Brooklyn DA Askes For Extradition Of Accused Child Rapist Rabbi Avrohom Mondrowitz

UOJ has the NY Daily News article (not yet online). I'll write more on this development with Gerrer hasid and alleged child rapist when I'm able …

Comments

[steve]

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime_file/2007/10/11/2007-10-11_brooklyn_da_wants_alleged_molestor_extra-2.html?print=1

Brooklyn D.A. wants alleged molestor extradited

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Thursday, October 11th 2007, 4:00 AM

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Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes wants a rabbi who fled to Israel 23 years ago after allegedly molesting four boys, extradited back to New York.

Hynes' request to the U.S. Justice Department that Rabbi Avrohom Mondrowitz face justice has been forwarded to the Israeli Ministry of Justice. Mondrowitz, a onetime popular child psychologist in Brooklyn's Borough Park, was indicted in February 1985 on charges of sexually abusing four boys, months after he fled.

Former Brooklyn District Attorney Elizabeth Holtzman tried for years to extradite Mondrowitz, but Hynes had resisted. Critics charged Hynes was afraid of offending the powerful Orthodox Jewish voting bloc and only changed his mind because of a change in the community's attitude toward pedophilia. His spokesman, Jerry Schmetterer, denied the allegation.

"That had no impact on our decision at all," he said, saying an amendment to the extradition treaty allowed Hynes to act.

Hynes' decision has brought some relief to the alleged victims, including a rabbi who told Hynes that Mondrowitz, a neighbor and father of his friends, had molested him at the age of 11 in the late 1970s.

Mondrowitz declined comment when reached by telephone in Israel.

Nancie L. Katz

[steve]

Harry Maryles' post from September, 2006:

It is with great sadness that I write about this issue. I know the family and I respect the great Talmid Chacham that is his father. In fact let me say a bit about this huge Talmid Chacham. He wrote, and later published (in 1965) a Sefer on Mikvaos entitled “Mei Me-Ayin”. It has approbations from the following people: Rav Yitzchak Zev HaLevi Soloveitchik (The Brisker Rav), Rav Issar Zalmen Meltzer, R Eliezer Yehuda Finkel, and Rav Tzvi Pesach Frank.

He is a holocaust survivor from Lodz, Poland and a Gerrer Chasid. He was one of those who spent most of the war years in Shanghai with Talmidim of the Mir. He is also a very successful businessman here in Chicago... an honored man. Back in the seventies was asked by the Mikva association to be on their Halacha committee, along with Telzer Rosh HaYeshiva, Rav A.C. Levin, and Rav Aaron Soloveichik, when they were building a new “state of the art” Mikva facility in West Rogers Park. He turned them down. Why he turned them down is the rest of the story.

His name is Harav Yitzchok Mondrowitz. If that name sounds vaguely familiar it is probably not because of his Sefer but because of his son, Avrohom.

Avrohom Mondrowitz is a wanted man. The United States government, through the Brooklyn district attorney's office is seeking his extradition from Israel on sex charges: Four counts of Sodomy; eight counts sexual abuse.

I knew this fellow. We were in Telshe together. We are about the same age and were in the same Shiur there. His friends and family called called him Avremiel. He was always an upbeat person with a completely positive attitude toward Judaism. He was very careful in his Mitzva observance, and he learned well. And was well thought of by his Rebbeim. He is about the last person one would associate with sex abuse.

I left Telshe after tenth grade. The next time I saw him he was married, living in Chicago, and had become much closer to Ger, adopting all of their Minhagim, including the Levush… their style of dress, Shpoduk (Gerrer style Shtreimel) and all. My father davened in the same Sheeble with his father, Rav Yitzchok, who used to give Shiurim there. It was Rabbi Perlow’s Shteeble (The Novominsker Rebbe) before he moved to New York.

I saw Avrohom there occasionally, always smiling, always making others smile. After living in Chicago for a few years in the early seventies, he moved to Brooklyn so he could live in more of a Ger-style community which was practically non-existent in Chicago back then. I lost touch with him.

A few years later I saw an ad in the Jewish Press aimed at children with psychological problems: “Psychology Al Pi Halacha” it said, listing Dr. Avrohom Mondrowitz as the psychologist who would provide therapy… and it gave his phone number. I remember thinking, how wonderful that this Chasid that I knew… with an upbeat personality had gone to college, received a degree in psychology and was now treating young children with emotional problems.

Boy… was I ever wrong! It wasn’t quite that wonderful. It was in fact a shocking horror story that was then, of unheard of proportion.

I am told by various sources that he had no real degree. It was entirely made up… or it was one of those phony baloney ones you can buy. I don't really know. But in any case,instead of providing therapy for children with emotional problems he was causing permanent psychological damage to… who knows how many… children. He had found a way draw into seclusion and sexually abuse many victims. And he had the best cover one could devise, in case of being accused of wrongdoing: These were sick children! He has denied and continues to deny all charges. But the evidence is overwhelming. He realized that and “skipped town”. Ever since the early eighties he has been living in Israel.

This is real tough one for me to understand. He was from the best of families… well to do …Yerei Shamyim. He had a brilliant Talmid Chacham for a father, a real role model. His mother was a working registered nurse. And he had a younger brother who is wonderful human being with a family of his own. Outwardly Avrohom was a paragon of virtue, but secretly he was an uncontrollably perverted man who violated major Issurim in the Torah continuously for many years and hurt many people in the process.

I do not know if his wife and his many children are still a part of his life. I can only imagine the kind of terrible emotional pain they must constantly be in. I know his parents have not shown their faces in public ever since the story broke in the mid eighties. They are broken people. What a human tragedy it is for so many people... his family, his parents, his brothers, and most of all his victims.

[steve]

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime_file/2007/10/17/2007-10-17_abuse_victims_hope_healing_begins_with_r.html

Abuse victims hope healing begins with rabbi's arrest

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BY NANCIE L. KATZ
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Wednesday, October 17th 2007, 4:00 AM

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For too long, an alleged Brooklyn pedophile rabbi's victims have waited for their silencing to end. Now, they hope his prosecution will push their closed community to out child molesters.

Twenty-three years after Rabbi Avrohom Mondrowitz fled to Jerusalem to evade charges of molesting four boys, Israel's ministry of justice now has an extradition request from Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes, his spokesman said.

"It's a shame it took so long. People committed suicide over him," said a 44-year-old man who says the popular rabbi abused him and his friends in the 1970s.

"If they did this a lot earlier, there would have been a lot more people saved because other child molesters would get the message. This will send the message."

In the hush-hush Orthodox Jewish community, victims say Mondrowitz left a trail of destroyed lives during his tenure as a rabbi/psychologist and headmaster in Brooklyn during the 1970s and early 1980s.

Former District Attorney Elizabeth Holtzman tried to get him extradited in the 1980s, but a U.S. Justice Department official said the extradition treaty with Israel made it hard - until changes last January - to forward the request to Jerusalem.

Hynes, who took office in 1989, had been slammed for failing to go after Mondrowitz. Critics charged he feared losing the powerful Orthodox Jewish vote. But his spokesman denied the allegations, saying Hynes moved swiftly once a treaty change allowed Israel to recognize the 1985 sodomy counts.

An Israeli Justice official declined comment, as did Mondrowitz, contacted at his Jerusalem home.

One alleged victim was only 11 when he described Mondrowitz, who headed his alternative Jewish boys' school, as befriending him, giving him money and taking him to movies and his mountain cabin.

Soon, he began taking friends, he said.

"He used to talk us all up. He did a lot of things to entice kids," he said. "I used to bring kids to his house. He'd grab kids in front of me, in his office.

"It affected me a long time," he said. "I felt I was taken."

The victim, not named in the indictment, said he believed hundreds of boys were fondled by Mondrowitz, and saw dozens himself.

A 39-year-old rabbi filed a complaint last year, accusing Mondrowitz of abusing him when he was 11. He charged that pedophiles are still free to ruin lives in the closed Orthodox community, where leaders routinely silence victims to avoid scandal.

"There are probably more kids harmed in this community than any other because everything is placed under the rug," he said. "They throw a kid out of school if he complains. "This will send a message: You can run away and hide and you can think it is forgotten, but eventually it will hunt you down and get you. That is very important. It is a deterrent we never had."

nkatz@nydailynews.com