Haredi Pedophile Rabbi Yosef Kolko Wants to Withdraw Guilty Plea
By Shmarya Rosenberg
An attorney for an admitted haredi pedophile has now told a New Jersey court that the pedophile wants to withdraw his guilty plea entered last May, the Associated Press reported.
Rabbi Yosef Kolko pleaded guilty on May 13 in the middle of his trial. He now says he was pressured by his Lakewood haredi community to enter that guilty plea.
The attorney for the former haredi camp counselor filed the motion, apparently on Friday.
Kolko had originally pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual assault, attempted aggravated sex assault, sexual assault and child endangerment. The victim was 11 when the abuse began in August 2008.
The victim’s family was savagely harassed and ostracized by the Lakewood haredi community after they brought the accusation of sex abuse against Kolko to police after haredi rabbis failed to handle the it internally. The boy’s father, who was a prominent rabbi in the community lost his job and eventually was forced to move his family to Michigan to escape the harassment – much of it endorsed and allegedly orchestrated by Rabbi Yisroel Belsky of Yeshiva Torah Vodaas in Brooklyn.
When he entered his plea, Judge Francis R. Hodgson asked Kolko if he had received any promises or was threatened or coerced by anyone in exchange for entering the guilty plea.
There were things that were “not part of the court system,” Kolko reportedly answered in a soft voice.
Kolko’s attorney has until the end of September to file papers in support of the motion to withdraw Kolko’s guilty plea.
A hearing on that motion is now scheduled for October 17.
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