An unlicensed religious therapist whose child molestation conviction pierced a veil of silence in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community was resentenced to 18 years in prison on Tuesday, after Brooklyn prosecutors supported a lighter sentence. The sentence, ordered by Judge Matthew J. D’Emic in Brooklyn State Supreme Court, means that the therapist, Nechemya Weberman, could be released in five years. Mr. Weberman, 67, was sentenced to 103 years in prison in 2013, but a state law capping prison terms for such crimes cut his sentence to 50 years.
Mr. Weberman accepted his guilt in the molestation charges for the first time on Tuesday. He had claimed his innocence ever since his arrest in 2011.
It was once unimaginable that someone like Mr. Weberman would go to prison. Victims of sexual abuse in the Satmar Hasidic community, of which Mr. Weberman is a member, had long been intimidated into silence, and Mr. Weberman’s conviction was viewed as a sea shift for victims of sexual abuse in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. Those victims and their supporters view the decision of the Brooklyn district attorney, Eric Gonzalez, to support Mr. Weberman’s early release as an outright betrayal. The victim, who was 12 when she first met Mr. Weberman, had been referred to him for counseling by her religious school in Williamsburg. The school told her parents that she would be expelled unless they paid Mr. Weberman $150 per hour, according to a close family member who spoke with The New York Times in 2012. The sessions, the victim testified in court, were aimed at making her more religious. But Mr. Weberman forced her to perform oral sex on him, she said.
The prosecution came during a politically charged time in Brooklyn. Charles J. Hynes, the district attorney in 2012, had faced criticism for decades that his office had not prosecuted cases of sexual abuse in the politically powerful Satmar community. Facing re-election, Mr. Hynes took a hard-line approach to Mr. Weberman’s case, even calling for a long prison term in an opinion essay in The Daily News before Mr. Weberman’s sentencing. Mr. Weberman’s lawyers have pointed to that environment, along with what they say was an unfairly long sentence, as evidence of an unjust prosecution.
Yiddish-language publications have compared him to Joseph from the Book of Genesis, who was falsely accused of rape, and prominent Satmar rabbis have visited him in prison. More than a year ago, a group of rabbis wrote to Gov. Kathy Hochul asking for Mr. Weberman’s immediate release.
Elected during a wave of progressive-minded prosecutors in 2017, Mr. Gonzalez has aggressively re-evaluated cases with long prison sentences like Mr. Weberman’s. In an interview with The Times in November, Mr. Gonzalez said that his office stood by the conviction. But sentences like the one imposed on Mr. Weberman, he said, “have become a serious moral and policy failure” in the criminal justice system.
The victim’s supporters have rejected that explanation. They say that the district attorney has cowed to pressure from Mr. Weberman’s supporters in the Satmar community. In a filing before the hearing on Tuesday, the victim’s lawyer, Sarena Townsend, cited a number of sexual abuse cases in Brooklyn comparable to Mr. Weberman’s in which the defendant was sentenced to decades in prison. “It is without merit to claim that Nechemya Weberman’s sentence of 50 years prison is unmatched by others who have been charged and convicted similarly,” Ms. Townsend wrote. They also point to what they say is a lack of remorse from Mr. Weberman, who they say had more victims. In August 2012, before Mr. Weberman went on trial, a Brooklyn prosecutor wrote in a filing that six more victims reported that Mr. Weberman had sexually abused them in sessions going back to the 1990s. (Mr. Weberman was ultimately not charged in those cases.)
During a news conference held outside the district attorney’s office in December, the victim’s supporters protested its backing of a shorter sentence for Mr. Weberman.
“To vacate or shorten this sentence is not mercy,” said Emily Miles, executive director of the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault. “It is a betrayal of every principle of protection, safety and accountability that should be guiding our justice system.”
The victim and her family faced persistent harassment from members of her community before and during the trial. Hundreds of Hasidic men held a fund-raiser for Mr. Weberman’s defense in 2011, where they also hung posters accusing her of libel. Four men were charged with trying to buy the silence of the victim and her boyfriend, now her husband. After the trial, the couple moved out of Brooklyn.
Olivia Bensimon contributed reporting.
Santul Nerkar is a Times reporter covering federal courts in Brooklyn.
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