Another Greer Accuser Testifies

Rabbi Daniel Greer sexually forced himself on another 14-year-old, caressing his rear during lessons and attempting to kiss him during a late-night outing, the former student testified under oath.

That revelation from yet another accuser emerged in Superior Court on Thursday morning, as the state continued to make its case to the jury that Rabbi Greer is guilty of criminal charges of sexual assault and risk of injury to a minor named Eliyahu Mirlis.

The state called this second witness, who is now 23 and goes by the initials R.S.A., to buttress its case that Greer repeatedly raped Mirlis for three years when Mirlis was a student at his Yeshiva of New Haven.

R.S.A., said that he’d never met Eliyahu Mirlis, until being introduced to him outside the courtroom two days ago.

But the story R.S.A. told from the witness stand closely matched the way Mirlis said Greer came on to him, going in for a kiss after counseling the students about their family problems.

The six-member jury heard that right after an expert in sexual offenders, who worked in state prisons for 20 years, testified about how child predators ​“groom” their victims. He said they often find a way to touch someone inappropriately, like by horsing around, to see the response before they might try something ​“a little more bold,” usually ​“to insure it won’t be disclosed.”

Before being sworn in, R.S.A. placed a cowboy hat on the corner of the witness stand and unzipped a hoodie he had on over his purple button-down, with the sleeves rolled up. As he testified, he kept a hand on his chin. A piercing sparkled on his nose. R.S.A. told the prosecutor he felt ​“a tad” nervous.

Greer, throughout much of the testimony, put a hand to his forehead, partially covering his face.

R.S.A. said that his older brother convinced him to enroll at the Yeshiva of New Haven, Greer’s boarding school at the corner of Elm and Norton Streets, by saying, ​“You don’t have to be at home.”

He said he signed up as a freshman, the only student in his class, in 2008 — three years after Mirlis graduated.

R.S.A. immediately sensed that Rabbi Greer ​“was someone that commanded respect.”

“When he walked into the room, everyone stood up,” R.S.A. said. ​“He owned a chunk of New Haven. He was like the supreme principal of the school, an absolute genius.”

He also said ​“from day one” he struggled in the school.

He’d just learned Hebrew within the previous year, and he’d been diagnosed with dyslexia. So he said he mixed up words in the daily prayers. Whenever he did, he said Greer ​“barked” at him ​“in a loud aggressive way.”

“It happened to me quite often,” R.S.A. said. ​“I felt terrible.”

When his grades tanked by late fall, his teachers sent him down to Greer’s office for a talking-to. R.S.A. recalled that Greer asked him to read something. When he stuttered through it, Greer flipped into a rage. ​“He started screaming at me,” R.S.A. said. ​“This went on for about 10 minutes, and I left in tears.”

R.S.A. returned to the dorm and started packing his bags. A classmate arrived, saying Rabbi Greer wanted to see him to apologize.

In the office, Greer came up with a plan ​“to overcome this reading issue I had.” Greer told him to come by for a daily tutoring session, where he’d spend about 15 minutes of practice from a book of psalms in the hallway.

Soon, those lessons got longer: up to three hours, by the year’s end.

Each time, when he finished reading, Rabbi Greer would call R.S.A. into his office to read aloud. He said Greer put the book at the corner of his desk, near where the rabbi was seated. Each time, in a gesture that looked like calling for his attention, Greer brushed his hand against his crotch, R.S.A. said.

“That would seem to nail me in the nuts every time,” R.S.A. said.

As the lessons continued, R.S.A. said he moved away from the desk and contorted his body to avoid having what seemed like Greer trying to feel him up.

“I’d take a different step to the side; I changed it up,” R.S.A. said. ​“It got to the point almost where I was turning my body sideways.”

After his front became inaccessible, Greer put a hand on his rear, R.S.A. went on. He described it as ​“a pat that stays too long.” He said he felt ​“weirded out,” ​“embarrassed and uncomfortable.” He said he didn’t tell anyone.

But the tutoring sessions did help, and his reading improved, R.S.A. said.

Over the course of the year, Greer talked to him about his family, especially about his ​“pretty bad relationship” with his parents at that point. ​“He’d say, ​‘I’d adopt you,’” R.S.A. remembered. ​“It kind of creeped me out.”

Rabbi Greer told R.S.A. that he wanted to know if his grades went up too.

After the next report card, Greer proposed a toast, handing him a shot of a brown liquor, probably bourbon, R.S.A. said. They both drank; it gave him a ​“nasty tummy ache,” he said.

When he again scored higher marks that spring, Greer said he wanted to take him out to celebrate. Greer asked him what he liked to drink, which R.S.A. said left him ​“a little confused” given he was only 14 years old.

After evening prayers, Greer drove him to Edgewood Park, R.S.A. said. The rabbi brought two plastic cups, a bottle of wine and a big bag of cashews. They sat down on a bench together in the dark and drank, he said.

The wine made him feel ​“a little dizzy,” so he dug into the nuts, R.S.A. remembered. Then, Greer put a hand on the back of his head and leaned in to try to kiss him, the rabbi’s tongue probing past his lips, he said.

His mouth was still full of cashews, and he spat them out, R.S.A. said, laughing as he remembered it, on the stand. ​“I thought it was funny, messed up and, like, disgusting,” he explained. 

“What the fuck,” R.S.A. remembered saying.

“It must be the alcohol,” he remembered Greer saying.

R.S.A. said he didn’t tell anybody for at least a year, saying he felt ​“humiliated.” He said that Greer never tried anything else like that with him again.

R.S.A. said he withdrew from the school that summer.

Facebook Flop

On cross-examination, Dow tried to go after R.S.A.‘s credibility. He asked why his Facebook page still lists him as a graduate of the Yeshiva of New Haven, if R.S.A. had truly left after just a year as he testified.

“That would be untrue?” Dow asked. ​“You didn’t graduate from the yeshiva?”

R.S.A. said he hadn’t updated the page in a long time. Even though he hasn’t finished college, he said, he might have even listed himself as a Yale grad, just as a joke that a 14-year-old might write. But he added that he definitely didn’t list the Yeshiva of New Haven.

Dow handed him a printout of the Facebook page and asked R.S.A. if it refreshed his recollection.

“I’ve never seen this in my life,” R.S.A. said. ​“This is not my Facebook.”

Dow said that was ​“non-responsive.

“Does this refresh your recollection?” he pressed. ​“What did you put on Facebook?”

“I don’t believe I put anything,” R.S.A. said.

“Nothing?” Dow said.

“The paper you’re looking at is not my Facebook,” R.S.A. said.

The state had hoped to present as a witness a third former student with a long story of alleged abuse by Greer, Avi Hack (who later became the school’s assistant principal). In a deposition for a civil trial that Greer lost, Hack said that Greer had also molested him for years. But Hack has since been dodging a subpoena to testify in the criminal trial.

Scientific Evidence?

On Tuesday afternoon, as prosecutors wrapped up their case, a New Haven detective put forward the closest approximation to ​“hard evidence” from the decade-old accusations of rape.

After the case had been sitting around at police headquarters for nearly a year, Det. Kristine Cuddy was assigned to pick up the investigation. She’d been handling sex crimes investigations for eight years, with victims ranging from 3 to 78 years old.

In June 2017, she testified, she phoned Mirlis up and asked him to describe Greer’s naked body.

Mirlis told her about a scar of up to three inches on his testicle, his orange pubic hair and his gray back hair. Mirlis later described a mole on his upper back. Mirlis also described Greer’s unusual way of dressing, putting his shoes on before his pants.

In court on Thursday, after the rabbi said he had to leave the courtroom for ​“religious reasons,” Cuddy walked jurors through 20 pictures of Greer’s body, pointing to the scar on his testicle and the mole on his back on a video monitor.

Cuddy also noted, during a two-minute video of Greer undressing and dressing, that the rabbi took off his pants before his shoes. She said that was ​“the opposite” of what Mirlis had told her.

During cross-examination, Dow asked Cuddy what that amounted to.

He’d already suggested earlier in the week that Mirlis might’ve seen Greer undressed elsewhere, like at a ritual bath known as a ​“mikveh” or at a seaside vacation in Massachusetts. And he’d said Greer’s hernia surgery might have been common knowledge throughout the school.

Was Mirlis knowing about that scar really evidence of anything?

Dow: And you know one of the most important things law enforcement tries to do is corroborate?

Cuddy: Yes.

Dow: That type of information could be other witnesses?

Cuddy: Yes.

Dow: It could be scientific evidence, correct?

Cuddy: Yes.

Dow: I take it you were not able to discover any witnesses to any of the allegations?

Cuddy: None wanted to talk.

Dow: And no scientific evidence recovered there?

Cuddy: How do you mean?

Dow: DNA?

Cuddy: I think a scar is pretty telling.

Dow: Did you make any inquiry to determine when Rabbi Greer had an operation [that resulted in] that scar?

Cuddy: No.

Dow: Why not?

Cuddy: Either he has it or he doesn’t.

After the defense puts on its case, the six members of the jury will have to weigh that question for themselves.

They won’t be able to rely on R.S.A.‘s testimony alone for that either.

Earlier in the day, Judge Jon Alander told the jury that Mirlis’s claims needed to stand independently for a guilty verdict. He explained they should use R.S.A.‘s testimony only to establish whether Greer had a ​“propensity or tendency to engaged in criminal sexual behavior.” However, he added, ​“evidence of misconduct on its own is not sufficient to prove the credibility of the crimes charged.”

Previous coverage of this case:

• Suit: Rabbi Molested, Raped Students
• Greer’s Housing Corporations Added To Sex Abuse Lawsuit
• 2nd Ex-Student Accuses Rabbi Of Sex Assault
• 2nd Rabbi Accuser Details Alleged Abuse
• Rabbi Sexual Abuse Jury Picked
• On Stand, Greer Invokes 5th On Sex Abuse
• Rabbi Seeks To Bar Blogger from Court
• Trial Mines How Victims Process Trauma
• Wife, Secretary Come To Rabbi Greer’s Defense
• Jury Awards $20M In Rabbi Sex Case
• State Investigates Greer Yeshiva’s Licensing
• Rabbi Greer Seeks New Trial
• Affidavit: Scar Gave Rabbi Greer Away
• Rabbi Greer Pleads Not Guilty
• $21M Verdict Upheld; Where’s The $?
• Sex Abuse Victim’s Video Tests Law
• Decline at Greer’s Edgewood ​“Village”?
• Rabbi’s Wife Sued For Stashing Cash
• Why Greer Remains Free, & Victim Unpaid
• Showdown Begins Over Greer Properties
• Judge: Good Chance Greer’s Wife Hid $240K
• Sex Abuse Too Much For Many Jurors
• Potential Greer Juror Grilled On ​“Truth”
• Greer Jury Finalized
• Greer’s Accuser Recounts Sexual Abuse
• Attorney Grills Greer Accuser
• Religion’s Role Raised In Greer Trial