Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Hasidic Sex Abuse Victims Advocate Hit With Bleach

A Hasidic rabbi who advocates for victims of sexual abuse in the ultra-Orthodox community was injured when a chemical was thrown in his face.

Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg on Tuesday was walking down the street in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, where he lives, when a man approached him from behind, tapped him on his shoulder and then threw a chemical believed to be bleach in his face, according to reports.

Rosenberg, 62, was treated for burns on his face, around his eyes and in his left eye. He is expected to make a full recovery.

“He taps on my shoulder, he says ‘whoops’ and throws it in my face,” Rosenberg told the New York Daily News.

Rosenberg identified the attacker as the son of an accused child sex abuser. He blamed the attack on unrest in the Satmar community over the conviction of Nechemya Weberman on sex charges a day earlier.

“Because of the Weberman case, everything is upside down,” he told the News. “Everybody is crazy.”

The rabbi runs a website and blog for sex-abuse victims, as well as a telephone hot line.

He told New York media that he believes the attack was in retaliation for his support and assistance of the now 18-year-old female victim of Satmar Hasidic leader Weberman, who was convicted on Monday of 59 counts of sexual abuse of the woman when she was between the ages of 12 and 15 and went to him for counseling.

Police have not yet caught the attacker, though they reportedly have identified a suspect.

On Monday, Rosenberg accused another rabbi of abusing young boys in a blog post on his website, according to the New York Post.

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.