Julie Globus has identified herself as the anonymous blogger who'd been writing under the name Lost Messiah
The Rockland County woman had been seeking to "uncover crimes, misdeeds and abuses within segments of the Jewish community"
She's facing a libel lawsuit, being accused of defamation. But she wants the case file unsealed
The blog’s stated purpose: "To uncover crimes, misdeeds and abuses within segments of the Jewish community in the hopes of effectuating change."
In an exclusive interview, Globus told the I-Team she had two separate focuses:
"One was on the ultra-Orthodox community, and the money -- where it was coming and going? And I was focusing on sexual abuse. I think there is a need to hold myself and others within that religious community accountable."
Globus said she wanted to remain anonymous to protect her family."
“The subject matter that I was touching on was really dangerous stuff, like police corruption. Russian diamond smuggling."But now, the 48-year-old has been outed and she wants it to be on her terms.
In August, she was served with a libel lawsuit filed on behalf of two real estate titans, Louis and Joel Kestenbaum, and their company, Fortis Property Group. The suit accuses Globus of writing two false articles in 2016 and perpetuating the defamation by reposting the offending articles on another site.
Joel Kestenbaum
Months before the suit was filed, a state Supreme Court Justice in Brooklyn, Wavny Toussaint, had already ruled that one of the articles was false, and ordered the host blog site Wordpress not only to take it down, but also to release LostMessiah’s personal information.
Louis Kestenbaum
Said Globus’ attorney, Henry Kaufman, "She didn’t have any chance to defend her article before it was taken down by order of the court without having heard our side."
The lead attorney for the plaintiffs, Anthony Genovesi Jr., asked the court to seal many of the court documents to "avoid re-victimizing my clients by perpetuating the harmful falsehoods." That request was preliminarily granted pending further hearing.
He said in a statement, "My clients are victims of cowardly, anonymously published falsehoods. The defamation lawsuit is an effort to hold the responsible parties accountable."
n court papers, Genovesi labels Globus an "internet troll" who "publishes lies on the internet with the sole intention of ruining lives for sport."
Globus said she can’t talk specifically about the alleged defamation, except to say that she relied on what to her were reliable sources. She now wants the case file unsealed."It puts us all in darkness. It’s a slippery slope, how far can you go to start sealing records of things," she said.
UCLA law professor and scholar Eugene Volokh has now jumped into the First Amendment fray, filing his own motion to oppose any sealing of documents in the case.
"The plaintiff is trying to short-circuit this discussion by trying to get the case sealed. So they’re trying to get this whole issue litigated in the dark. That’s not the way the American court system generally works," Volokh said.
Kaufman said, "They want it sealed because there’s embarrassing material. But that’s not a good enough standard to protect because every defamation case would be sealed."
Globus is blogging more than ever."Look, I’m outed, it made more sense to me to step up and say, 'Here I am.' I wanted the narrative to be my narrative and not their narrative."
Both sides were scheduled to be in court before Judge Toussaint on Dec. 5.
5 comments:
She put this on her site over a month ago.
She is a true hero.
This is interesting because Kestenbaum knew Shmatta Rosenberg was attacking him too but also knew that the putz sat around in his underwear blogging from his mother's basement and doesn't own much more than the beanbag that his big rump was flattening.
Poisonous Julie Globule is right to expose many things that she does but is the wrong person for the job. She is a vicious & vile woman from an atheist Yiddishist background who hates all orthodox Jews with a passion including law abiding ones. There was a profile on FM suspected of being her btw who had the most venemous outbursts, eg the orthodox are a "cancer that metastasize" to new neighborhoods. Shmatta actually had to tell her to tone it down because someone that boiling over with hatred made his own attacks appear less credible.
Why shmuck!?
All she is is an extortoinist. All she wants is to get millions. Note she uses the word Messiah. She is probably a front for that bum blogger Failed Messiah. Or a copy cat who wants to get money from rechnits to shut her blog.
Julie was known to operate the blog https://eiruvrav.wordpress.com/2016/05/30/you-wont-believe-lostmessiahs-idiocy-moron/
I have decided to post a response and am hoping that you will do me the kindness of posting publicly. To the person who refers to me as a "hero." Thank you. I don't believe myself to be as such. I think, though, that someone has to speak up. To the person who comments that I hate the Orthodox, that could not be farther from the truth. I am saddened by those who dress a part, go and pray on Shabbat and then go and steal from the government or their law abiding neighbors as soon as the sun sets on Motzei Shabbat. They diminish the value of the law abiding citizens, members of the same community and others, particularly insofar as they make people frightened to speak up and they invite anti-Semitism. I am not telling anyone anything he or she does not already know. As to the extortionist comments, I have never taken donations, never taken money, and have not been paid for anything on the site. I did not want to be beholden or at the behest of the deepest pockets. I would not take money now. In fact, I had considered stopping the posts because as anyone in this position knows, the corruption, fraud, sexual abuse articles, information, tips, they all take a toll. Anyone who looks at the site will know nothing was posted between January and August. I am thankful to this site for taking its own stance and to others like it, though I do not think that we should all be working alone. Only in concert do I now believe will we actually make a difference. I am not the site Vekker attributes to me above but would be grateful to find out who is. There has been speculation and Vekker's comments raise more. Next, as to the comments on FailedMessiah, I did not learn of that site until 2014 and never posted any comments to it, as far as I recall. I did, however, use it as the basis for 2 public articles written in 2015/2016 on sites in Clarkstown. The author of that site has a library of a decade of work which sadly has been relegated to the WaybackMachine. As to my religion, I am not an atheist, far from it, but the claims made above are not anything I have not heard before. I am simply not a hypocrite about who I am and what I believe. I was raised in a Yiddish speaking household, though not the Yiddish of today which sadly has lost the remarkable beauty that it had when I was a child. It has become the language of religious extremism, which again, is a great shanda. Again, thank you for posting the story; and hoping you will post my response to the comments above. I welcome any information that could be useful, either to the site or with respect to the lawsuit.
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