Women from Borough Park and other Orthodox neighborhoods in the New York area described nightmare scenarios in which their husbands coerced them into having sex by invoking the authority of God, withheld money for household necessities and used GPS to track their movements. They told of being thrown to the ground while in late stages of pregnancy — or of watching their partners beat their children.
After having shared stories of seeking help from rabbinic and civil authorities, they found themselves subjected to surveillance, harassment or the loss of their children in custody proceedings. This cycle has had profound consequences, intimidating victims into not reporting crimes, and shielding abusers from consequences.
Henny Kupferstein, a former Borough Park resident who grew up in the Belz Hasidic sect, said in a series of interviews that she faced stigma, community hostility and the loss of her children when she finally left her husband and accused him of domestic abuse.
“Literally gang warfare — mafia tactics,” Kupferstein said. “Ganging up, harassment that comes in a way that is presented as a holy task.”
It was an overcast and unseasonably warm November day in 2009 when Kupferstein, the woman who described “mafia-like tactics,” finally decided she had suffered enough.
The cries of her young child through an apartment window after her husband, Victor, allegedly locked Kupferstein out of the family home. The slurs, delivered in Yiddish — “witch,” “dog,” and worse. And the weight of her husband as Kupferstein lay underneath him, weeping through desperately unwanted but religiously obligatory sex.
“I was just crying the whole time,” Kupferstein, now 43, said in an interview. “Think of this from the perspective of someone who believes, quite strongly, that this act is something that God wants you to do.”
THANKS SO MUCH,, IT MEANS THE WORLD TO US IN THESE DIFFICULT TIME
