The New York State Assembly Chamber. (Photo courtesy Matt H. Wade/Flickr)

Brooklyn legislators continue to push back against Gov. David Paterson’s proposed budget, but they know cuts are coming.

The state budget was due last Thursday, but Paterson and the Legislature have yet to agree on a final version. The Assembly and the Senate have each passed different versions, and the two branches have been in protracted negotiations with each other and with Paterson ever since. The final contours of the budget will emerge from these closed-door discussions.

The governor, who has made reining in the state deficit a top priority, has called for drastic cuts totaling $5.5 billion in state spending. The education and health care sectors are heavily targeted. According to New York City’s Independent Budget Office, $1.3 billion of those cuts are intended for the city, a large part of which could affect its largest borough, Brooklyn. Meanwhile, the Legislature has proposed restoring $1.2 billion of the total state cuts, and continues to fight other proposed reductions. The Assembly has also approved $193 million in restorations for education expenses, but the Senate and the governor have so far rejected this proposal.

To some extent, this situation occurs every year: The governor proposes cuts, the Legislature restores some of them, and the three camps haggle over the final bill. But it has become increasingly clear to Brooklyn legislators that no matter the final budget, their constituents are likely to lose many vital services.

“It’s going to have a devastating impact on my community,” Assemblyman Alan Maisel said. “Everything is going to be affected by this, even in the best-case scenario.”

Maisel’s two priorities are state tuition grants, or TAP grants, for higher education and group homes for the elderly. The Assembly restored the TAP grants in its version, but Maisel admitted that those policies could be removed from a final version of the budget.

“We have to have a compromise,” he said. “It’s not going to be our way or the highway.”

However, compromise will not be easy because, like Maisel, every legislator will be fighting for his or her pet issues. For example, Sen. Velmanette Montgomery, chair of the Children and Families Committee, is pushing to restore money for student MetroCards, summer jobs for teenagers, and a revamping of the juvenile justice system. For Assemblyman William Boyland Jr., it is about ensuring that, at the very least, the Assembly’s levels of education spending remain in place. “We need to make sure that the numbers stay where they are, and that the money comes home,” Boyland said. “The bottom line is access to education.”

A spokesperson for Montgomery, Jim Vogel, criticized the governor’s management of the budget process, calling it “top-down management reduction.” “Most agency budgets were reduced a standard percentage of 5 to 15 percent,” he said, adding, “Some of the agencies had already absorbed multiple years of budget cuts, and further cuts would effectively end those agencies and services, which would in many cases be illegal.”

Criticism of the governor is common amongst the state’s legislators. Viola Plummer, who is chief of staff for Assemblywoman Inez Barron, said that Paterson’s cuts to CUNY and SUNY programs were “too severe,” though she could only laugh when asked if she thought all of the nearly $100 million in proposed cuts to the SUNY budget would actually be restored. Plummer’s point was echoed by Boyland, who admitted that “there isn’t much to give out” to many of his favored community organizations.

Similarly, Blair Horner, the legislative director of the New York Public Interest Research Group, said, “We do know there will be cuts.” Horner argued that the different budgets being proposed by the Assembly, Senate, and the governor are not so dissimilar. Indeed, he estimated that around 90 percent of the final budget will “be the same across the board.”

Horner’s analysis indicates that politics may be more at work in the budget negotiations than legislators will admit. Looming over the talks is an embattled governor, battered by an ongoing criminal investigation and calls for his resignation. Many may find it politically hazardous to align themselves with the deeply unpopular Paterson. However, others deny that the governor has any bearing on their decision to support a final budget.

As Maisel put it, “Paterson has no political situation anymore,” adding, “It doesn’t exist.”

Councilman Charles Barron of Brooklyn tells the Ink that, contrary to public reports, New York’s black leadership will not urge Governor Paterson to resign at a Harlem meeting this evening.

“We’re not going to let Paterson be tried by the media,” said Barron, who will attend an emergency meeting hosted by the Rev. Al Sharpton at Sylvia’s Restaurant later today. “If Clinton can govern 50 states while being impeached, then Patterson can govern.”

The councilman was adamant that racism has been at play in the media’s criticism of Governor Paterson over his handling of a domestic abuse scandal and allegations that he lied under oath about accepting World Series tickets last fall. “White men in power don’t want us [black men] in executive positions,” he said, citing recent criticisms in the media of President Obama, Rep. Charles B. Rangel – who just stepped down as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee because of an ethics investigation – and, of course, Governor Paterson.

“The idea that this is a post-racial society is a bunch of crap,” Barron concluded.

The black political establishment of Harlem is weighing whether to continue supporting embattled Governor David Paterson, a Brooklyn district leader told the Ink earlier today.

At a meeting tonight at Sylvia’s Restaurant in Harlem, the state’s most important black leaders, including Al Sharpton and Carl McCall, will likely urge the governor to submit a letter of resignation, said the Democratic leader, who in insisted on anonymity. (The AP confirmed this evening’s meeting earlier this afternoon) The urgent gathering comes in the wake of the latest accusation against Patterson. The State Commission on Public Integrity has claimed that Paterson lied under oath when questioned about free World Series tickets he accepted last fall, The New York Times reported today.

Harlem Democrats were dealt another blow yesterday when its congressional representative, Charles B. Rangel, stepped down from the powerful position of chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee because of an ongoing ethics investigation. “The African-American power structure is changing rapidly,” the Brooklyn district leader noted.

UPDATE: Paterson’s spokesman, Peter Kauffman has resigned.

“As recent developments have come to light, I cannot in good conscience continue in my current position,” Mr. Kaufman said in a statement.

This follows the resignation of Deputy Secretary for Public Safety Denise O’Donnell and the retirement of police superintendent Harry Corbitt.

By Christopher Alessi

Charles Barron is standing by David Paterson. (AP Photo/Adam Rountree)

Rep. Steve Israel, a Democratic congressman from Long Island, has urged Gov. Paterson not to run for reelection after a report in the New York Times of a domestic abuse complaint against a top aide and questions about whether the governor was out of line for contacting the aide’s girlfriend before the case was dropped, the AP reported.

Most Brooklyn politicians would not comment on the situation. But, in an interview with the Ink, Brooklyn Councilman Charles Barron readily defended the governor and lashed out at the Times, accusing the paper of practicing “vile, unsubstantiated journalism.” He claimed the Times compiled the report because they are supporting Attorney General Andrew Cuomo for governor and want to create a scandal for Paterson so that he drops out of the race. “Cuomo is a coward who is sitting back and letting Paterson take all the hits,” Barron said.

Arab-Americans in Bay Ridge gather for a Town Hall meeting. Photo: Alessi/BrooklynInk

Of the 250 people who attended the Arab American Institute’s Brooklyn town hall panel on immigration last night, only two believe that President Barack Obama has delivered on his campaign promise to reform the U.S. immigration system.

“How many people were excited when Obama promised immigration change?” asked Chung-Wha Hong, the executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, as cheers and shouts erupted. “And, how many people think President Obama delivered on that change?” The audience went silent, and only two raised hands could be seen in the crowd.

“Three hundred fifty thousand immigrants were deported last year and 440,000 were detained,” Hong said, adding that only one sentence of President Obama’s recent State of the Union address was devoted to the topic of immigration reform.

Hong was one of six speakers at the event, which was held at the Wikki Catering Hall in Bay Ridge, home to one of New York’s largest Arab-American communities. The Arab American Institute orchestrated the town hall – the first in a series of national meetings the organization plans to facilitate – as a way to bring together policy advocates and elected officials to lead a discussion about immigration reform, civil liberties and national security with the Arab-American community-at-large.

From the opening statement, however, the discourse quickly shifted from policy to politics, as Dr. Ahmad Jaber, president of the Arab American Association of New York, emotionally voiced the disappointment felt by many in the Arab-American community toward President Obama. At the time of Obama’s inauguration, Jaber said, the Arab-American community was “ecstatic” about Obama’s declaration to close the U.S. military prison in Guantánamo Bay, and “even more ecstatic” about his approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, having demanded that Israelis cease building settlements in the occupied Palestinian West Bank.

“A year later,” he continued, “our hopes are dashed out.”

After being introduced by Jaber, Dr. James Zogby, the president of the Arab American Institute – and a longtime supporter of Democratic candidates – attempted to temper the harsh rhetoric that had preceded him. “Obama got handed a shovel, not a magic wand,” Zogby reminded. “Did he dig the hole deeper or try to dig us out? We don’t know yet, but this is not just about the president,” he added. He implored the audience to be more active in lobbying their elected officials for policies that would better serve Arab-Americans.

Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Yvette Clarke made sparing references to President Obama, and instead used her time at the podium to talk about her recent legislative initiatives in the House of Representatives. She described herself as one of the original co-sponsors of the House’s recent immigration reform bill, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security and Prosperity Act of 2009. Among other measures, the bill would make it easier for the families of permanent U.S. residents to be able to come to this country, a provision that likely pleases many first-generation Arab-Americans who may still have spouses or children living in their home countries. “The bill will pass hopefully early next year,” Clarke said.

The congresswoman also cited another recent bill of hers – which has passed the House but not the Senate – called the Fast Redress Act of 2009, which seeks to fix what she referred to as “the flaws in the government’s terrorist watch list.” The bill would allow those Arab- and Muslim-Americans who have appeared on the FBI’s terror watch list, when traveling through airports, to have their names put on a “cleared list” to avoid further confusion. Many in the audience vigorously nodded in agreement and applauded, appearing more pleased with the potential implications of this bill than that advocating immigration reform.

Following Clarke, the other government official to speak, Andrea Quarantillo, the New York director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), was more closely linked with the Obama administration. Quarantillo’s organization falls under the umbrella of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and so she was there as a direct representative of an Obama appointee, Secretary Janet Napolitano.

Visibly nervous and close to apologetic, Quarantillo began by saying, “Let me tell you what USCIS is not. We are not the enforcement branch, we don’t arrest and detain,” she said, adding, “We’re just about providing services to immigrant communities.” For example, USCIS has a new “Citizenship Initiative,” which is designed to reach out to different ethnic communities – for which English is often a second language – to explain the Immigration Services interview process in advance so that candidates know what to expect beforehand.

“Secretary Napolitano,” Quarantillo said, “is really reaching out to the Arab-American community.”

Hong’s speech was in direct contrast to Quarantillo’s. She forcefully urged the large audience to descend on Washington on March 21 for a national immigration rally to lobby the Congress to do the near impossible: pass immigration reform this year. “Who thinks immigration reform will be easier to pass after the 2010 elections, when even more Democratic seats will be lost?” Hong asked. No hands were raised.

More than 55 members of the 300 parishioners who worship at the First Haitian Church of the Brethren in East Flatbush lost family members as a result of the earthquake that decimated Haiti four weeks ago. Since the disaster, the Rev. Verel Montauban, who has been the pastor of the Flatbush Avenue church for more than 20 years, has provided constant counseling — sometimes late into the night — to his grieving congregants.  Many of them are looking for ways to bring family members from Haiti to the United States, or at the least send home remittances to those that will not be able to obtain visas.

In addition to the sizable Haitian community in East Flatbush, the Haitian-American pastor has continued to minister to parishioners in Port-au-Prince, where he returns at least twice a year.  His church there, Croix-des-Mission, was reportedly obliterated during the earthquake. “I was supposed to be over there at this time,” he said.

More than 55 of the 300 parishioners at the First Haitian Church of the Brethren lost family members in the earthquake that decimated Haiti. Alessi/TheBrooklynInk

So not surprisingly, within days of the Jan. 12 disaster, Montauban established the Haiti Earthquake Family Support Center in a small room off the side of his church. It is a small operation.  There are a few folding tables and chairs, two leather couches (next to a table with candies and bottled waters), and a large television permanently set to CNN.  Since the disaster, the organization — with the support of New York Disaster Interfaith Services and the Red Cross — has been providing legal counseling and emotional support to Haitians in the Flatbush area and beyond.

“People are coming from all five boroughs, many to find out ways to bring their loved ones in Haiti to the U.S.,” Marilyn Montauban-Pierre, the pastor’s daughter and the support center’s unofficial administrative director, said Thursday morning.

At least once a week, Montauban-Pierre said, the center brings in lawyers who volunteer their time to help Haitian-American citizens fill out I-130 forms. These applications allow American citizens to petition for their “alien relatives,” who in this case are still living in Haiti, to be able to legally come to the United States. The lawyers also work with illegal Haitian immigrants, of which there are thought to be more than 100,000 living in the country, to file for Temporary Protected Status (TPS).

Immediately following the earthquake, the Department of Homeland Security granted the special status to undocumented Haitian immigrants who were already living in the United States.  If their applications are approved, these illegal immigrants can work legally in the country and send remittances back to their families in Haiti. TPS — granted to illegal residents whose native countries are facing the consequences of natural disaster or armed conflict — last 18 months, but can be renewed, as they have been in the past for immigrants from Sudan, Somalia and El Salvador.

Montauban-Pierre, a college student, has spent hours behind the center’s makeshift front desk, from which she fields dozens of calls a day on both her BlackBerry and the landline. She schedules strict appointments — advising clients that they must be on time for their meetings, to ensure that the clinic runs on schedule. Since opening on Jan. 18, the organization has helped at least 300 people file applications, 60 of which were for TPS. Many illegal immigrants, though, have not come forward to register for TPS because, Ms. Montauban-Pierre says, they are afraid of providing their names.  “They think this might be some kind of scam, but we are trying to assure people that it is OK,” she said.

Twenty people were scheduled to fill out forms for TPS on Thursday alone — one of the highest number of TPS appointments so far — though few had trickled through the front door by midafternoon. “We have 50 to 55 people in total on a daily basis, but because of the weather there are less today,” the pastor said, gesturing to the foot of snow piled up outside the glass window. He also had three less volunteers today because of the inclement weather. Montauban fears he will increasingly lose his committed volunteers as more time passes. “And, there is no financial help,” he said, lamenting the reality that the organization has no resources to maintain a paid staff.

Moreover, Montauban, who has four sisters and another congregation in Haiti, has been trying desperately, with no luck, to get a flight out of the United States. “I might have to go through the Dominican Republic,” he said, adding, “maybe before the end of this month.”

The pastor took a deep breath and then paused for a moment. “My presence is important there,” he said.

(L-R): Matthew Chachere, Alan Fleishman, Chris Owens, and Marty Needelman at the St. Pauls Evangelical Lutheran Church, Brooklyn. (Photo: Christopher Alessi/The Brooklyn Ink)

By Christopher Alessi

The New Kings Democrats gathered last night in a frigid back room in St. Paul’s Evangelical Church in downtown Brooklyn for a civics lesson.

Fifty of the New King’s young activists – most of whom got their start in politics  campaigning for President Obama in 2008 – filed into dusty folding chairs to listen to their elders within the anti-establishment wing of the Brooklyn Democratic Party give a lecture on the process of judicial selection to the New York State Supreme Court.

Matthew Cowherd, the president of New Kings, thinks reforming how judges are chosen is vital to challenging what he sees as a corrupt and static Democratic establishment.  Last night’s meeting  was an attempt to make the group’s politically savvy members equally knowledgeable about the ins and outs of a selection process that is much older than them. In short, to have these would-be reformers understand just how the system they want to reform actually works.

First and foremost, they learned it all comes down to one man: Assemblyman Vito Lopez, the Brooklyn Democratic County Chair or, as he is known around the borough, the “boss.”

“It’s insider baseball,” said Alan Fleishman, a district leader for Park Slope. “If you don’t know the Democratic Party establishment you can’t become a judge, it’s all electoral politics.” He was referring to a complex process by which judicial delegates, elected at the neighborhood level, choose candidates for the State Supreme Court. The judicial delegates are elected by State Assembly district, but are mainly chosen by party leaders and usually run unopposed. They then gather at the annual Democratic judicial convention where they cast their votes to choose candidates to run for the State Supreme Court—candidates that are all but certain to win the election in heavily Democratic Brooklyn.

“Judicial delegates are often insiders,” Fleishman explained. “They generally have something to lose if they don’t do what they’re told.”

Chris Owens, the former president of the Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats, is one judicial delegate who has been critical of the Democrat’s process for years. He told the group that at last year’s convention he had abstained from voting for every candidate who was  presented to the delegation as a way of protest. He advised the New Kings to “play in this field” and challenge the whole procedure, about which most people know so little.

Marty Needelman, a legal services attorney who got his political start working with Lopez in the 1980s, was more blunt. He referred to the party machine as the “forces of evil,” eliciting nervous laughter from his colleagues. But he also cautioned the New Kings to understand the potential upside of the current system. “Early on, Vito supported progressive people, great candidates who we helped get judgeships,” he said.

For Needelman, it comes down to one question: “Who chooses, the good guys or the bad guys?” Years ago, Needelman said, Lopez was with the “good guys,” and so the system was working for “progressive” interests. That is not the case anymore, he continued, because Lopez now represents the establishment he once sought to reform. And, he added, the “boss” has only consolidated his power to choose.

The New Kings diligently took notes throughout the two-hour session, some nodding in agreement while others appeared perplexed. At the end, the speakers answered a range of technical questions about New York’s judicial system, attempting to simplify a numbingly convoluted scheme. Finally, Cowherd piped up. “But where do we activists begin?”

By Christopher Alessi and Nathania Zevi

Rabbi Avrohom Mondrowitz, shown above, was arrested on charges of child molestation in November 2007 by Israeli police. He currently awaits extradition to the U.S. Photo courtesy of The Awareness Center, Inc.

In Brooklyn’s ultra-orthodox Jewish neighborhoods, the rabbinical leadership’s muted response to a wave of sexual abuse allegations has come under increasing scrutiny.

The problem of sexual abuse by rabbis and yeshiva teachers against children has garnered much media attention in the last year. Twenty-six alleged molesters were arrested–8 of them convicted–throughout orthodox Brooklyn in the last year. Hundreds more children have been molested, mainly in Borough Park, according to reports in The New York Times, The Jewish Star, and The Jewish Week.

But many of the parents of those children–fearful of offending the powers that be and the possibility of being ostracized from a notoriously insular community–are not reporting these crimes to the police. They are keeping quiet because a Jewish law, Mesirah, states that a Jew cannot report a fellow Jew to the secular authorities. This law has been cited repeatedly by ultra-orthodox rabbis who do not want victims to report instances of sexual abuse to the police, but rather only to the rabbinical courts, called the Beth Din.

“It is the mentality of a community that is at stake,” said Rabbi Yosef Blau, the Mashglach Ruchani, or spiritual supervisor, at Yeshiva University. Blau has spoken out against what he sees as an improper interpretation of Jewish law, but noted, “The community is not going to shift on a dime.”

The ultra-orthodox world is facing a powerful and authoritative silence, and it remains unclear when–and exactly how–the pendulum will swing.

The 26 arrests in the past year stand in dramatic contrast to earlier years when the average was a mere two per year. The recent culmination of several decades-old child molestation cases helped to pave the way for this shift. In November 2007, Rabbi Avrohom Mondrowitz of Chicago was arrested in Israel pending extradition orders to the U.S., 24 years after having fled the U.S. in order to evade charges of child molestation in Borough Park. Mondrowitz, who was indicted on four counts of sodomy and eight counts of sexual abuse in the first-degree, still awaits extradition and has not been tried.

Mondrowitz moved to Borough Park in the late 1970s, where he worked as a rabbi and child psychologist, in addition to working as a consultant for the influential Jewish non-profit, Ohel Children’s Home & Family Services. Up until 1984, when he fled to Israel, Mondrowitz allegedly molested dozens of young boys in the neighborhood, according to the indictment handed down by a Brooklyn grand jury. As a footnote, Blau notes that Mondrowitz “pretended to have many degrees” in psychology but was not formally trained. In all the time he was living in Brooklyn “nobody checked to see if his degrees were real,” Blau said.

Another landmark case that came to a head recently was that of Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, a teacher at the prestigious Yeshiva-Mesivta Torah Temimah in Brooklyn, who was arrested in December 2006 on charges of child sexual abuse. David Framowitz attended the school in the early 1970s, when it was called Torah Vodaath. He came forward in 2003, claiming to have been one of Kolko’s first victims. Framowitz filed a civil suit against the school, ultimately forcing Kolko to resign his post at the yeshiva. A wave of additional accusations followed, leading to Kolko’s arrest.

In 2008, The Jewish Week reported that prosecutors at the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office allegedly “talked the families of the victims into not pursuing further action after a plea bargain was negotiated.” Kolko, who made no admission of sexual abuse, pleaded guilty to two lesser counts of child endangerment. He was sentenced to three years’ probation, with no jail time. The DA’s office declined to comment for this article.

Some victims, meanwhile, say they are thwarted in their quest for justice. Mark Weiss, 43, currently lives in an orthodox Jewish neighborhood in New Jersey. He grew up in Chicago where he first met Rabbi Mondrowitz, who was a family friend. In 1980, his father, a respected yeshiva teacher, sent Weiss, then 13, to Borough Park to spend a week with Mondrowitz in order to refocus the boy on Judaism. Weiss found Mondrowitz to be “very charming,” though he explains that it became “complicated at night when it was time to go to bed.” While Weiss says it is now clear to him that Mondrowitz sexually molested him, he had not fully understood what was happening at the time. Then, when he was 18, he had an encounter with Mondrowitz in a Chicago synagogue. “It hit me like a ton of bricks, what had happened,” Weiss said of the sighting. After this revelation, he told his parents about the abuse.

But, despite his parents’ disappointment, he says, they were reluctant to accuse such a respected member of the community. This was the case with many of Mondrowtiz’s victims in the Jewish community who were loath to challenge the rabbinical establishment, Blau explained. But, as a self-declared psychologist in Borough Park, Mondrowitz had also interacted with other children in the neighborhood, including the sizable population of Italian-Americans that used to reside there. “The Italian kids would go to the police [if molested],” Blau said, “the Jewish kids would not.”

Guided by a fundamental interpretation of the law of Mesirah, orthodox Jews fear the consequences of speaking out. “Many feel that if anyone knows their kids were abused, then they won’t be accepted to good yeshivas and won’t obtain a good marriage partner,” said Vicki Polin, executive director of The Awareness Center, Inc., an advocacy group for victims of sexual abuse in Baltimore. “People have, in the past, been chased out of the community,” she said.

Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg is one example of a person who was ostracized for speaking out, in orthodox Williamsburg. In 2007, he set up a phone hot-line for abuse victims so that they could call in for counseling and support. When he tried to educate other rabbis in the neighborhood about sexual abuse, he says, he was essentially ex-communicated. That same year, many prominent rabbis throughout Brooklyn signed a rabbinical decree urging the members of the orthodox community not to associate with Rosenberg, according to Der Blatt, a Yiddish-language weekly newspaper based in Williamsburg. Rosenberg has said that he received death threats, and was allegedly wounded in the forehead by what may have been either a rock or a bullet.

“I am paying a high price for speaking out,” Rosenberg said. “But, I was able to do it because I was working in a different industry and I had no political pressure” from the rabbinical establishment. He also works as an accountant in Manhattan.

Sympathy for Rosenberg within Brooklyn’s orthodox community has been limited. Rabbi Aharon Fried, a professor at Stern College and resident of Borough Park, said of Rosenberg, “a person who calls himself a victim becomes a hero,” adding that in his view, the child molestation issue “has been over-reported.” In attempting to explain this mentality, Blau notes that, “Rosenberg is a traitor to the community in their eyes, while the guy who abused people was just a bad guy.”

As a result, it takes years–even decades–for some people to be able to come forward and share their stories of abuse. Pinny Taub says he was molested in 1990.  He only shared his story over a year ago, to advocates for abuse prevention, as increasing numbers of victims began going public. He grew up in Williamsburg and attended a yeshiva in Borough Park. When Taub was 15, he says, a teacher at his yeshiva befriended him and took the teenager under his wing.  “He was a dream rebbe teacher, he was my buddy,” Taub said. The teacher would take Taub to his house during school hours and let him smoke cigarettes, play on the computer, and talk about sex. It was during one of these midday outings that Taub says he first heard the phrase, “Just give me two minutes,” as his teacher attempted to grab Taub’s crotch.

He would hear this phrase repeatedly over the next year, he said. During these incidents, the teacher would become physically violent as he tried to pin Taub down. The first time this occurred the teenage boy’s pants were ripped apart and he was left with choke marks around his neck. He was furious. Yet, despite his anger he continued to return, again and again, to his mentor and friend. “After a day, I would go back to him because I was lost,” Taub recalled.

Today Taub, who has a wife and three children, is an outspoken advocate for sexually abused children. His former teacher, he says, still lives in Borough Park. While Taub and the teacher have not spoken in almost two decades, the sight of his old mentor continues to invoke a deep and unresolved anger. In August, Taub ran into him at a wedding.  Before the teacher could even enter the wedding venue, Taub dragged him outside and began to beat him. Taub knocked him to the ground, kicking and cursing at the elderly man, he says, while other bystanders looked on. “People said that he deserved it, that he should be kicked out” of the community, Taub said.  But he remains frustrated because, he says, the community has done nothing to remove the former teacher and many others like him.

Nonetheless, advocates like Taub and Weiss continue to push back, encouraging victims of sexual abuse to go to the police.  Bloggers, including the “Unorthodox Jew” (UOJ) and “Failed Messiah,” have been instrumental on this front. Paul Mendolwitz, the UOJ blogger who has tried to protect himself by keeping his identity secret on his blog, was the first to break the Kolko case. Since then, he has remained a constant critic of those in the community unwilling to speak out against abuse. “The blogs were very, very helpful,” said Rabbi Mark Dratch, the founder of an advocacy group called J-Safe, who believes that the community is being forced to “open up.”

In 2006, Mendolwitz also broke Rabbi Asher Lipner’s story on his blog. Lipner, a Flatbush-based mental health professional and advocate for sexually abused children, says he was molested as a teenager by a rabbi at the Ner Israel Rabbinical College in Baltimore. Lipner had kept his story a secret for two decades. “I was afraid of being shamed, shaming my family, being disbelieved and having no support,” he said.  Even at the time that Lipner’s story was revealed, he says, he was still nervous about backlash from within the orthodox world.  Today, he says, he fights to erase the stigma of speaking out about issues of sexual abuse in the orthodox community, noting, “the potential damage is not nearly as bad as people think because of the taboo.”

Lipner is also among those who are critical of Ohel, the Borough Park-based Jewish children’s welfare organization, where he worked as a psychologist in the adolescent department and then in the outpatient clinic until last year. Advocates have accused Ohel of failing to encourage victims of abuse to report their cases to the secular authorities. For some, Ohel has remained too loyal to the rabbinical establishment.  The blogger, Mendolwitz, says that Mondrowtiz – the rabbi being held in an Israeli prison–worked intimately with Ohel.  Blau corroborates this claim, noting that Mondrowitz “served as a consultant” for Ohel for many years.

“Ohel knew he was a sex offender,” Mendolwitz argued further. “They can’t claim they didn’t know.”  Additionally, Weiss, the victim from Chicago, claimed that the ultra-orthodox rabbinical leadership refers a lot of child patients to Ohel and as a result, “Ohel looks at the larger institutional structures before the victim.”

Ohel is also a partner in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office’s new sexual awareness program, Kol Tzedek, an arrangement that concerns some advocates despite the number of recent prosecutions. Jonah Bruno, a spokesman for the DA’s office, could not be reached for comment.

Ohel’s communications director, Derek Saker, who declined to speak in person, requested an e-mailed list of detailed questions from the Ink. This list included questions that asked Ohel to respond to accusations that the organization does not actively encourage victims of abuse to report these crimes to the police; how the organization teaches children to interpret the law of Mesirah; to address the organization’s relationship with the rabbinical leadership of Brooklyn’s ultra-orthodox community; and to respond to accusations that claim the organization was aware Mondrowitz was a sexual offender while he was working in conjunction with Ohel. Saker– who sent back what he termed an “advertorial” citing Ohel’s commitment to fighting sexual abuse in the orthodox community–responded directly to only one question. “To the best of our knowledge, Avrohom Mondrowitz was never employed by Ohel,” he wrote.

Dratch, meanwhile, is critical of Borough Park’s assemblyman, Dov Hikind.  Hikind has been an outspoken critic of sexual abuse in the neighborhood, and has been instrumental in providing support for victims in the community that want to share their stories. Yet, critics, like Dratch, believe he has not been forceful enough in encouraging these victims to report the crimes to the police. “By making it a public issue he has done a good job,” Dratch said. Yet, he continued, “Hikind has also perpetrated the cover-up, which is very harmful.”

Hikind counters that he tells victims they have “an option” to go to the police, but he emphasizes that it is a “personal choice” to do so, rather than an obligation.  He also has deep reservations about providing the names of victims to the DA’s office because he is afraid of alienating others who might come forward, who would not want their stories to be made public. (In a later interview, Hikind retracted these comments, insisting, “We encourage people to go the police, but most have already made up their minds.”) Others assert that he does not provide the names to the DA’s office so as not to undermine the rabbinical establishment, about which he is notably uncritical.

“I want to believe the rabbinical authorities just didn’t know and understand this problem,” Hikind said.

Despite the cold wind and rain on this dreary off-season day in Coney Island, Peter Agrapides, Jr., owner of Williams Candy shop on Surf Avenue, was in high spirits this morning. Like other small business owners in the area, he was thrilled to learn that the city yesterday had finally won the bid to purchase seven acres of land in the neighborhood’s amusement district.

“Bloomberg is better for the amusement,” said Agrapides of the $95.6 million purchase from Thor Equities, a real estate development firm run by Joseph J. Sitt. “Thor wanted to change everything and remake [the amusement district] with condos,” he said, explaining that Sitt’s housing development plan for the boardwalk area could have caused his business to go under by reducing the influx of tourists.

Agrapides, whose family has owned Williams Candy since 1982, says he was pleased with the Mayor for reassuring local merchants that their businesses would remain intact. The mayor has visited the candy shop many times in the last year.

“He said, ‘Don’t worry Peter,’” recalled Agrapides of Bloomberg’s last visit to the shop. To show his gratitude, Agrapides made a special batch of candy apples that he delivered to the mayor’s reelection campaign.

Construction at Coney Island. Photo: Alessi/The Brooklyn Ink

Around the corner, Maya Haddad, the owner of the Coney Island Beach Shop on Stillwell Avenue, was equally pleased. “I think the city will be a really good landlord because they will take into consideration the needs of the community,” she said. Although the city will not be purchasing Haddad’s storefront “many more people will come here,” she said, “which will be good for business.”

Along the boardwalk, most long-time residents of the neighborhood expressed their satisfaction with the deal. “This is a great thing because it is like garbage now,” said Elizabeth, a Russian immigrant and 16-year veteran of Coney Island, as she strolled along the deteriorating, trash-laden boardwalk with her husband.

But others remained skeptical of the city’s motives. “They’re trying to get us to move, they’re trying to get rid of the old people,” said Catherine Pride, who has lived in Coney Island for the past 30 years. Pride, though, acknowledged that the city’s project would benefit the neighborhood in the long run. “I’m just trying to keep my apartment,” she said as she boarded a northbound bus on Stillwell Avenue.