Rabbi slams Brooklyn DA after attacker gets plea deal

By Josh Saul
New York Post
April 29, 2014

http://nypost.com/2014/04/28/rabbi-slams-brooklyn-da-after-attacker-gets-plea-deal/

Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg, left, is critical of Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson, right, after his attacker was given a no-jail plea deal.

A Brooklyn rabbi and child sex-abuse advocate slammed segments of the Orthodox Jewish community and new Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson on Monday after the man who threw bleach in his eyes got off with a no-jail plea deal.

Meilech Schnitzler, 38, was hit with a raft of charges including assault for the December 2012 bleach attack on Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg in Williamsburg, but Schnitzler was allowed to plead guilty to just one count of assault in a deal that gave him five years probation but no time behind bars.

“They threw bleach on me because I’m a child activist and they want the child meat for free,” said Rosenberg, 64. “We thought Thompson was going to give us a better chance to fight the pedophiles, but it looks like the office is still the same with the community pressure.”

Rosenberg said he was targeted because of his support for the victim sexually abused by Satmar Hasidic youth counselor Nechemya Weberman. At the time of Schnitzler’s arrest, then-NYPD Commisioner Ray Kelly said Schnitzler’s father had been named on Rosenberg’s anti-abuse website.

Schnitzler defense attorney Izzy Fried said the bleach assault wasn’t premeditated and that his client was holding bleach at the time because he was cleaning the windows of his fish shop.

“It was an argument that got heated and all he had in his hand was the bleach so he chucked it at him and some of it got in his eyes,” Fried said.

A law-enforcement source noted the no-jail plea deal was appropriate given Schnitzler had no prior arrests and Rosenberg suffered minor injuries once he flushed out his eyes with water.