The FBI busted a Rockland County rabbi early yesterday on charges that he sexually abused a girl for a decade, beginning when she was 9 years old.
Agents arrested Israel Weingarten, 58, at his home in Monsey after finding him hiding with six of his kids in a locked bedroom, authorities said.
Weingarten had repeatedly moved his family between Israel, the United States and Antwerp, Belgium, for fear that the abuse would be exposed, according to court papers.
He allegedly first molested the girl in 1990 – on a weekly and sometimes daily basis.
Defense attorney Kenneth Gribetz not only denied that his client was a child molester but also blamed the rabbi’s wife for spreading lies in the course of what he called “a very bitter matrimonial case.”
Gribetz said the two versions of events presented by prosecutors and Weingarten were “as different as Mars and the planet Earth.”
Weingarten was ordered held without bail.