Affleck (Claire Folger)
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He JUST wants justice for his son.
It may never come.
In the 2 1/2 years since Mordechai Jungreis’ boy revealed the awful truth — the mentally disabled teen was allegedly molested in a Jewish ritual bathhouse — Jungreis (pictured) has turned from a respected member of the Hasidic community into a leper. A nobody.
Pond scum.
Jungreis, his wife and four children were kicked out of their apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and forced to move to the community’s outskirts. They found a new synagogue that would accept them.
His son, “badly damaged” by the alleged abuse, was targeted a second time, he said, expelled from two yeshivas. Summer camp, too.
People on the street crossed to the other side when Jungreis walked by. Words of abuse were hurled anonymously into the telephone. Or on the street.
As a Jew, I’m horrified that, in 2013, Jungreis, 38, could be punished, vilified and treated worse than a criminal. All for publicly accusing a fellow Jew of a heinous crime?
Finally, tomorrow, Meir Dascalowitz, 29, the man charged in 2010 with molesting the teen, is scheduled for a pretrial hearing in a crime that, Jungreis says, he discovered after finding blood on his boy’s underwear. Jungreis hopes this exercise in jurisprudence will put his nightmare to rest.
He expects nothing.
“I went through hell,” Jungreis, who once considered himself a member of the Bobov ultra-Orthodox community, told me.
“We used to pray in the park, because I wasn’t allowed in the synagogue. My son is not in school.’’
And now, Dascalowitz has the full support of Jungreis’ neighbors.
“Everyone is running away from my child,’’ said Jungreis, whose son is afflicted with learning disabilities and a low IQ. The boy, now 17, is tested regularly for HIV.
“What about my child? This is a disabled child. And they’re screaming at me in the street!”
The ugly cloak of secrecy that has long ruled the Jews of Williamsburg was ripped to shreds last month. A Brooklyn jury convicted Satmar Nechemya Weberman of 59 counts for sexually abusing a now-18-year-old woman from the time she was 12.
The parallels with Jungreis’ case are inescapable. Weberman’s victim contends she was maimed again by her fellow Jews after she came forward. As Weberman, 54, prepares to be sentenced next week, one question remains:
Have things changed?
“On the one hand, advocates and victims feel empowered” by Weberman’s conviction, said Ben Hirsch, spokesman for Survivors for Justice, which supports sex-abuse victims.
But “the courageous victim in the Weberman case has been publicly vilified by the grand rabbi of Satmar, and thousands of Hasidim have publicly supported Weberman.” Hirsch accused Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes of lacking the guts to fight Jewish leaders who intimidate victims.
Hynes’ spokesman Jerry Schmetterer insists that the DA gives no special treatment — having arrested more than 100 Hasidim for sexual crimes since 2009.
Dascalowitz, who was married with a son, was locked in a mental hospital in 2011 to determine if he’s competent to stand trial.
“He’s playing games,” Jungreis insists. Since Dascalowitz was released from the hospital last year, he’s been held in lieu of $150,000 bond, charged with 10 felony counts of criminal sexual act, plus 10 misdemeanor counts apiece of sexual misconduct and sexual abuse, and one of endangering the welfare of a child.
“I’m not going to discuss the innocence or the guilt. I wasn’t there,” said his lawyer, Israel Fried. He complained that it’s gotten hard to defend Orthodox Jews.
“It’s becoming more difficult because of the publicity attached to the case and the pressure the community is placing on both the DA’s Office and on the courts.”
Cry me a river.
Meanwhile, a disabled teenager sits at home, hoping for justice.
In his community, it remains elusive.
Ben gets ‘left’ out by Oscar
Ben Affleck was mugged.
“Argo’’ is not only the best movie to emerge from the Hollywood cesspool last year, it leans conservative. And that cost its director, Affleck — ironically, an avowed Tinseltown liberal.
Centered on the stunning and successful 1980 mission to free American diplomats trapped in Iran, “Argo’’ glorifies CIA operatives. And it slashes one-term President Jimmy Carter, whose feeble administration is revealed as a bad joke.
But the ancient nimrods who run the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences issued an “Argo [bleep] yourself,’’ as they might say in the movie, nominating the film for Best Picture, but snubbing Affleck as Best Director — the very award he won last night at the Golden Globes.
Oscar pooh-bahs also snubbed Kathryn Bigelow, director of “Zero Dark Thirty,’’ the edge-of-your-seat film about the righteous capture and killing of Osama bin Laden by US forces. Well, Osama’s slaying upset Michael Moore!
Academy members need to retire before they can do any more damage.
Tiger, Tiger burning $light
Tiger who?
Once the world’s most sought-after golfer, serial adulterer Tiger Woods isn’t worth the $3 million appearance fee that he gets for golfing in foreign lands, Qatar’s Golf Association president, Hassan al Nuaimi, recently complained. (Tiger’s idle agent says Woods “never contemplated Qatar.’’)
Last month, Australian golf resort owner Clive Palmer said he didn’t want Woods attending a PGA championship at his place because the sleazebag’s “an emotional wreck’’ and “not a good example for kids.’’
Who wants to see a scratched and dented swinger? Apparently, not many.
Poor Kate felled by an art attack
She’s the most glamorous woman in Britain. Maybe the world. And yet in her just-unveiled official portrait, Kate Middleton has grown lumpy cheeks and pursed lips, making the 31-year-old princess look 10 years older and a dead ringer for Marlon Brando in “The Godfather,’’ said portraitist Stuart Pearson Wright. Ick.
The painting by Paul Emsley drew a stiff upper lip from exactly two Britons. Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, dubbed it “just amazing.’’ Hubby Prince William called it “absolutely beautiful.’’
It’s a great work — if you want to give competition to Prince Charles’ wifely muse, Camilla Parker-Bowles.
A perfect fig-men-t
Could this man be straight?
New York women have revealed the qualities of their “perfect man.’’ The mythical male is a fit, green-eyed brunette with a graduate degree, makes $150,000 to $200,000 a year, drinks socially and doesn’t smoke, said 9,345 respondents to a survey from the dating-auction site whatsyourprice.com.
This helps explain why so many women in this city remain single.