NEW YORK
The L Magazine
Posted by Audrey Ference on Tue, Apr 24, 2012
Late last year, Brooklyn D.A. Charles Hynes announced that over the past three years, his department had arrested 85 Orthodox Jewish men and women for sex-related crimes, including crimes against children, but refused to release the suspects’ names. He would not even name the 14 people who had been found guilty of crimes and sentenced.
After continued press inquiry, including a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Jewish Daily Forward, Hynes’s office released a statement today to the Forward to explain his continued withholding of information.
“The circumstances here are unique,” Assistant District Attorney Morgan Dennehy wrote in an April 16 letter to the Forward. “Because all of the requested defendant names relate to Hasidic men who are alleged to have committed sex crimes against Hasidic victims within a very tight-knit and insular Brooklyn community, there is a significant danger that the disclosure of the defendants’ names would lead members of that community to discern the identities of the victims.”
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