Will Hasidic Child Sex Abuse Whistleblower Sam Kellner Ever Be Vindicated?
Failed Messiah
Hasidic child sex abuse whistleblower Samuel Kellner may – finally – see the specious criminal charges against him dropped on Friday. But even if that happens, is that enough? Or should Brooklyn DA Ken Thompson investigate and prosecute the people who allegedly set up Kellner and tried to have him wrongly convicted? Hasidic child sex abuse whistleblower Samuel Kellner may – finally – see the specious criminal charges against him dropped on Friday. Prosecutors working for the previous DA, Charles J. Hynes, tried to drop the case before this but were overruled by Hynes and Michael Vecchione, Hynes' Rackets Bureau chief who, along with Hynes, just happens to be a close friend of Arthur Aidala, the attorney for an accused hasidic pedophile, Rabbi Baruch Lebovits, whose family – and Aidala and another Lebovits attorney, Alan Dershowitz – are allegedly behind what many say are the false accusations against Kellner. Lebovits allegedly molested Kellner's son. He also allegedly molested many others. Kellner helped police get enough evidence to have Lebovits indicted and put on trial. Lebovits was convicted, but that conviction was overturned on a technicality, and the appellate court noted that much of the evidence against Lebovits remains strong. It is in the context of that appeal process that the apparently false allegations against Kellner were made. Lebovits is awaiting retrial. Kellner was indicted largely on evidence provided the then-DA Charles Hynes by Aidala, Dershowitz and the Lebovits family. Almost all of that evidence has been shown to be false or misrepresented. Kellner wants the current DA, Kenneth Thompson, to investigate the alleged witness tampering he believes Aidala, Dershowitz and Lebovits's family may have committed. The problem is that Thompson, who has spent much of his first two months in office currying favor with the hasidic community – the same hasidic community that backs that accused pedophile – has shown no inclination to do so. And this, the Jewish Week's Hella Winston reports today, makes Sam Kellner very sad: “The former trial prosecutors twice wanted to dismiss my case and were overruled. And now we have a new [Brooklyn] district attorney in office [Kenneth Thompson], and he is taking almost six weeks to review it. And so I am still an indicted person. How do you like it?” Kellner, 52, asks matter of factly, before tallying up how many judges, prosecutors and district attorneys have presided over his case — four, five and two respectively, with a new judge expected this week. (At a hearing scheduled for Friday, prosecutors are expected to let the judge know whether they are moving to dismiss the case or will take it to trial.) “I must be a very dangerous guy,” he adds, his sense of the absurd fully intact.… Kellner himself is confident that “if, in the end, they will investigate what happened here and go after the intimidators, it would mean that all of this tampering and intimidation would end, that these people no longer run the streets. And that is probably worth the whole pain and suffering of my indictment because I don’t see any other way we could have accomplished this.” But, Kellner continues, if Thompson does nothing, “Where is the government that is supposed to protect me? It would be very hard to justify that another father should go to the secular court, even with a [dispensation] from the rabbis. [A dispensation Kellner had – FailedMessiah.com.] It will mean these people have won and it’s over,” he declares. “And all of this pain and suffering from the last six years has been for no cause. I can’t imagine how I will overcome it.”
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