State police are investigating a video purporting to show a school principal in close physical contact with a young boy in the Orange County village of Kiryas Joel.
The video was widely circulated on the internet Monday.
The video camera appears to have been in the ceiling of the principal’s office. An 11-minute version of the video shows a man sitting down at a desk and drawing the young boy to him. As the boys stands between the man’s legs, the man appears to stroke the boy’s face and kiss him several times, shaking him occasionally and pulling him closer. Both remain clothed.
An administrator at the ultra Orthodox Jewish school, United Talmudical Academy, could not be reached. A call to the principal was not returned.
“We have received the video. We have looked at it,” Major Joseph Tripodo, commander of New York State Police Troop F in Middletown said. Tripodo said state police investigators have been looking into the matter along with the District Attorney’s Office and the Orange County Child Abuse Unit. He said it was premature to say whether a crime was committed.
He said police had the video before it began circulating on the Internet Monday but he would not say how long ago they began their investigation. He declined to discuss details of the tape or whether the principal has been questioned. He said “it hasn’t been determined” what exactly is happening in the video but that police are trying to have it enhanced as part of the investigation.
Orange County Chief Assistant District Attorney Christopher Borek would not confirm the investigation or whether anyone at the DAs Office had seen the video even once it was posted online.
It was unclear from the posted video when the incident occurred. Commenters on social media suggested that the video was taken months ago and released now after authorities declined to bring charges. While not discussing the time frame, Tripodo said the investigation had not concluded and remains active.
KIRYAS JOEL – A new video has sparked allegations of child sex abuse allegedly from inside an ultra-Orthodox Jewish school in Orange County.
The video was reportedly leaked from someone inside one of the largest yeshivas in Kiryas Joel and given to News 12 by concerned members of the Hasidic community.
The video seems to show a young Hasidic boy being held, jerked, caressed and seemingly kissed while between a man’s legs for 15 minutes. The boy is repeatedly seen trying to get away, and at one point appears to wipe tears from his eyes.
Hasidic education activist Naftuli Moster says the video was leaked by a frustrated staff member inside a Kiryas Joel yeshiva.
“They thought it was what it looks like – sex abuse, child sex abuse – and they decided to spread it,” he said.
Moster says authorities didn’t press charges last year against the high-ranking school official in the video, which was posted to Facebook Sunday and has already racked up more than 27,000 views.
The Orange County District Attorney’s Office wouldn’t comment Monday on whether it had seen the tape or if the incident is under investigation.
News 12 went to the alleged school, but was turned away and told no one was available.
The story is an all-too-familiar horror tale: An adult in a position of power – in this case a Hasidic school principal – is accused of sexually abusing a child in his care.
But one thing makes this episode very different: The encounter was captured on a hidden camera and posted online this week for all to see.
Difficult to watch, the 11-minute clip offers a rare glimpse of what an incident of this sort actually looks like rather than as it may be refracted through memory days, weeks or years later in court, in the media or in the privacy of a therapy session.
The video, which is now being probed by police, was first widely circulated Saturday night on the messaging service WhatsApp and later posted on Facebook in an abridged form before being removed by administrators. It shows an older, bearded Hasidic man taking his seat in a small office and then pulling a young boy with peyos sidecurls between his legs.
Over the course of several minutes, the bespectacled man wearing a black hat caresses the boy, jerks him back and forth, and appears to kiss him repeatedly and rub against him. At one point the boy tries to escape the man’s clutches but is grabbed back. Both remain fully clothed throughout the encounter. A volume of Deuteronomy, a book of Psalms and other religious tomes lie on the nearby desk.
Filmed from an overhead camera without audio, the video shows neither the man’s nor the boy’s unobstructed faces. The boy, who has a closely shaved head under his black velvet yarmulke, looks to be anywhere from 5 to 9 years old.
Activists say the man is a principal at the main yeshiva in Kiryas Joel, a Satmar village located within the Town of Monroe in New York’s Orange County. The K-12 yeshiva, United Talmudical Academy, has some 6,000 students, according to school resource websites. A message left by JTA with administrators at the school on Tuesday was not returned.
State police are investigating the incident, according to the Journal News, the local paper that first reported the incident.
Christopher Borek, the chief assistant district attorney for Orange County, said his office had received a copy of the video but declined to say whether or not the incident is under investigation.
“I can tell you that in general our office treats all allegations of sexual abuse of children as extremely serious,” Borek told JTA, noting that a designated unit handles such allegations. “We never comment on investigations even to confirm if the investigation is ongoing or not unless or until charges are filed.”
The encounter at the Kiryas Joel yeshiva allegedly took place before last Yom Kippur and was filmed by someone who planted the hidden camera because he believed kids at the yeshiva were being subjected to inappropriate behavior.
Boorey Deutsch, an activist against sexual abuse in the haredi Orthodox community who shared the video on Facebook, said the person who made the video – whom Deutsch declined to identify — decided to go public with it because local authorities in Kiryas Joel who were shown the recording declined to take any action.
After posting a 36-second clip from the video, which got some 27,000 views before being removed by Facebook, Deutsch was inundated with comments by supporters as well as those who questioned whether the video indeed shows any sexual abuse. Skeptics said it could be an innocent encounter between an administrator showing affection for a student who required either special attention or discipline.
Deutsch vehemently disagrees.
“Some people said: ‘That’s how he showed love and dedication to the children for many years.’ But you do not show dedication and love to a child by kissing him in the face and pulling him into your body. This is inappropriate,” Deutsch told JTA. “There are still thousands of kids under his hands. He can do it again because nobody is taking action — again. It’s our job to stand up. If nobody else will stand up, I will stand up. I will make it happen.”
Deutsch, who grew up in the Satmar neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is a well-known figure in the Hasidic community. His wife was the person who, beginning at age 12, was sexually abused for three years by Nechemya Weberman, an unlicensed Satmar therapist. Weberman was convicted in 2012 on 59 counts of sexual abuse, including oral sex, and sentenced to 103 years in prison. Throughout the trial and after the verdict, Weberman’s supporters decried Deutsch’s wife as a “slut” and made her and Deutsch the targets of vitriolic attacks.
Deutsch said many haredi Orthodox boys who are subjected to encounters like the one portrayed in the video only realize their inappropriateness years later, if at all.
“Some people are still in the box and they don’t want to say it’s sexual,” he said.
Nuchem Rosenberg, an outspoken Hasidic advocate against sexual abuse who operates a hotline for the Hasidic community, says he has fielded 20-30 phone calls in the last few days from women in Kiryas Joel worried about their children attending the yeshiva where the incident allegedly took place.
“When they saw this video, they are totally under shock,” said Rosenberg, who in 2012 was attacked with bleach by a Hasidic assailant angered by Rosenberg’s activism. “These women said, ‘Is this where we are sending our children to learn and get holy and learn the word of God?’”
Naftuli Moster, an advocate for state intervention in haredi schools to compel them to offer state-mandated, grade-appropriate English and math, also has been caught up in the firestorm over the video. He was interviewed by a local TV station about the video, and was involved beforehand in discussions about how to release it publicly.
Even for those who argue that this is not a case of sexual abuse, it’s impossible to say the school administrator’s behavior is in any way acceptable, Moster told JTA.
“There’s definitely a certain type of abuse taking place. He’s definitely doing something wrong. Maybe decades ago people used to do this in small yeshiva settings and thought it was OK,” Moster said. “But he’s pinning this kid between his legs. He’s holding him by the neck at one point. He seems to be kissing him. The kid is visibly scared.
“Whatever it is, it’s just wrong,” Moster said. “He has to go.”