries: Rosenberg sustained a corneal abrasion to his left eye and chemical burns on his face, but likely saved his eyesight by washing out the chemical immediately after the attack

Guilty: Rosenberg was attacked one day after Nechemya Weberman, a prominent member of the Orthodox community, was convicted of repeatedly sexually abusing a girl

Array

Justice served: The anonymous victim of Nechemya Weberman, now 18 years old, is pictured with her husband at court during Weberman's conviction

A New York City rabbi who has been advocating for victims of child sexual abuse in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community was hospitalized after someone threw what is believed to be bleach in his face.

Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg said an assailant he recognized as the son of a man he has accused of molesting boys tossed a glass filled with the chemical at him as he walked in Brooklyn's Williamsburg section Tuesday.

Police say the two were involved in an ‘ongoing dispute.’ No arrest has been made so far, but the suspected attacker is expected to turn himself in shortly.

Rosenberg runs a hotline and blog that publicizes child sexual abuse victims in the Satmar Hasidic community.

The chemical attack comes one day after a prominent member of the Orthodox community, Nechemya Weberman, was convicted of repeatedly sexually abusing a girl that had come to him for counseling.

Rosenberg said he believes the attack was connected to the verdict. Police say there didn't appear to be any link.

Speaking from Woodhull Medical Center to the New York Daily News Tuesday, the 62-year-old rabbi said he was walking down Roebling Street at around noon when his attacker walked up to him with a cup in his hand. 

'He taps on my shoulder, he says "whoops" and throws it in my face,' Rosenberg told the New York Times.

The rabbi immediately washed his eyes with water, which he later learned from his doctor likely saved his eyesight.  

A relative told the Times Rosenberg sustained a corneal abrasion to his left eye and chemical burns around his eye. 

On Monday, Weberman, 54, was convicted of 59 counts of sexual abuse of a girl in a controversial case that divided the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn.

Weberman, an unlicensed counselor, faces up to 117 years in prison when he is sentenced next month for molesting a teenager for three years beginning when she was 12 years old, JTA.org reported.

DNAinfo.comsaid that the girl was sent to Weberman for failing to adhere to the Satmar Hasidic community's strict codes of modesty.

Many Hasidic men raised money for his defense, and some members of the community still believe that he is innocent.

On the day of Weberman’s conviction, Rosenberg put up a post on his blog accusing the owner of a fish store owner in Williamsburg of abusing young boys, WPIX reported.

In the message, the sex abuse advocate wrote that the alleged molester would be the next man arrested by police. The following day, Rosenberg was splashed with bleach in what he claims to be a retaliatory attack committed by the fish store owner’s son.

Rosenberg’s advocacy for sex abuse victims has earned him many enemies in the tight-knit, secretive Orthodox community over the years. According to the rabbi, he has received multiple threats, but police have ignored his pleas for help.

The threats were so frightening, Rosenberg said, that he closed down a hotline he had set up in February 2007 for victims of abuse.

'And I am still afraid for my life, even though the hotline is closed, because they are still after me,' Rosenberg told the Daily News.

The NYPD confirmed that Rosenberg has approached the authorities three times since July regarding threats to his life, but said there is little they can do.

Rosenberg has been subjected to intimidation after a rabbinical decree in the form of flyers written in Hebrew appeared across Williamsburg in August calling him a liar and urging members of the community to shun him.

‘If you see him, scream [dirty Jew], [evil person], [immoral] & spit on him,’ read one text message sent to Rosenberg's phone.

Death threats came in calls to his cell phone, he said. In 2008, Rosenberg was formally ostracized by a group of rabbis and religious judges, and barred from local synagogues for his crusading.

‘The public must beware, and stay away from him, and push him out of our camp,’ that ban, printed in local newspapers, said in Hebrew. Rosenberg said shortly afterward, he was grazed in the forehead by a bullet from a BB gun.