Documentary record Bound by Fear
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Conviction Jewish institutions and contexts Hasidic and Haredi communities Lackawaxen Township, Pike County, Pennsylvania, USA · 2015

United States: Chabad rabbi Aryeh Goodman sentenced for indecently assaulting a 12-year-old boy at a Chabad summer camp

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

Chabad rabbi serving as a counselor at Camp Menachem

Organization

Camp Menachem, Lackawaxen Township, Pennsylvania (Chabad-Lubavitch)

Spiritual nexus

The victim was a child at a Chabad-run religious summer camp; the defendant's authority as the camp's rabbi and counselor was what put him in unsupervised charge of the boy.

  • Pastoral or clerical authority
  • Institutional obedience or isolation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 2015-10-01 · guilty plea and sentence

    Court of Common Pleas, Pike County, Pennsylvania, USA. Rabbi Aryeh Goodman pleaded guilty to two counts of indecent assault of a person under 13 years of age, arising from incidents during the summer of 2001 when he was a counselor at Camp Menachem, a Chabad facility, and the victim was a 12-year-old boy. He was extradited from New Jersey in January 2013 to face the Pennsylvania charges. In October 2015 he was sentenced in Pike County to 11 to 23 months in prison, required to complete sex-offender counseling, and barred from contact with the victim or his family.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • rabbinic and counselor authority over a child at a religious summer camp

Primary record

Sources

jewish wire service court reporting background and sentencing report 'N.J. Rabbi Again Faces Sex Charges', Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 2018.

JTA report recapping Goodman's 2013 extradition to Pennsylvania, his guilty plea to indecent assault of a child under 13, and his October 2015 sentence of 11 to 23 months, in the course of reporting his later 2018 New Jersey charges.

Related record

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