https://www.nhregister.com/news/article/New-Haven-rabbi-guilty-on-4-felony-counts-bond-14467686.php
NEW HAVEN — Rabbi Daniel Greer today was handcuffed by judicial marshals and led away to lock-up after a jury found him guilty on all four counts of risk of injury to a minor.
Greer, dressed in a black suit, red tie and yarmulke, remained stoic as the verdict was announced. His wife, Sarah, seated behind him in the courtroom, also showed little emotion but she tried to speak with him before he was led off. A marshal said she could not have contact with him.
“I want to see my wife,” Greer told the marshals. But his attorney, William Dow III, told him: “These guys control the show.”
The outcome of the trial was a dramatic comedown for Greer, 79, who has long been a respected rabbi in New Haven and a community leader who helped revitalize the Edgewood neighborhood.
But the prosecutors convinced the six jurors that in 2002-03 Greer repeatedly had illegal sexual contact with Eliyahu Mirlis, then 15, at Yeshiva New Haven. This was the school founded by Greer, who taught there and was its dean.
Technically, if I may say, he was NOT convicted of having sexual contact.
ReplyDeleteI followed this case closely. The judge tossed the charges having to do with sexual contact because the statute of limitations had run out. Thus Daniel Greer was found guilty of risk of injury to a minor, a separate charge. The practical upshot of this is that even though the risk of injury occurred during sexual contact, he will not have to register as a sexual offender.
Daniel Greer almost walked free. The cutoff age for the risk of injury to a minor statute under which he was charged is sixteen years old. The victim was fifteen when the alleged molestation began. And the alleged events happened years ago. There were no witnesses to the alleged molestation. There was evidence presented at the trial countering the testimony of the victim.
The case will almost certainly be appealed, and the sentencing is in a few weeks. This case is not over.
https://www.wnpr.org/post/sexual-assault-charges-dropped-against-new-haven-rabbi-criminal-trial
ReplyDeleteDow’s second witness, Rabbi Avrohom Notis of Lancaster, Pa., said he never met Mirlis, but he knew Greer when he had a school within the Yeshiva of New Haven before relocating to Pa.
Dow asked Notis about the importance of positions of honor that Mirlis gave Greer, making him a witness at his wedding and the designated person to hold his child during his son’s circumcision ceremony. Notis said if the rabbi had sexually assaulted him he’d be considered tainted and the wedding would be invalid.