By: James Sheehan

As the New York Post first reported, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez is facing a fierce backlash from victim advocates who say he appears positioned to support the early release of a convicted pedophile from the Hasidic community — a controversy that recently exploded into a heated public clash at the governor’s State of the State address.

According to the Post, the dispute centers on disgraced former Williamsburg yeshiva counselor Nechemya Weberman, who was convicted in 2013 on 59 felony counts for repeatedly sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl, Rivky Deutsch, over a period of three years. Weberman was initially sentenced to 103 years behind bars, a punishment later reduced by statute to 50 years. He is now eligible for resentencing.

Victim advocates fear Gonzalez will ask the court to impose a sentence of time served — a move that would effectively free Weberman. As the New York Post reported, those concerns have intensified after Gonzalez was seen posing for photos with Weberman supporters while allegedly freezing out the victim and her advocates.

Hasidic victim activists claim Deutsch has been treated so dismissively by the DA’s office that she was forced to hire her own attorney to represent her interests during the resentencing process. The Post reported that such a step is highly unusual, particularly in a case prosecutors once aggressively pursued.

“It’s exceedingly rare for a victim to feel so unheard by the prosecution,” said attorney Sarena Townsend, a former Brooklyn prosecutor who worked in the DA’s office for a decade, as quoted by the Post. Townsend said a recent meeting between Deutsch’s team and the DA’s office reportedly ended with the victim’s side storming out in frustration.

“In most cases, victims feel reassured the prosecutor is acting in their best interest,” Townsend added. “It is definitely unusual to have to retain a lawyer just to make sure your voice is heard,” the Post reported.

The controversy reached a boiling point at this year’s State of the State address in Albany. Victims’ advocate Asher Lovy, director of the Orthodox Jewish group Za’akah, said he confronted Gonzalez directly after repeated attempts to contact the DA went unanswered, according to the New York Post.

“Basically, no one has been able to get a hold of him,” Lovy told the Post, referring to Gonzalez. “I went over to him and said, ‘Eric, I’m surprised to see you here. I thought you’d be working overtime to get Weberman out of prison.’”

Lovy said Gonzalez denied trying to free Weberman, but the exchange escalated after Lovy reminded him of a 2021 letter he wrote to then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo seeking commutation for Weberman, the Post reported. The argument grew so intense that an unidentified New York City Council member reportedly had to step in to physically separate the two men.

While the DA’s office declined to confirm the confrontation or whether Gonzalez intends to push for time served, spokesman Oren Yaniv told the Post that the office supports both the victim and resentencing. Yaniv argued that Weberman’s original 103-year sentence was an “extreme outlier” and claimed it was “motivated by politics.”

“We agreed to allow the court to hear from all parties and make a fair determination that spares the defendant from dying in prison while serving this clearly excessive sentence,” Yaniv said, according to the New York Post.

Critics remain outraged. As the Post reported, Gonzalez has repeatedly declined to appear at events with Jewish victims’ groups while continuing to engage with influential Hasidic power brokers. Meanwhile, an amicus brief filed by Lovy and others noted that Weberman recently published a letter in a Hasidic newspaper likening himself to the biblical patriarch Jacob and portraying his potential release as a triumphant return to family and status.

“To give him this kind of benefit — someone unremorseful and eager to reclaim his former standing — is sickening,” Townsend told the Post.

The case has long been marked by intimidation. During Weberman’s trial, members of his Satmar community allegedly harassed Deutsch, attempted to bribe her with $500,000 to drop the case, and pressured authorities to revoke the kosher certification of her husband’s pizza shop, effectively forcing it to shut down, as the New York Post reported.