Conviction Jewish institutions and contexts Other Jewish institution or hearing Lakewood, New Jersey, USA · 2013

United States: Lakewood yeshiva teacher's 15-year sentence — and the communal campaign against his victim's family

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Disposition and response

Material that narrows or disputes the record

Appellate history

2016

Plea-withdrawal denial affirmed (State v. Kolko, A-1561-13).

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

yeshiva teacher and camp counselor (Yeshiva Bais Hatorah camp)

Organization

Yeshiva Bais Hatorah, Lakewood

Archive classification

This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.

A boy under his religious teacher and camp counselor — with the community's punishment of the reporting family documented in the court record itself.

Guru or spiritual-teacher authority
Institutional obedience or isolation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2013-05-01 · mid-trial guilty plea; plea-withdrawal denied and affirmed

Ocean County Superior Court, New Jersey; NJ Appellate Division. Yosef Kolko, a yeshiva teacher and camp counselor in Lakewood, pleaded guilty mid-trial in May 2013 to aggravated sexual assault and related counts against a boy in his charge (2008–09) and was sentenced in October 2013 to 15 years. He later sought to withdraw the plea claiming community pressure had driven it; the trial court refused and the Appellate Division affirmed in 2016. The victim's family was subjected to documented communal intimidation for reporting to secular authorities.

Documented coercion mechanisms

religious teacher-counselor authority over a boy in his charge
documented communal intimidation of the victim's family for going to secular authorities

Cited record

Sources

official court judgment appellate judgment State v. Kolko, NJ App. Div. (A-1561-13, 2016).: The appellate opinion affirming the plea's validity.
national newspaper court reporting sentencing report Asbury Park Press, 18 Oct. 2013 (archived).: Contemporaneous sentencing report.

Source provenance

Source access and integrity log

This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.

Source and tier basis: https://law.justia.com/cases/new-jersey/appellate-division-unpublished/2016/a1561-13.html Corpus classification: official-court-judgment; evidentiary role: appellate-judgment.
Retrieval: 2026-07-27 · Retrieval failed; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
Source and tier basis: https://www.bishop-accountability.org/news2013/09_10/2013_10_18_Hopkins_FormerOrthodox.htm Corpus classification: national-newspaper-court-reporting; evidentiary role: sentencing-report. SHA-256 1ace227ca7bcffe32d8e6533d90b0aece3b8fe5100b2f47615b8de3e4982b10b
Retrieval: 2026-07-27 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

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