Kolko Allegedly Intimidating Boy Set To Testify In Abuse Case

The father of a 12-year-old boy who alleges that he was sexually molested by Rabbi Yehuda Kolko has filed a criminal complaint against Kolko for violating a protection order signed after the rabbi plead guilty in 2008 to two counts of endangering the welfare of a child, The Jewish Week has learned

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The boy’s family brought criminal charges against Rabbi Kolko in 2007, which — along with charges made by the family of another boy — resulted in Kolko’s guilty plea.

The father told The Jewish Week that in the complaint, made at the 70th Precinct Wednesday night, he alleges that Rabbi Kolko stopped and glared at him and his son as they made their way to shul in Brooklyn last Friday night. The boy noticed Kolko’s actions and alerted his father. The father said in the complaint that the boy was frightened and unable to sleep as a result. According to the father this was not the first instance of Rabbi Kolko allegedly violating the order.

The protection order restricts Rabbi Kolko from having any contact with the boy.

“This shows [Kolko] doesn’t give a damn for the courts,” the father told The Jewish Week. “My son is now reliving this thing that happened [to him] four years ago.”

A spokesman for the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office, Jerry Schmetterer, told The Jewish Week, “We are aware of the complaint and are in touch with the family’s attorney.”

The boy’s family has also filed a civil suit against Yeshiva Torah Temimah, where Rabbi Kolko was employed as a first-grade teacher and where the abuse is alleged to have taken place in 2005.

That trial is scheduled to begin in March of 2011. The boy is set to testify at that trial.

“Any belief on the part of Kolko and his fellow conspirators that this scare tactic will work is 100 percent wrong,” said Michael Dowd, the attorney representing the boy’s family. “The audacity of these people only makes my client and his family stronger in their determination to bring these people to justice.”