NEW JERSEY
NJ.com
By MaryAnn Spoto | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on March 10, 2015
TRENTON —A Brooklyn man testifying Tuesday in the trial of a Lakewood rabbi accused of orchestrating forced divorces said he was ambushed and beaten until he agreed to divorce his wife.
The daylong testimony of Yisrael Meir Bryskman in federal court in Trenton did not connect Rabbi Mendel Epstein or his three codefendants to the 2010 attack but it set the stage for prosecutors’ main witness who could provide more potentially damning evidence in the trial.
Bryskman, a 40-year-old Israeli national who fled his state to avoid warrants for his arrest for refusing to grant a divorce, described for jurors how he was beaten over several hours at the Lakewood home of David Wax, a man he thought was going to give him a job.
Wax, who is scheduled to testify on Wednesday, is the prosecution’ main witness linking Epstein, his son and two other rabbis to the beatings.
But defense attorneys contend that Wax, who faces life in prison for Bryskman’s kidnapping, concocted the allegations against Epstein, his son David “Ari” Epstein and rabbis Binyamin Stimler and Jay Goldstein to receive a reduced sentence.
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