CSA in the USA > 50 years w/o parole for CST; Orthodox Jew with 103 year sentence may get out soon; Decades later, an Alaskan JW may pay for CSA

 

Orthodox Jewish Man Sentenced to 103 Years for Sex Abuse May Go Free

Nechemya Weberman, convicted of molesting a 12-year-old girl in a politically charged case, is seeking a new, shorter sentence with the Brooklyn district attorney’s support.

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Nechemya Weberman in Brooklyn Supreme Court in 2013.Credit...Robert Stolarik for The New York Times

Thirteen years ago, a Brooklyn man’s child molestation conviction pierced a veil of silence in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, where many people who dared to report sexual abuse were shunned, expelled from schools and had businesses ruined.

Now the man, Nechemya Weberman, an unlicensed therapist who was sentenced to 103 years in prison, could be on a path to freedom.

Mr. Weberman, 67, is scheduled to appear in court next month, with a judge set to decide whether to commute the original sentence and impose a new, shorter one, in a move supported by Eric Gonzalez, the district attorney.

Supporters of survivors of sexual abuse in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community are outraged. They say Mr. Gonzalez has bowed to years of relentless pressure from an influential voting bloc, and that an office that won a seminal conviction was now abdicating its duty in the same case.

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“This sends a devastating message,”

Decades of silence preceded a painful reckoning for a Jehovah’s Witness congregation on the Kenai Peninsula

State prosecutors say Aaron Scott Merritt sexually abused at least four girls in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Some of the victims say the abuse was well known by Jehovah’s Witness congregation leaders for years.

By Michelle Theriault Boots

Updated: 1 hour agoPublished: 5 hours ago

For years, rumors about Scott Merritt and the underage girls in a Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses on the Kenai Peninsula hovered over the congregation.

As far back as the 1990s, members remember hearing it said that Merritt, a well-liked young leader based in Kenai, spent too much time with young girls. That he acted strangely with them.

More than one former member said they told congregation elders that Merritt was sexually abusing adolescent and younger girls.

An official silence prevailed: The abuse was not reported to police until 2002, the same year Merritt was excommunicated. Even then, there was no criminal prosecution. Years passed. Then decades.

The girls who say they grew up being abused by the man they knew as “Scotty” became adults. Some left the Jehovah’s Witness faith. Some moved out of Alaska.

The Kenai Kingdom Hall itself, a squat, khaki-colored building with few windows on Kiana Lane, closed and became a yoga studio, and later a tribal office.

Now, a painful reckoning about what happened in the 1990s and early 2000s is taking place.

Last month, state prosecutors charged Merritt with 20 counts of child sexual abuse involving four victims, all of whom were members of the Jehovah’s Witness hall in Kenai.

Court documents describe the abuse as happening between the years of 1998 and 2002. The victims say it goes back even further, to the mid-1990s.

One girl said she was abused starting at age 5.

Merritt and his attorney could not be reached for this story. He pleaded not guilty in court and is being held at the Anchorage jail, according to court records. He would have been 18 or 19 when the accusations described in the indictment began. He is now 45.

Aaron “Scott” Merritt holds a copy of the indictment from his criminal case while being arraigned on Nov. 4

in Kenai. (Ashlyn O'Hara / KDLL)

In a statement, the Jehovah’s Witness organization said Merritt “was removed as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses in 2002 and has never been reinstated as a congregant.”

“We are not aware of any concerns about his conduct being raised with congregation elders other than those reported at the same time to law enforcement in 2002 when he was removed from the Kenai congregation,” the organization’s statement said.

The Daily News spoke with several people who were members of Kenai Peninsula Jehovah’s Witness churches in the 1990s and 2000s, including two women who are among the victims in the criminal case against Merritt.

They say they either directly reported or witnessed someone telling elders about the abuse years earlier.

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A doctrine of separation