The following article expresses an example of the sick horrors that some people experience in their lives. Wow!!!
(Associated Press) A woman who says her ultra-orthodox rabbi father molested her for much of her youth confronted him Tuesday under tense circumstances: as he cross-examined her at his own sex-abuse trial.
The defendant, Israel Weingarten, decided to be his own defense lawyer, setting up what a frustrated judge called an "awkward" and "fairly untenable" situation once he got the chance to directly question the government's star witness.
The woman, now 27, initially turned her head and wept when her father stepped up to a podium normally used by lawyers in a Brooklyn courtroom. But she slowly regained her composure, even lashing out at him when he questioned why she didn't come forward as a teenager with the shocking allegations.
"My feeling from your molesting me was utmost fear and blackmail and years of torture because you hit me, because I told my mother," she said. "Didn't I get hit enough?" Weingarten, 59, a member of the Satmar community in Monsey, N.Y., was arrested and jailed without bail last year on charges he traveled outside the country to have sex with a minor. In a rambling opening statement, he said he had been falsely accused by a daughter who rebelled against a strict upbringing, and suggested that a neighbor was the The daughter, one of eight children, told the FBI in 2003 that she was victimized since age 9 while living with her family in Hasidic communities in Belgium, and on trips to England and Israel. Prosecutors allege Weingarten sexually abused her, sometimes on a daily basis, and moved the family around to help conceal his crimes.
The accuser has since changed her name, but came forward and identified herself in open court as the daughter of the rabbi on Monday when she first took the witness stand to detail the accusations. She has appeared in court wearing an orange scarf and pants suit, and with her hair down -- a mainstream look she said her father had scorned.
She told jurors on Tuesday that once she grew up, she left the faith and hoped "to forget everything that happened to me," mindful that her father had warned her she "would never be able to prove it." But she went public with her charges at the urging of her mother, who was embroiled in a custody dispute with her father.
Weingarten, though assisted by two lawyers, struggled with his cross-examination. His questions meandered, and he often interrupted his daughter's answers by scolding her, which visibly angering U.S. District Judge Gleeson.
"I'm not sure where this cross is going, but I do know this: You are not going to lecture this witness," the judge told him.
The father peppered his daughter with questions about her admission that as a teen she briefly fell in love with an older man living next door in Belgium. Though she claimed she never had sex with him, she testified she was thrilled "that I finally got to be with another guy besides my father." Her father reminded her that the neighbor was married with children, asking, "Didn't you feel that was wrong?" "I didn't do much thinking," she responded. "I went with my heart." The woman was to resume testifying on Wednesday
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