NEW YORK
New York Daily News
Joanna Molloy
If Nechemya Weberman had a guilty look in his eyes, the jurors never saw it. He didn’t look at them once as the prosecutor gave graphic details Thursday of the 88 counts of sexual torment he allegedly wrought upon a teenage girl he was paid to help.
If the jury finds Weberman guilty — now that lawyers have wrapped their case — the leaders of the insular Satmar Hasidic sect to which he belongs must ask themselves the same questions that dogged the Catholic Church in the wake of its own pedophilia scandals.
They must ask, did we enable him? Do our methods of reigning in rebellious young girls run counter to American law? Do we deny these girls freedoms they are entitled to, treating them as prisoners despite more than a century of hard-fought victories by women’s rights activists?
Instead, it seems this Williamsburg-based sect is operating under its own rules, some of which run counter to the law.
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