Lakewood Yeshiva Teacher Sex-Assault Trial Begins
By Kathleen Hopkins
TOMS RIVER — The boy at the center of a sexual abuse case within Lakewood’s Orthodox Jewish community had no friends in fifth and sixth grade and none in the summer camp he attended those years, he shyly testified on Wednesday. So when camp counselor Yosef Kolko let the boy sing solos with the camp choir and gave him the lead role in the play the summer after fifth grade, in 2007, that made the boy feel “awesome,” he told a jury of nine men and seven women. “I respected him,” the boy, now 16, said of Kolko. “He was one of the cool counselors.” The following August, the boy returned to Yachad, the summer camp that is run by the Yeshiva Bais Hatorah School on Swarthmore Avenue in Lakewood. He and some other boys in his class told the head counselor they wouldn’t return to camp unless Kolko was their counselor, he said. “I looked up to him,” the boy told the jury. “I tried to develop a personal relationship, because there was an inkling to be close to the counselor, and because I didn’t have any friends.” And Kolko seemed to single out the boy, according to the boy’s testimony. The counselor took the boy alone to an empty classroom at the camp on one occasion during the summer of 2008, and to a storage room at the camp that was off-limits to everyone else, the boy said. “It was a little exciting because no one was allowed to be up there,” the boy said. During those encounters, Kolko asked the boy to “lean my body against him,” he said. The first time, it seemed to the boy that Kolko had an erection, the boy testified. The next time, “I believe again he had an erection. He put his arms over me and his hands in my crotch area.” The encounters continued that year and into the beginning of the 2009, in a wooded area, in Kolko’s car on the outskirts of Lakewood, and even in the basement of a synagogue, the boy told the jury. Kolko would pick up the boy for their secret meetings in his car, near his house but not in front of it, he testified. The boy described a series of molestation and oral sex the two engaged in, at Kolko’s behest, that made the boy feel uncomfortable, the boy testified. He told the jury that on one occasion, Kolko made him lie face down in the rear seat of his car, with his pants down, and attempted to have anal sex with the him, but the boy resisted. Despite feeling uncomfortable about the encounters, “I wanted to keep meeting him, because I wanted to make a relationship or keep a relationship with him,” the boy told the jury. “Why?” asked Assistant Ocean County Prosecutor Laura Pierro. “Because I didn’t have any friends at this time,” the boy said. “Even though it was strange, I still considered him a friend.” The boy was 11 years old at the time and teased by his classmates because of a medical condition. Kolko was in his mid-30s. Kolko, now 39, of Geffen Drive, Lakewood is on trial before state Superior Court Judge Francis R. Hodgson in a case that is being closely watched by Lakewood’s Orthodox Jewish community. Kolko, who was a counselor at Yachad as well as a teacher at Yeshiva Orchos Chaim in Lakewood, is charged with aggravated sexual assault, attempted aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault and child endangerment. The case highlights how the Orthodox community sought to resolve the issue internally, without notifying secular authorities, and it spotlights the courage of a young boy and his family who had the fortitude to go outside their religious community to the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office to seek justice, Pierro said in her opening argument to the jury. Family shunned The family, ostracized by their community, has moved out of Lakewood, and the boy’s father, a prominent rabbi, resigned his prestigious teaching position, Pierro said. The boy said his family moved to Michigan, where he plays in a band and has a job selling suits. Kolko’s defense attorney, Michael F. Bachner, told the jury in his opening statement that the child lied about the abuse. In cross-examining the boy, Bachner insinuated that he made up stories about molestation because Kolko accused him of stealing and being a delinquent. The boy replied that wasn’t true. The trial is expected to resume at 9 a.m. today.
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