Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Connecticut Rabbi Pleads Not Guilty To Sex Assault On Student

(JTA) — A Connecticut judge entered pleas of not guilty on behalf of a prominent Connecticut rabbi charged in the alleged sexual assault of a minor.

Rabbi Daniel Greer, 77, the founding rabbi of the Yeshiva of New Haven, appeared Tuesday in Superior Court in that city. He is charged with second-degree sexual assault and risk of injury to a minor, and remains free on $100,000 bail.

Eliyahu Mirlis, 29, of New Jersey, claims the rabbi raped and sexually molested him hundreds of times when he was a minor and a student at the religious boarding school from 2001 to 2005. Mirlis has urged media outlets that normally would not identify an abuse victim to use his name.

In May, a federal jury ordered Greer and the Yeshiva of New Haven to pay Mirlis $15 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages.

In the civil lawsuit, which was filed last year, Mirlis claimed the abuse occurred for three years when he was a student at the yeshiva, which Greer also served as principal.

Greer has denied the allegations and his attorney said he would appeal the civil judgment.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.