Sex offender who gave high profile interview to Hasidic comedian pleads guilty to new charges
The Dutchess County Courthouse in Poughkeepsie, New York. Photo by Daniel Case/Wikimedia Commons
(New York Jewish Week) – A convicted sex offender who gained widespread attention for speaking publicly about his crimes with a Hasidic comedian last year has pleaded guilty to new abuse allegations that surfaced as a result of the interview.
Gershon Selinger, 41, pleaded guilty in Dutchess County Court on Wednesday to the felony of first-degree sexual abuse of a minor under the age of 11, according to court records. The incident occurred in 2008. Selinger was taken into custody after the hearing and will be sentenced in March.
The plea deal will see Selinger serve five years in prison followed by 10 years of supervised release, according to public defender Seth Gallagher, his defense attorney. Gallagher declined to give any further comment.
In 2015, Selinger was convicted in a Brooklyn court of abusing a 6-year-old, also in 2008, and was sentenced to 10 years probation, according to public records.
Last July, Selinger again drew attention when he sat for an interview with Mendy Pellin, a Hasidic comedian, and spoke about his abuse in explicit terms. In the 78-minute video, which has more than 250,000 views across the social platforms X and YouTube, Selinger discusses his molestation of several children, his treatment for pedophilia and his relationship with his wife.
Pellin said he recorded the video in order to raise awareness of child sex abuse. The interview sparked a discussion about sexual abuse among some in religious communities, garnering hundreds of comments.
Pellin published subsequent video interviews with two experts in the field – Michael Salamon, a psychologist, and Pattie Fitzgerald, a child safety educator and the founder of the educational group Safely Ever After.
“My intention was to get into the mind of a child molester so that parents and educators could be better equipped to [protect] the children,” Pellin, who is based in Brooklyn, told the New York Jewish Week. “And also just to show that, ‘Hey here’s a guy with a beard and a yarmulke, and he looks like a regular guy you’d see in shul, and look what sick things he’s done.’ And also get people thinking, opening their eyes that you really have to watch out for your kids.”
Selinger said in the interview that he had grown up in a religious Jewish household, and later worked as a lifeguard as well as in Hasidic Jewish schools in Brooklyn. Both were environments where he interacted with children, though he said that he did not carry out any abuse connected with his work. He went through therapy after his 2015 conviction and remains Jewishly observant, he said. His entry on the state sex offender registry lists an address in Brooklyn.
Zvi Gluck, the CEO of Amudim, a New York City- and Jerusalem-based group that aids victims of abuse in the Orthodox Jewish community, thanked Pellin in a social media post for publishing the video, while acknowledging that he had concerns about its potential for triggering trauma in survivors of abuse. Some commenters said the video was informative and important for spreading awareness, while other social media users called the interview “highly unethical,” and traumatic to survivors.
One of the video’s viewers, according to Pellin, watched it from a different vantage point: As she heard Selinger retell his crimes, she recognized that he had abused her. Pellin says the victim contacted him, telling him she had largely repressed her memories of the abuse. But in October, less than three months after Pellin released the Selinger interview, the victim, who is not named in court records, filed charges against Selinger for the abuse — leading to Wednesday’s guilty plea.
“These flashbacks that she’s been getting for years, just trying to convince herself that they may not be real or they’re vague, just became very clear,” Pellin said. “She realized the beast that she’s been fighting all these years.”
The victim said in an impact statement in court on Wednesday that Selinger had abused her multiple times, causing her years of trauma, according to Asher Lovy, an advocate for sexual abuse victims who was in the courtroom. Judge Edward McLoughlin applauded the woman for coming forward, Lovy said, saying she had shown her strength by speaking out and seeking justice.
Lovy, the director of Za’akah, a nonprofit that combats sexual abuse in religious communities and advocates for survivors, said he had mixed feelings about the video because it had given Selinger a platform to present his side of the story. Lovy felt that Selinger showed a lack of remorse in the interview, but added that the new victim coming forward was a benefit of the video.
“I don’t want anybody getting the idea that this is generally a good idea, that if you can convince a pedophile to make a video maybe more will come forward,” Lovy said. “Once the video was made, I’m glad that it could lead to Gershon being brought to justice for more of the abuse he’s committed.”
Pellin said he feels gratified with the video’s impact.
“She’s handling this with great strength and I think it’s very inspiring,” Pellin said of the victim. “Survivors should always have the final say.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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