On July 14, the founder and former leader of an organization meant to keep the Haredi community safe, the Boro Park Shomrim, pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a 15-year-old girl. The reaction from community leaders was mostly silence.

The chair of the Boro Park Shomrim, Rabbi Berish Freilich, suggested he was uncertain whether a crime happened at all. “It’s an isolated incident, if it was whatever it was,” Freilich said in a phone interview with Shtetl. Freilich, who spent about 16 years on the payroll of the New York State Police as a Jewish liaison, only grudgingly accepted that there might be any validity to the claims against Daskal: “I guess if the police and the prosecutors have tried it, maybe there was something there,” he said. The coordinators of Boro Park Shomrim, Motty Brauner and Motty Katz, did not respond to requests for comment, and Shomrim did not issue any public statements about the guilty plea, outside of Freilich’s comments to Shtetl.  

Amid reports of rising antisemitism, many community members appreciate the extra layer of protection the Boro Park Shomrim offers. The group shares examples on its website of times it has helped the NYPD apprehend people suspected of robbery, vandalism, and other crimes, raised awareness of antisemitic incidents, recovered lost and stolen items, helped respond to weather emergencies, and dispensed safety tips to people in the neighborhood.

But critics of Shomrim point to a more problematic track record of reported vigilantism, corruption, and covering up abuse cases within the Haredi community.

Indeed, for activists against abuse in Orthodox Jewish communities, the Daskal case fits into a larger story about Shomrim.

Shomrim is “like a club where they support their own even when their own did something wrong,” said Devorah Beenstock, an anti-sex-abuse advocate who grew up in the Chabad-Lubavitch community. “While they do a lot of good and I won’t take that away from them, I do feel that they think they’re above the law.”

Ben Hirsch, co-founder of Survivors for Justice, an organization that combats child sex abuse echoed that sentiment, telling Shtetl he thinks Haredi leaders, activists, and community members are surprised – not by what Daskal allegedly did, but by the fact that he will actually face consequences. 

"Boro Park Shomrim has been openly protecting Orthodox child molesters from criminal prosecution for decades, so of course the Boro Park community is surprised that somebody as powerful as Daskal didn't get away with his crimes,” Hirsch said. “People assumed that he, like all the Orthodox sex offenders he protected over the years, was above the law."

Asher Lovy, director of Za’akah, an organization that combats child sex abuse in Orthodox communities, was not surprised by Daskal’s actions. “Shomrim has been an instrument of abuse cover-up for many, many years,” he said. “It’s not shocking that the head of it would abuse his position there.”

That multiple activists say Shomrim holds itself “above the law” speaks to some aspects of the organization’s track record.

In 2011, Daskal told the New York Daily News that Boro Park Shomrim maintained a list of 15 suspected Haredi child molesters they didn’t report to the police. "The community doesn't go to the police with these names because the rabbis don't let you,” he said at the time. 

Freilich, who said he’s been involved with Boro Park Shomrim since it was founded in the 1990s, has faced his own controversy. In 1999, while he was employed by the New York State Police, Freilich was indicted and then acquitted on charges that he made death threats against a woman who was scheduled to testify that her father had repeatedly raped her as a child. In 1995, when a rabbi and his assistant were charged with sexually abusing a 15-year-old girl, Freilich told the New York Times he thought the girl “drummed up a charge.”

"It is impossible that an Orthodox Hasidic person would even speak to a female, much less touch her,” Freilich said at the time. 

Members of Shomrim maintain close relationships with the NYPD; Shomrim searches for, apprehends, and detains suspected criminals, helping the NYPD arrest them. But the possibility that the relationship goes in the other direction, with the NYPD assisting Shomrim, has generated some alarm among community activists interviewed by Shtetl, and the Daskal case provides some evidence in that direction.

Daskal relied upon the tightness between the NYPD and Shomrim to perpetrate his crime against his underage victim, according to prosecutors. In pressuring her to keep silent about his abuse, Daskal allegedly told her he “had police protection and was a ‘big’ guy in the Jewish community and would deny any allegations,” according to court filings.

What experiences have you had with Shomrim? If you’d like to talk with Shtetl, contact reporter Lauren Hakimi at lhakimi@shtetl.org.