New Jersey Rabbi Arrested In Teen Prostitution Sting
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
By Ari Feldman February 21, 2018
Rabbi Aryeh Goodman Image by Jewish Community Watch
A New Jersey rabbi who reportedly once worked a Chabad center turned himself in on charges that he had sex with a minor who was forced into prostitution, the New York Post reported.
Rabbi Ayreh Goodman, 35, paid to have sex with the 17-year-old girl, who was held at a motel in East Brunswick, New Jersey. Goodman was reportedly at one time the director of Chabad East Brunswick. A statement released Monday by the Rabbinical College of America indicated that Goodman has no current affiliation with Chabad.
“The Chabad House of Rutgers has not affiliation with the individual charged nor any knowledge of the incident in question,” a spokesperson for Chabad House of Rutgers told MyCentralNewJersey.com.
On Monday, the Middlesex County prosecutor’s office released a statement saying that Goodman has no current affiliation with Chabad.
Police said that Goodman was one of some 30 men who paid two Bronx residents to have sex with the minor, both of whom were arrested. Goodman turned himself in to authorities earlier this month.
Goodman is registered as a Tier 3 sex offender, a designation he received in 2015 after he was convicted on two counts of indecent assault against minors. Goodman sexually assaulted two 13-year-old boys at Camp Menachem, an ultra-Orthodox summer camp where he was a counselor. The assaults reportedly occurred in 2001.
Update, February 21 — This article has been updated to reflect statements from RCA and Chabad House of Rutgers that Goodman has no affiliation with Goodman.
Contact Ari Feldman at [email protected] or on Twitter @aefeldman
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
