Documentary record Bound by Fear
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Conviction Jewish institutions and contexts Hasidic and Haredi communities Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York, USA · 2012

Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi Moshe Keller: guilty plea for endangering the welfare of a child after abusing a teenage boy

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi; ran an organization for at-risk Chabad youth in Crown Heights, Brooklyn

Organization

Chabad-Lubavitch, Crown Heights, Brooklyn

Spiritual nexus

Keller's standing as a Chabad rabbi running an outreach program for at-risk Chabad youth gave him the access and trust that placed the victim in his care; the abuse occurred within that religious-outreach relationship rather than a secular or family one.

  • Pastoral or clerical authority
  • Institutional obedience or isolation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 2012-05-01 · guilty plea and sentence

    Kings County Criminal Court, Brooklyn, New York. Moshe Keller pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of a child, arising from sexually assaulting a then-15-year-old boy in 2009, and was sentenced to three years' probation. Charges were brought in 2011 after a third accuser, Mordechai Feinstein, came forward; prior allegations dating back roughly two decades in Israel had not been disclosed to the New York community when Keller relocated.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • rabbinic authority within the Chabad-Lubavitch community
  • trusted access to a vulnerable teenage boy through a youth-outreach role

Primary record

Sources

magazine journalism case history Rachel Silberstein, 'Watching the Jewish Community Watch and Its "Wall of Shame"', Tablet Magazine (2013).

Discusses the Moshe Keller case as part of a wider account of the Jewish Community Watch's tracking of accused abusers in the Chabad-Lubavitch community, including the 2012 plea and sentence.

survivor advocacy case summary Manny Waks, 'Convicted paedophile Moshe Keller in Melbourne' (advocacy blog, n.d.).

Survivor-advocate summary of Keller's conviction history, including the 2012 New York plea to endangering the welfare of a child and the earlier Israeli conviction, used here for corroboration of the New York disposition only.

Related record

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