Police charged a New Jersey Rabbi and two other people with human trafficking and prostitution of a 17-year-old Lancaster, Pennsylvania, girl, said Middlesex County Prosecutor Andrew C. Carey and East Brunswick Police Department Police Chief James Conroy.
Rabbi Aryeh Goodman is among 30 men who allegedly had sex with the girl after Bronx residents Gabriella Colon, 18, and Richard Ortiz, 23, allegedly forced her into prostitution. Police arrested the two at a Fort Lee, New Jersey, motel, and they now face 11 counts of human trafficking and child pornography offenses, Carey’s office said.
Officials allege that Ortiz and Colon coerced the girl, who is now 18, into having sex with the men between January 1 and February 2 at an East New Brunswick-based hotel.
Goodman, who turned himself in on February 6 to the East Brunswick Police Department, runs a religious learning center out of his home in East Brunswick. Police charged him with one count of engaging in prostitution with a child, and an additional count of endangering the welfare of a child.
This is not the first time Goodman has been in trouble with the law.
Court records show that police arrested and charged Goodman in 2013 with 12 counts of “indecent assault against minors” for allegedly making sexual contact with a boy at a youth camp he held in his home. Goodman pled guilty to the two charges, and the court sentenced him to 11 to 23 months in prison while dismissing other charges against him in a plea deal.
The assaults allegedly while Goodman was a counselor at Pennsylvania-based Camp Menachem in June 2001.
Ortiz and Colon are in custody at the Middlesex County Jail in North Brunswick.
The specter of pedophilia has raised its ugly head numerous times this year — running the gamut from people supporting failed senatorial candidate Roy Moore to a Pennsylvania Police Chief who was arrested for allegedly soliciting sex from a minor.
But considering we have a Sexual-Harasser-in-Chief, this just seems like another addition to the ever-lengthening list of pedophiles and misogynists in this country.
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