Kolko claims Rabbi Belsky and other rabbis pressured him to falsely plead guily and to go to jail - to avoid sensational trial

Asbury Park Press    Middle-of-the-night visits and YouTube videos of child molesters in prison were among methods employed by Lakewood’s Orthodox Jewish community to pressure a former Orthodox Jewish camp counselor to admit to sexually abusing a child, the former camp counselor’s attorneys said in court papers.The members of Lakewood’s Orthodox community made the concerted effort to persuade Yosef Kolko to plead guilty to child molestation against his will to spare the community the unwanted publicity of a trial, defense attorneys Stephanie Forbes and Alan L. Zegas said in a brief filed in state Superior Court. [...]

Senior Assistant Ocean County Prosecutor Laura Pierro said in a response to the brief filed by the defense attorneys that Kolko already had been contemplating a guilty plea, because of the way the trial was going. He went ahead with the plea after learning that the Prosecutor’s Office had been contacted by an attorney representing two more individuals who claimed to have been molested by him, Pierro said in her brief opposing Kolko’s motion. Kolko did not enter his guilty plea until after he consulted with a Brooklyn rabbi, Yisroel Belsky, to get his blessing, Pierro added. [...]

Five letters from members of the Orthodox community were submitted with the brief on Kolko’s behalf, saying that Kolko was pressured into taking a plea bargain. The letters included one from Shabsi Kolko supporting the defendant’s story that he told him he was pleading guilty against his will, and one from Belsky, who said he was among the people who advised Kolko to plead guilty.“The reasons were convincing enough to make those who believed in his innocence fearful of the sensationalism attached to the affair and other weighty considerations,’’ Belsky wrote in his handwritten letter.

Hodgson is scheduled to hold a hearing on Kolko’s motion at 1:30 p.m. today.