A staunch supporter of an Orthodox Jewish sex abuse victim was attacked on a Brooklyn street today by the bleach-throwing son of a man he’d accused of being a pedophile.
Anti-sex abuse activist Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg, 62, was ambushed as he walked down Roebling Street across from Schnitzler’s Famous Fish market around noon, he and witnesses told The Post.
“He comes up to me and he taps me on the shoulder,” the still-shaken Rosenberg recounted after being treated for ocular burns at Woodhull Medical Center.
“It is Mr. Schnitzler, who owns the fish store,” Rosenberg said.
Paul Martinka
Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg attacked In Williamsburg this morning.
“He walk up hard to me. He looks me in the face. I saw him holding a glass. I thought it was coffee or something and he throws it in my face.”
Rosenberg runs an information hotline and blog for sex abuse victims and was a nearly daily presence at the trial of powerful Hasidic leader Nechemya Weberman.
The attack was in retaliation for his support of Weberman’s now 18-year-old victim, as well as for his claims that his alleged attacker’s father, Monsey rabbi Shalom Schniztler, “is a pedophile,” Rosenberg said.
On Monday — as Weberman was convicted Monday on 59 counts of abusing of a Brooklyn schoolgirl — Rosenberg posted on his blog, accusing rabbi Schnitzler of abusing young boys.
“I said Mr. Shalom Schnitzler should pack up his bags and join Mr. Weberman in jail,” Rosenberg recalled.
The activist also posted on Twitter after Weberman’s conviction.
“Burech hashem!! (Praise God!!),” he tweeted. “Chazer (Pig) Weberman Is Arrested After All 60 Charges Was Totally True! Rabunim & Chazerim (Rabbis & Pigs) Are All The Same Garbage.”
“Two days later, this is what happens,” Rosenberg said, referring to the attack.
According to Rosenberg, his attacker is a relative of Rabbi Baruch Lebovitz, whose 2010 child sex abuse conviction was reversed and is slated to be retried in February.
Police had not charged anyone late yesterday in the alleged assault.
Rosenberg — who left the medical center in a hospital gown after police took his bleach-stained clothes as evidence — was enroute to the 90th Precinct to try and identify his attacker in a lineup.
Witnesses said the bleach-tossing thug fled the street after dousing Rosenberg.
Primo Santiago, who manages a liquor store on the same block as the fish market, was just opening up shop when the attack occured.
“It happened so fast,” he said. “Out of the corner of my eye I saw [Rosenberg] walking down the street, and the other guy ran from the fish store and threw the bleach.”
“He didn’t say anything,” Santiago said of the attacker. “He just ran toward the guy.”
After the attack, Primo saw Rosenberg staggering and making a phone call, and told the wounded man to rinse out his eyes in a nearby phone store.
“He said I think I got bleach on my face, that’s all he said,” Primo recalled.
Sources said Hatzolah, the Jewish ambulance corps, refused to pick Rosenberg up, so he waited for EMS to take him to the hospital.
Rosenberg said he’d been on his way to pay bills at a corner store when he was accosted.
He said it wasn’t his first encounter with the fish store owner, who has spit at him before.
Rosenberg said his outspokeness has made him the target of threats for years.
“I am the activist in the community that opened up the can of worms,” he noted. “In our community we have so much molesting going on — from teachers, from ordained rabbis, from any kind of religious people.
“And we have ritual baths called the mikvah and there is so much molestation going on. Children who are three- and four-year-old, they go there with naked old people and I kept on saying, ‘this has to stop.’”
“So they ostracized me,” Rosenberg said. “they threw me out, and since then there is not a peaceful day in my life.”
The latest attack has him fearing for his life.
“I am very much afraid,” Rosenberg said. I’m thinking of going out of town for a week or two.”
Additional reporting by Josh Saul and Kirstan Conley
