Lawsuit Revives Victims’ Hopes That Alleged Abuser Will Face Justice

https://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/lawsuit-revives-victims-hopes-that-alleged-abuser-faces-justice/

The suit alleges that during their mandated counseling session, Mondrowitz — who at the time had a popular radio show and was revered by many within the charedi world as a talented psychologist despite having faked his credentials — molested Zuckerman. After the incident Zuckerman says Mondrowitz took him to a bookstore and bought him an expensive set of young adult books he wanted, written by the 19th-century German rabbi and author, Marcus Lehmann.

The teacher took him to the office of the school’s spiritual supervisor, Avrohom Leizerowitz, who, Zuckerman claims, “berated him for his ‘dirty mind’ and instructed him that he would be required to receive counseling” from the very man in the basement, Avrohom Mondrowitz.

(In 2006 Leizerowitz fled to Israel after allegations surfaced that he had molested boys. A post on the website of the now-defunct Awareness Center reported that a civil suit was filed against him alleging that he improperly touched a boy during a one-on-one help session in his office.)

The complaint, filed Monday in Brooklyn Supreme Court, takes advantage of a law passed last year allowing victims of childhood sexual abuse a limited window of time in which to pursue abuse claims even if the statute of limitations has run out. Zuckerman also asserts in the complaint that after he reported the abuse to Leizerowitz he was expelled from the yeshiva, which is affiliated with the Ger chasidic sect; the expulsion came, he told The Jewish Week, via a letter written to his parents explaining that he “didn’t fit the school and they should find another school.”