Chasidic counsellor guilty of sexual abuse of young girl

A Satmar counsellor has been found guilty of 59 counts of sexual abuse of a young girl in a case that has caused outrage in his Brooklyn community.

Nechemya Weberman, 54, was found guilty on Monday of a three-year-long abuse of a girl, which began when she was 12 years old. The girl had been sent to him for religious counselling because she was deemed “rebellious” by her Orthodox school.

The girl was forced to perform sexual acts by Weberman and to watch pornography and then “copy what was in the porn”.

The Satmar community has responded with hostility to the trial. Many were angry to see a prominent member of the community tried in a secular court, rather than a rabbinical court, the New York Daily News reported.