Courage Shown By A Little Boy May Finally Land A Notorious Haredi Child Molester In Prison

Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, a haredi teacher and camp counselor with a long history of alleged child sexual abuse covering four decades, escaped a prison sentence in 2008 when Brooklyn’s ethically challenged District Attorney Charles Hynes gave Kolko what some observers say was the sweetheart plea deal of the decade. But now he may go to prison because of the courage of a 13-year-old boy.

Rabbi Yehuda Kolko

Courage Shown By A Little Boy May Finally Land A Notorious Haredi Child Molester In Prison
Shmarya Rosenberg • Failedmessiah.com

He may finally go to prison.

Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, a haredi teacher and camp counselor with a long history of alleged child sexual abuse covering four decades, escaped a prison sentence in 2008 when Brooklyn’s ethically challenged District Attorney Charles Hynes gave Kolko what some observers say was the sweetheart plea deal of the decade.

Kolko, who allegedly fondled the genitals of two first graders while rubbing his erect penis against their clothed bodies, got 3 years probation and escaped sex offender registration because, Hynes claimed, neither of the victims’ families wanted their little boys to testify in court.

But that appears to have been a lie, as Hella Winston reminds us in The Jewish Week:

…The Jewish Week reported at the time [of the plea deal] that both families claimed they were willing to have their sons testify. The paper also obtained a letter to the district attorney, written by one of the fathers to the district attorney and dated one day after he signed off on the plea deal, that “[m]y son was ready to go to trial and we feel he would have done an excellent job and I am sorry to hear that [the case against] Joel Kolko will not proceed further.”…

Now Kolko is on trial again, this time for allegedly violating a protection order by menacing one of those two victims, who is now 13-years-old. If convicted, he could spend up to one year in prison.

Kolko allegedly folded his arms and assumed a menacing pose while glaring at the boy on two successive Sabbaths as the boy and his father walked to synagogue in a Brooklyn neighborhood where they had moved after the first trial. Kolko had by then reportedly left Brooklyn and was living in Lakewood, New Jersey.

After the boy’s family moved, Kolko returned to Brooklyn and made his new home nearby the boy's family.

He then began menacing the boy, appearing on the street close to the boy’s home even though Kolko did not need to pass by there to get to his own home or to his synagogue.

Jeffrey Schwartz, Kolko’s attorney, denies that kolko menaced the boy. At one point Schwartz claimed that all Kolko had done was wish the boy and his father a gut Shabbos, a good Sabbath.

Winston reports that the jury has not been allowed to hear why the order of protection is in place, and has not been told anything about the sexual abuse the boy and his first grade classmate at Yeshiva Torah Temimah, the haredi yeshiva where Kolko taught, suffered. The two boys could have testified that Kolko, who was then the boy’s teacher, fondled their genitals.

However, as the trial went on prosecutors argued that Schwartz's questioning had "opened the door" and that the truth of Kolko's background should be allowed in as a result. The judge agreed that Schwartz had indeed "opened that door," and responded by allowing the boy’s father to testify that his son told him about “wrongful acts” allegedly done to the boy by Kolko before the order of protection was put in place. But no specific information about what those wrongful acts were was allowed in.

“I felt real good because what Kolko did to me and many boys was wrong. I always thought judges were very mean,” the boy told Winston after testifying. “But this judge was very understanding to me and I felt protected.”

Allegations that Kolko was sexually abusing children were known to haredi community leaders and rabbis for several decades. The vast majority ignored the allegations. Others – like haredi leader Rabbi Chaim Pinchas Scheinberg –  actively covered up the abuse.

The trial will resume Monday.

Comments

[A. Nuran]

Fundraiser for Kolko in 3... 2... 1...

[Dovy]

Kolko: The gift that keeps on giving!

[Yerachmiel Lopin]

Poor dumb Yehuda Kolko. The moron tried to do the intimidation work himself instead of letting Lipa et al do what they do best, covering up.

I hope the SOB gets time. It would be a modicum of delayed justice.

Kudos to Hella for documenting and publicizing the awful truth: the DA gave him a sweet deal when he could have gone to trial and made him get a real sentence commensurate with his crimes. Yet this DA has the chutzpah to claim he witholds the offenders' names to protect the victims. ARGH!

[mike]

Kolko allegedly folded his arms and assumed a menacing pose while glaring at the boy

I had no idea that he folded his arms also, I thought that he just glared. For that he should get more than one year - one for glaring and another for folding his arms.

[Jeff]

Jeffrey Schwartz, Kolko’s attorney, denies that kolko menaced the boy. At one point Schwartz claimed that all Kolko had done was wish the boy and his father a gut Shabbos, a good Sabbath.

What a surprise - a lawyer who's willing to lie for money.

He may be a lower form of life than his client.

[Jeff]

Here's a Talmudic conundrum. The boy was molested well before the age of thirteen, but he's testifying about it now that he's reached the age of responsibility - except that he isn't doing it directly, but through his father. So, my question is - does he get punished in gehinnom for being a moser? (About the father, of course, there is no doubt!) This is a very important matter that our most brilliant Toyreh sages need to ponder!

Oy, oy, you see the trouble these mosers make for Klal Yisroel? If our holy geodylim didn't have to waste their precious time with narrishkeit like "sexual molestation" (which every ehrliche Yid knows has never happened and never will), they'd be able to get back to more important matters, such as how much money is required to make a piece of treif meat kosher? Oy, nebech!

[Jake]

Well said Jeff

[Jeff]

You know, Jake, the sad thing is that if I took the first paragraph, cut out the last line about "Toyreh sages" and posted it to VIN, YWN, Matzav or any of numerous other Haredi sites or forums, they'd consider it a legitimate question and try to answer it.

I'm tempted to try it, but I'm already depressed enough.

[Bench Kvetcher]

Perhaps this instead of calling them molesters we would call them seed spillers public response would be different from the Toireh Velt.

[Rebitzman]

@Jeff

What a surprise - a lawyer who's willing to lie for money?

He may be a lower form of life than his client.

Accused of a crime, a man had a right to the council available, and a lawyer has an equal obligation to be the strongest advocate possible for his client. That's not "low" - that's the American justice system working as it should.

That said: This advocate made a rookie "mistake" that will allow the prosecutor to bring the molestation allegations into evidence.

No evidence to back this up, but a smiling suspicion that the lawyer too would like to see justice served.

[Jeff]

Defending him is one matter; lying for him, to that extent, is another.

No evidence to back this up, but a smiling suspicion that the lawyer too would like to see justice served.

I'd like to agree; but experience has taught me that most lawyers involved in this kind of work are morality-impaired. They're simply whores in $2,000 suits.

[Jeff]

I misunderstood the story; I thought Shmarya was saying the boy's father testified for him. I just read his previous post, in which he states that the boy testified on his own. Good for him; he's shown a level of courage generally lacking in that world. In a few more years, he might not have been able to do it.

Of course, now he'll be kicked out of school (if he's lucky), never get a shiddach and go to gehinnom. What, you think that's unfair? Kofrim! It's Hashem's will, as revealed to us by our holy gedoylim!

Di di di... [insert shmaltzy Jewish melody of your choice]

[different dave]

can we stop referring to this beast as a Rabbi, He is far from the title

[Question]

Leave the guy alone, he has cancer and let him live out his life.

Come'on people, live and let live, he's harmless at this point. He has a faimly

[Jeff]

Leave the guy alone, he has cancer and let him live out his life.

Come'on people, live and let live, he's harmless at this point. He has a faimly

Posted by: Question | June 24, 2012 at 11:16 AM

Either respond to what I said here:

Kolko Victim Testifies

or stop posting the same comment repeatedly on multiple threads.

[Yochanan Lavie]

The victims also have families. The same spurious logic is used on people trying to prosecute aging Nazi war criminals (no, I'm not equating Kolko with them, bad as is he is).

[Mike]

Guilty as hell. He violated his restraining order. Even if he did say good shabbos it's still a violation.

Kolko is such a scumbag. He actually believes he is righteous. He can't just leave his victims alone- he has to torment them because of his "religous agenda." I think he truly believes he has done no wrong. I hope he goes to jail, and not in a "religous section" but in a section for sick, sex criminals. Where he belongs.

[Jeff]

I hope he goes to jail, and not in a "religous section" but in a section for sick, sex criminals.

I think it's the same section these days.

[No Light]

Question - you seem as clever as a bag of flour.

Child rapists deserve no mercy. He thinks he's above the law, so do you apparently.
Hopefully the law of nature will see to it that he spends every day in agony, in a living hell.

The boy is a hero, a truly courageous young man. I hope he sees justice served, and goes far in his life.

[chaim yankel]

Look what sandusky got when authorities take case to trial. Hynes should be tarred feathered drawn and quarter for the letting this sick monster walk. His backpedaling now with the witness intimidation stuff is too little too late. He blew the big one and you can never put it back in the box. he is such a corrupt bastard its just sickening.

[Mike]

@ Jeff:

AHA!

[Rebitzman]

@Jeff

My wn experience is tat lawyers are a lot like congressmen, used car and insurance salesman. If they aren't ours, we think they're scum - if they ARE ours, we somehow see them as an exception.........

Probably neither view is entirely accurate.

[neverFrum]

How the father refrained from beating kolko to the point of near death when he saw him menace his child is beyond me.

[No Light]

Chaim- I totally. agree. The front page is stacked full with perverts!, their enablers, and their protectors.

Many of them will never be held to account for raping children. Bloc voting is clearly a powerful thing.

Hynes should be scrupulously investigated. He has associates who are known child rapists, and he seems far too invested in making sure that even the most heinous frumbag molesters never do time.

[dh]

Jeff, LOL!

[Jeff]

How the father refrained from beating kolko to the point of near death when he saw him menace his child is beyond me.

Posted by: neverFrum | June 24, 2012 at 10:31 PM

It's this fear and awe of rabbis with which they're brought up. I've never really understood it, either. When it was revealed that Baruch Lanner had been kicking boys in the groin for years, I couldn't understand why some MO dad wasn't chasing him down the street with a baseball bat. I would have stopped just long enough to call my attorney and put him on notice that he was going to have to come and bail me out in about an hour.

From childhood, I've seen most authority figures as being full of crap - but then, as has been established, I'm a rasha and an apikorus who's too ignorant to understand these things. Maybe I'll finally get it when I'm in gehinnom.

[Jeff]

Jeff, LOL!

Posted by: dh | June 25, 2012 at 12:02 AM

;-)

[KOLKO NIGHTMARE]

you are all right i should have beat the hell out of kolko but i didn't want to got to jail.
i reported it to the police and here is where we stand today one day before the jury decides on a verdict.
my son iN my eyes is a hero. he went up to the stand pointed kolko out to the jury and said his story. i only hope that all you victims that are in the statue of limitataions will come forward.
i was never out for revenge i was out for one thing justice and i hope AYH june 26 2012 AROUND 2-4 PM THE ORLD WILL HERE THE AMES we will hear the jury of 6 give the verdict.
this trial was not for only my son it was for all kolko victims that never came forward and this is your day also.

THE FATHER & SON WHO TESTIFIED AGAINST MONSTER JOEL KOLKO.

[Jeff]

Posted by: KOLKO NIGHTMARE | June 25, 2012 at 08:26 PM

Thank you for your courage, and please thank your son for us as well; he's a very brave young man. I understand that reporting a rabbi to secular authorities is a huge issue in your world, and that you open yourself up to a tremendous amount of condemnation.

I hope that when this is over, you and your family can get beyond it and resume something of a normal life.