Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Accused Rabbi’s Supporters Clash With Protesters

Two ultra-Orthodox Jews were reportedly arrested after a confrontation between supporters of a Brooklyn rabbi accused of sex abuse and protesters.

The Daily News reported that scores of demonstrators faced off against a much larger crowd of supporters of Rabbi Nechemya Weberman, who is accused of abusing a teenage girl, in Williamsburg.

Police were called after scuffles broke out between the rival groups and the pair were charged with disorderly conduct, the paper said.

Weberman was arrested last year after a 16-year-old girl complained he had forced her to perform oral sex and other acts. Supporters say the girl concocted the accusations of abuse, which she says took place when she was 12.

Signs supporting the rabbi and promoting the fundraiser were plastered on main streets in the predominantly Jewish neighborhood.

The controversy over child sex abuse in the ultra-Orthodox community has exploded in recent weeks as the Forward and other publications have questioned Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes’s strategy for countering the problem.

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.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

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.