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Case of Rabbi Bernard Freilich


Acquitted of death threats to an alleged incest survivor

1995 - Rabbi Bernard Freilich, administrator of the Council of Jewish Organizations in Boro Park, told The New York Times that "people are outraged at these charges. They are unbelievable, impossible nonsense. It is impossible that an Orthodox Chassidic person would even speak to a female, much less touch her."



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Table of Contents:

Grand jury to hear sexual misconduct case involving rabbis (06/06/1995)
Rabbi on state police payroll (05/27/1999)
A prominent Hasidic rabbi has been charged with making death threats (06/23/1999)
N.Y. rabbi accused of death threats (07/09/1999)
Lawyers charged in probe of rabbis (08/06/1999)
Orthodox Jews, Angered Over Recent Cases, Up in Arms Against Brooklyn D.A. (03/15/2000)
Brooklyn rabbi acquitted (03/16/2000)

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Grand jury to hear sexual misconduct case involving rabbis
by TOM TUGEND

Jewish Telegraphic Agency - June 9, 1995

http://www.jewishsf.com/bk950609/uscase.htm


LOS ANGELES -- Federal authorities will decide next week whether to seek indictments of a respected Chassidic rabbi and his assistant, both of whom have been charged with sexually abusing a 15-year old girl on a flight from Australia to Los Angeles.

The assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, Joel Thvedt, said he intended to present the case to a grand jury, which would decide whether to prosecute.

The accused are Rabbi Israel Grunwald of Brooklyn, a leader of the Hungarian Pupa Chassidim, and his assistant, Yehudah Friedlander, both 44 years old.

Their arrests have sparked outrage in the Chassidic and Orthodox communities of New York, while Los Angeles rabbis moved quickly to aid their colleagues.

Both of the accused have vehemently denied the charges, according to their attorney, Mitchell W. Egers.

After a hearing here June 2, U.S. Magistrate Judge Carolyn Turchin released Grunwald on $10,000 bail. He immediately flew back to New York.

Grunwald, charged with sexually touching a minor, faces a maximum of two years in prison and a $250,000 fine if he is convicted.

Friedlander remained in detention over the Sabbath and the Shavuot holiday, despite Egers' protests. He was being held pending clarification of the disposition of a 1991 arrest in New York state, in which he was charged with a sexual offense.

On Tuesday, Turchin denied a cash bail to Friedlander, calling him "a danger to society."

The judge said Friedlander only would be released if someone put up his or her house with equity valued at least at $100,000.

If convicted, Friedlander, who was charged with more extensive sexual abuse, faces up to 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Friedlander has been identified in the media as a rabbi or "assistant rabbi," but according to Egers and New York sources, he is actually a non-rabbinical assistant.

A nine-page affidavit submitted to the court by an FBI agent, which cites statements by the young girl, a witness on the plane and Friedlander, alleges a number of occurrences during the long United Air Lines overnight flight.

The girl, an American traveling alone, accused Grunwald of leaning across an empty seat and, following some conversation, touching her necklace and fondling her breasts.

At some point, Friedlander allegedly exchanged seats with Grunwald, and while the cabin lights were dimmed, Friedlander allegedly groped and fondled the girl's private parts and breast for some five to eight minutes, the complaint charged.

The teenager told authorities that she tried to fend off the advances but was too embarrassed to call for help. However, a woman passenger observed the alleged incident, talked to the girl and then notified the flight crew, which radioed a report to authorities.

When the plane landed in Los Angeles, FBI agents, who assumed jurisdiction under the laws governing American aircraft in flight, arrested the two men.

One agent quoted Friedlander as telling him that it was the girl who initiated the advances, adding that "I shouldn't have done it, but it happened."

Egers said Friedlander was "in a state of shock and deeply upset that the whole Jewish world" knows about the accusations.

Egers, a veteran trial lawyer with close ties to the Orthodox community, said when he and his two clients appeared in court last week, he was "besieged by armies of reporters, with just about all the media from New York and Los Angeles on hand." For a day, "we were bigger than the O.J. Simpson case."

Reaction to the arrests was sharpest in the Boro Park section of Brooklyn, where Grunwald serves as rabbi of Congregation Tuldos Yacov Yosef.

Rabbi Bernard Freilich, administrator of the Council of Jewish Organizations in Boro Park, told The New York Times that "people are outraged at these charges. They are unbelievable, impossible nonsense. It is impossible that an Orthodox Chassidic person would even speak to a female, much less touch her."

Rabbi Abner Weiss of the Orthodox Beth Jacob Congregation in Beverly Hills took a less categorical view. He was being installed as the new president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California when he received word of the arrests.

In his first act in office, Weiss conferred with Aaron Kriegel, a Conservative rabbi who serves as prison chaplain, to assure that the two Chasidim would receive kosher food. Weiss said he personally bought loaves of challah for Grunwald and Friedlander.

Without passing judgment on the case, Weiss, who holds a graduate degree in psychology, noted that, in general, "Jews are not immune to any kind of illness, physical or mental."

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Rabbi on state police payroll
River Reporter - May 27, 1999

http://www.riverreporter.com/issues/99-05-27/brief.htm


ALBANY -- New York State has been paying a Brooklyn rabbi $76,000 a year as a "spiritual advisor" to the state police, according to a Times Herald-Record report.

Rabbi Bernard Freilich was paid by the Health Department and drove an unmarked state police car, but neither agency is saying exactly what he was doing.

Others say the rabbi acted as cultural and language interpreter for the Hasidic and ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities, but no similar interpreters are maintained for other religious or cultural groups.

Freilich was recently suspended from the job after New York City police charged him with intimidating a woman who planned to testify in support of her charge that she was raped by her father.

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A prominent Hasidic rabbi has been charged with making death threats

Associated Press - June 23, 1999

http://www.thelinkup.com/crimes99b.html


NEW YORK CITY — A prominent Hasidic rabbi has been charged with making death threats against a 22-year-old woman to keep her from testifying that her father raped her as a child.

Rabbi Bernard Freilich, 47, allegedly went to the woman's home earlier this year and told her he "would teach her a lesson and send her to the cemetery" if she took the stand, court papers said. A grand jury indicted Freilich on felony charges of witness-tampering, witness intimidation, and harassment. If convicted, he would face up to 4 years in prison.

Freilich had pleaded not guilty in May to misdemeanor charges in the same case. His lawyer said he will enter the same plea when he's arraigned on the more serious charges next month. The attorney described his client as a community leader who prides himself on his connections to law enforcement. Before he was first charged, Freilich had been a special assistant to a superintendent in the New York State Police.

The lawyer said Freilich does not know his accuser, whose name was not released. But prosecutors have said the rabbi and the woman's father are close friends. The father was charged in Feb. with first-degree rape, incest, sex abuse, and harassment in the pending criminal case. He was arrested again on April 22 after allegedly violating an order of protection by pounding on his daughter's door and warning her it would be her last day unless she withdrew her accusations.

Prosecutors say that three days later — with the daughter about to testify before a grand jury — Freilich went to her home and threatened her; allegedly repeating the threats the next day. Another Borough Park man also has been charged with trying to get the woman to drop the charges

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N.Y. rabbi accused of death threats
JTA - July 9, 1999

http://www.jewishsf.com/bk990709/usrabbi.shtml


NEW YORK (JTA) -- A New York grand jury late last month indicted a rabbi on charges that he made death threats against a woman scheduled to testify that her father had raped her as a child.

Bernard Freilich of Boro Park, Brooklyn, is scheduled to be arraigned this month on felony charges of witness tampering, witness intimidation and harassment.

A lawyer for Freilich, who has been suspended from his job as special assistant and spiritual adviser to the New York state police, said he would plead innocent to the charges. The woman's father has been charged with first-degree rape, witness-tampering and criminal contempt.

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Lawyers charged in probe of rabbis

JTA - August 6, 1999

http://www.jewishsf.com/bk990806/usreport.shtml


NEW YORK (JTA) -- Two lawyers were among those charged last month with conspiring to intimidate a witness in a widening incest-rape case involving two rabbis in Brooklyn.

George Meissner and Richard Finkel previously represented Rabbi Bernard Freilich, who is accused of attempting to prevent a woman from testifying that her father repeatedly raped her when she was a child. Freilich and Rabbi Pinchas Shor pleaded not guilty to separate charges last month.



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Orthodox Jews, Angered Over Recent Cases, Up in Arms Against Brooklyn D.A. - Hynes and His `Haman'
by Rebecca Segall

Village Voice - March 15 - 21, 2000

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0011/segall.php


Influential Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn are calling for the removal of District Attorney Charles J. Hynes following the acquittal last week of Bernard Freilich, a prominent Hasidic rabbi, on charges of witness tampering. Coming in the wake of a grand jury's failure to indict four cops accused in the killing of Gidone Busch in Boro Park last year, the Freilich prosecution is seen as the latest in a series of wrongs directed against the Orthodox community.

In the Freilich case, an immigrant couple, Moshe Israel and Anna Shapiro, alleged that the popular Boro Park rabbi—who until his arrest was also a special assistant to the state police—threatened to have them killed unless they dropped allegations of incest and rape against Ms. Shapiro's father.

"Hynes went after Freilich with a vengeance," says Rabbi Leib Glanz, a leader of the Satmar Hasidic community, referring to the D.A.'s decision to assign two top deputies, Michael Vecchione and Jay Shapiro—his lead prosecutor on death penalty cases—to the Freilich case.

In a dramatic response to Freilich's acquittal, about 2000 Boro Park residents attended a celebration in his honor on Saturday at the Satmar Hasidic shul. On Sunday, the head rabbis of each ultra-Orthodox sect in Boro Park met with Freilich, and in speech after speech referred to him and their community as having survived "persecution and prosecution."

"This is a man with 25 years of service in the public life of Boro Park," Rabbi Glanz told the Voice. "He was instrumental in creating Tomche Shabbos," an organization that feeds thousands of Hasidic families each week.

During the trial in Brooklyn Supreme Court, Ms. Shapiro testified that Freilich had come to the couple's Boro Park home last April on the day before she was to give grand jury testimony, and told them that if she testified they would wind up "in the cemetery." After she appeared, she alleged, Freilich showed up again and pledged to make good on the threat. Freilich maintains he has never spoken to the couple.

Since his acquittal, Freilich—who friends say once got up at sunrise to help Hynes's campaign—warns the D.A. of political trouble ahead. "The community doesn't trust Hynes anymore," Freilich says, "and he's obviously going to have problems regaining their support."

As family members celebrated Freilich's victory, an uncle gave a short vort (talk) over kosher Chinese cuisine: "This month is Purim, the holiday that commemorates Jewish freedom from their Persian persecutor, Haman. Today, the wicked Haman has once again been defeated by the pious Mordechai—this time Freilich." One way to interpret the analogy, he explained, is that "the prosecutor, Vecchione could be Haman, while Hynes, his enabler, is the King."

"I will not be excited to support Hynes again," Glanz told the Voice. "It's unlikely that anyone running against him will be worse."

In a March 10 editorial, the ultraconservative Jewish Press declared: "What bewilders us is the alacrity with which D.A. Hynes indicts persons such as Rabbi Freilich, which is in sharp contrast to his categorical reluctance to [indict the] police officers who shoot a Jew dead on the streets of Boro Park. In our view, there is something very wrong in the way business is conducted in the Brooklyn D.A.'s office."

"I'll put it to you this way," says Reb Avraham, a prominent Hasidic activist who goes only by that name, "regarding the Busch case, the Boro Park community is more furious with Hynes than they are with Giuliani. Hynes was supposed to oversee a fair investigation," but failed to indict the four cops involved in the shooting of Busch, 31, in Boro Park.

Doris Busch Boskey, Busch's mother, alleges: "Hynes never had any intention of getting an indictment, and he didn't even pursue the possibility of lesser charges. I hope my son's ghost hangs heavy over Hynes, Giuliani, and Police Commissioner Howard Safir as a constant reminder of his senseless murder and the lack of accountability and justice."

Raphael Eisenberg, a witness to the Busch shooting who testified at the grand jury hearing at which the officers were cleared, told the Voice that the D.A.'s office seemed to be looking for any minor discrepancy to invalidate testimonies. "Hynes's career is dependent on his popularity among the police," he asserted.

Reb Avraham maintains that anti-Hynes feelings are now so strong that many Orthodox Jews would join with African Americans—"two communities that have been wronged by Hynes"—to elect a black moderate. "He did some good, but it's over now what with the legacy of Busch, Freilich, and other cases."

Avraham translates the last line of a full-page editorial in the March 10 edition of Nayis Baricht (News Report), a major Yiddish-language paper: ". . . perhaps the time has come for [Hynes] to bring his political career to an end and retire while it can still be said that the good of his administration outweighs the bad."

According to many ultra-Orthodox Jews, there has been much good. For the last decade Hynes has enjoyed a cozy relationship with Brooklyn's Orthodox communities. Henna White, a Lubavitch woman who serves as Hynes's liaison to the Jewish community, points to what she sees as culturally sensitive preventive programs for pedophiles, batterers, and drug users that Hynes's office has initiated over the last two years.

"Hynes is a very caring D.A.," she maintains, "and the community knows it. The recent incidents are not going to influence Boro Park's feelings toward Hynes." White says she was particularly impressed by the way Hynes handled the Crown Heights riots.

However, following the Freilich case, Hasidic leaders who attended the trial are alleging that one of Hynes's aides made anti-Semitic comments during his summation. Last week, the Jewish Press promised to print portions of the summation—which is currently being transcribed—in upcoming issues, allowing readers to "judge for themselves the appropriateness of some of his comments." Last year in another controversial case that left the Orthodox community in a state of fury, the same aide allegedly made comments in private to a prominent rabbi and to his lawyer that were construed as anti-Semitic. The lawyer on that case, Roger Adler, told the Voice, "I was shocked when the aide made comments that sounded like more personal attacks on my client than intellectual discourse regarding his innocence.

After Freilich was indicted last year, Orthodox leaders reached out to black Brooklyn assemblyman Clarence Norman—a close friend of Hynes's—beseeching him to share their concerns with the D.A. The Hasidic community has made other unorthodox alliances regarding Hynes. Park Avenue Synagogue rabbi David Lincoln wrote to Hynes asking why he took such an aggressive stand against Freilich, whom he described as "an outstanding man." Lincoln told the Voice that Hynes has spoken at his synagogue at least once, "but I think he has lost some credibility over this matter."

Andrew Stettner, executive director of Jews for Racial & Economic Justice, agrees. "We are disappointed with the D.A. Across the board in the Jewish world—and in the Asian and black communities—there is a widespread feeling of injustice." JFREJ has been organizing events at which secular and religious participants have united in support of petitioning Attorney General Janet Reno to investigate the Busch case.

In the aftermath of the Busch and Diallo cases, the United Jewish Appeal's Young Lawyers Committee met two weeks ago with Reverend Calvin Butts of Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church and Gidone Busch's brother Glenn Busch, a New York-based lawyer. "In my brother's case, Hynes never indicted," Busch told the group. "We need independent prosecutors in police brutality cases."

On March 5, Congressman Jerrold Nadler reproved attendees at a UJA professional breakfast in Manhattan for not putting more pressure on the Justice Department to help the Busch family, implicitly criticizing Hynes's office.

"There are certainly questions that have gone unanswered," he said, such as, "What went wrong in this investigation?"

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Rabbi Attempts to Cover-up Incest Rape
NEW YORK CITY — A prominent Hasidic rabbi has been charged with making death threats against a 22-year-old woman to keep her from testifying that her father raped her as a child.

Rabbi Bernard Freilich, 47, allegedly went to the woman's home earlier this year and told her he "would teach her a lesson and send her to the cemetery" if she took the stand, court papers said. A grand jury indicted Freilich on felony charges of witness-tampering, witness intimidation, and harassment. If convicted, he would face up to 4 years in prison.

Freilich had pleaded not guilty in May to misdemeanor charges in the same case. His lawyer said he will enter the same plea when he's arraigned on the more serious charges next month. The attorney described his client as a community leader who prides himself on his connections to law enforcement. Before he was first charged, Freilich had been a special assistant to a superintendent in the New York State Police.

The lawyer said Freilich does not know his accuser, whose name was not released. But prosecutors have said the rabbi and the woman's father are close friends. The father was charged in Feb. with first-degree rape, incest, sex abuse, and harassment in the pending criminal case. He was arrested again on April 22 after allegedly violating an order of protection by pounding on his daughter's door and warning her it would be her last day unless she withdrew her accusations.

Prosecutors say that three days later — with the daughter about to testify before a grand jury — Freilich went to her home and threatened her; allegedly repeating the threats the next day. Another Borough Park man also has been charged with trying to get the woman to drop the charges

source:
http://www.thelinkup.com/