A woman who says she was sexually abused for years as a teenager is suing the grand rabbi of the Skver Hasidic sect, claiming that when she and her parents told him about the abuse, the rabbi pressured her to drop the charges and kept the alleged abuser from being held accountable.

The woman, who is anonymous and goes by “Jane Doe” in the lawsuit, alleges that she was 15 years old in 1999 when her neighbor, Mordechai Usher Sitorsky, a rabbi at a Borough Park synagogue, began sexually abusing her. The abuse went on for five years, she said, and took place in multiple locations, including Sitorsky’s mother’s home, Sitorsky’s car, a girls’ high school, an indoor amusement park, and homes where she was babysitting.

In 2004, the woman and her parents, who belonged to the Skver sect, had a meeting with the Skverer rebbe, David Twersky, because the parents were “concerned about the sexual abuse of their child,” according to the complaint filed as part of the lawsuit.

Twersky “prevented the plaintiff and her parents from obtaining protection from the ongoing harm being perpetrated” and “compelled them to cease cooperating with the Kings County District Attorney’s Office” in order to prevent the alleged abuser from being charged, the complaint says.

Za’akah, an organization that helps victims of sexual abuse bring legal action against their abusers, posted a video on Instagram claiming the Skverer rabbi told the woman “if she went ahead and cooperated with police, it would ruin her marriage prospects.”

Though the complaint doesn’t name the district attorney, at the time of the alleged abuse, the Brooklyn district attorney was Charles Hynes, who served in that role from 1990 to 2013. In 2012, the New York Times joined many other news outlets and examined Hynes’s ties to Haredi leaders and his practice of not releasing the names of alleged abusers within the Haredi community, even those who were convicted, Hynes lost his 2013 bid for reelection.

The alleged victim is also suing Congregation Nachlas Mahrim Stretin. The lawsuit says Sitorsky was a rabbi there and abused her there for five years. It says the synagogue failed to enforce “strict” gender segregation.

The Stretin synagogue is not affiliated with the Skver sect. The lawsuit claims that at the time, Twersky was the leader of a corporation responsible for supervising Sitorsky, but does not name the corporation.

A man who answered the phone for the Stretin synagogue said that Sitorsky has not been affiliated with the synagogue in “over 20 years,” and left the congregation because he moved away. According to the lawsuit, Sitorsky now lives in Jackson, New Jersey.

“I don’t know the story,” said the man, who identified as a congregant of the synagogue but declined to share his name. “I would just suggest that this is somebody who may be troubled or bothered at some pain she has in her life, and she’s looking to shine a bad light on whoever she can get her hands on.”

Sitorsky is “a very nice man, a very beloved person, and I admire him a lot,” the man who answered the phone for the Borough Park synagogue said.

The lawsuit was filed under the Gender Motivated Violence Act, a law that allows victims of sexual abuse that took place in New York City to seek compensation in civil courts for injuries resulting from abuse. In 2022, the New York City Council created a “lookback window,” for two years beginning on March 1, 2023, allowing victims to bring claims against their alleged abusers regardless of how long ago the abuse occurred.

Twersky is not the only grand rabbi of a Hasidic sect who stands accused of covering up alleged sexual abuse. In January, a young woman sued the Bobover rebbe, Ben Zion Halberstam, and his son, Chaim Halberstam, for “creating and maintaining a regime of terror and intimidation” after she accused Jacob Daskal, the former leader of the neighborhood patrol group Boro Park Shomrim, of raping her when she was 15.

Daskal pleaded guilty to engaging in criminal sexual activity and was sentenced in October to 17.5 years in prison.

New Square’s main synagogue, Congregation Tzemach David of New Square, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit. Neither Twersky nor Sitorsky could be reached for comment.