NEW YORK
Village Voice
BY HELLA WINSTON
Former Brooklyn District Attorney, Charles Hynes is being sued by a hasidic father who claims Hynes prosecuted him as part of a conspiracy to protect a child molester in the Hasidic community.
The suit, filed Monday in Brooklyn federal court by a lawyer for the father, Sam Kellner, accuses Hynes’ office of malicious prosecution and violating Kellner’s constitutional rights in the service of a “criminal conspiracy to pervert the course of justice” for victims of a “notorious” Hasidic child molester. According to the complaint, which also names the city as a defendant, this occurred in the context of Hynes’ “special, preferential system of ‘justice’ for pedophiles within the community.”
In 2008, Kellner, a member of the Munkacs Hasidic sect, obtained rabbinic permission to go to law enforcement with allegations that his son had been molested by another member of the community, Baruch Lebovits. (There is a strong taboo in the Hasidic world against “informing” on another Jew to the secular authorities and even in the case of suspected child sexual abuse, many will do so only with a dispensation from a rabbi.) Kellner then worked closely with a sex crimes detective to identify and bring forward two additional Lebovits victims. One of those victims dropped out of the case as a result of what Sex Crimes prosecutors believed was intimidation, while the other went to trial. In 2010 Lebovits was convicted and sentenced to 10 ½ to 32 years in prison.
Within months of his conviction, as detailed in court papers, people connected to Lebovits — including his sons and attorneys — approached the Brooklyn DA with allegations that, prior to Lebovits’ trial, Kellner had attempted to extort money from Lebovits’ family in exchange for a promise to persuade the complaining victims to withdraw their claims against Lebovits. They also alleged that Kellner had paid the victim who backed out of the prosecution to testify falsely against Lebovits before a grand jury. During this time, according to the complaint, Hynes “surreptitiously dismissed” Kellner’s son’s still pending case against Lebovits. In 2011, prosecutors in the Rackets division of Hynes’ office sought and obtained an indictment against Kellner.
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