“This didn’t take away from the fact that a crime was committed,” he said. “This can define you as a person and it can shape you for the rest of your life. It will always be part of me. This man has vastly changed my life.”
Above and above right: The paved and lighted path leading from Isaac Neuberg's house on the Ner Israel Yeshiva campus to Ner Israel's student housing
An Interview With The Victim Of Isaac Neuberger
By Phil Jacobs • Special to FailedMessiah.com
Josh sat Wednesday night on a comfortable tan leather sofa in his parents’ home, located in the predominately Orthodox Upper Park Heights section of Baltimore.
Just above his head on the living room wall were photographs. In one, he is pictured with his bride Chava. In another picture, he’s a little boy enjoying an ice cream cone. Oh, if he could only go back to those moments.
At this point, though, the only picture that occupies a large space in his mind is that evening on December 12, 2013 when he was confronted in a men’s room by Isaac Neuberger, a partner in the firm of Neuberger, Quinn, Gielen, Rubin & Gibber, and the son of the late Rabbi Herman Neuberger, a builder of Ner Israel Rabbinical College and a Baltimore Orthodox community icon.
Josh was a server for a catering company handling the food and drink at the law firm’s holiday party. In a statement of charges, Josh alleged that Neuberger started a conversation with him while the two men were using urinals. When they finished, the charge said that Neuberger told Josh about “exercises to keep my abdomen in shape” before touching him.
“He followed me into the restroom,” recounts Josh. “There were two urinals. He was on my left. As I was finishing up, he pushed me on my left shoulder. He kept talking to me, and he wasn’t making eye contact, instead he stared at my crotch area. When he pushed me, I was facing him. That’s when he touched me on my stomach and inner thigh.”
Josh added that his genital area was grazed by Neuberger’s hand after the two had washed hands. .
It was, Josh said, a touch that lasted brief moments. Now they will remain fixed in his life time.
Josh told his employer what had happened. He would end up filing a police report that same night.
The case had taken over a year to finally make it to Circuit Court. Neuberger was found guilty of second degree assault by Judge Melissa Phinn. The judge imposed a sentence of probation before judgment as long as the defendant has no further related incidents. Second degree assault in Maryland is a misdemeanor that carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. Prosecutors dropped a fourth-degree sex offense charge as part of a plea deal with Neuberger.
But this case isn’t about Neuberger, 67, any longer.
He received much of the attention in the local Baltimore media, because of his 45 years as an attorney.
From the moment he remembered in the men’s room to the time he stood just feet away from Neuberger in the courtroom, is a time that Josh, who was 25 at the time of the incident, and is now 26, says he will always carry with him.
On Tuesday, Jan. 20, the day of the trial, Neuberger would request a postponement, only to be denied by the judge.
Josh would be seeing Neuberger for the second time since that night in December. The attorney once walked into the business where Josh is employed. When he saw Neuberger, Josh decided to stay in another room until the man left. He said he remembers feeling very nervous just seeing Neuberger.
There in the courtroom, Josh said, “This whole thing was finally coming to an end, and I’m in the same room as Isaac Neuberger. At least there is some kind of justice being served.”
Josh called the outcome “bittersweet.” Neuberger was found guilty, “but at the same time you wish more could have been done for me and for all the people who came before me who were too scared to come forward with their own stories of molestation.”
“This didn’t take away from the fact that a crime was committed,” he said. “This can define you as a person and it can shape you for the rest of your life. It will always be part of me. This man has vastly changed my life.”
Sitting in the living room, hearing him speak were his parents and his wife. Josh, a yeshiva graduate with a warm smile isn’t, his mother said, the type to show emotion. On this evening, with the courtroom scene still festering, Josh had much to say, as if to cleanse his system.
“I will remember every detail of that moment no matter how long I live,” he said.
Going forward, he added that he plans not to be “a statistic,” but instead to be an advocate for people with similar experiences.
Josh said that the experience “for the most part didn’t change me too much. Thank God that when this happened I was 25. I probably could handle it better than someone who was molested as a teenager.
“I’m Jewish, I’m Asian, I’m adopted, now I’m a victim,” he said. The living room was quiet. The floor belonged to Josh. The very floor where Josh played as a child with his friends or his sister Sarah. Both siblings were adopted from South Korea by their loving parents Barbara and Blaine.
It’s Blaine who says that he felt a sadness that he couldn’t protect his son. But even Chava, a young woman who also grew up in Baltimore’s Orthodox Jewish community, expressed the same sentiments about her best friend and husband. She was working hard to not show the rage inside.
“Over this year, I’ve been drawn to other victims I’ve read about,” Josh said. “You sympathize, but now that it’s actually happened to me, now I am one of them.”
He has been approached he said by others who were afraid to come out with their stories. Some of those stories were allegedly involving Neuberger. But to this date, Josh’s charge was the lone one made against the attorney.
“Nobody was surprised who did this to me,” said Josh. “I got a lot of silent support.”
Baltimore, Josh said, has had a reputation for covering up sexual molestations especially in the religious community. Still, he feels help for victims has improved.
“I received so much support from people around here,” he said. “We’re taking care of this issue in small strides. Ten years ago, if I had pressed charges, I would have been completely shunned. Now, there are more rabbis out there for the victims.”
When the interview came to an end late Wednesday night, Josh was tired and spent.
He was getting hugs from his wife and his parents.
When he stood up, it was like all of the images in the photographs on the wall behind him were one big picture of a safe past.
Now he just wants to get on to the next snapshot of his life.
Phil Jacobs is a freelance writer and former Executive Editor of The Baltimore Jewish Times where he wrote extensively of the cover up of molestation within the Jewish community.