Christopher Peak Photo
Dow with his client, Rabbi Daniel Greer.
Why did an alleged victim of childhood sexual abuse wait nearly 10 years to contact law enforcement? Why did he never share the graphic details before then with his wife, his friend and his therapist? What was in it for him to bring it up now?
Willie Dow, an attorney defending Rabbi Daniel Greer against criminal charges of sexual assault and risk of injury to a minor, put those questions to the accuser during Tuesday’s testimony in a fourth-floor state courtroom at 235 Church St.
Eliyahu Mirlis has said that Greer repeatedly sexually abused him from 2002 to 2005 when he was a former student from the Yeshiva of New Haven. Prosecutors have focused in particular on the first year of his abuse, when Mirlis was under 16 years old.
Throughout the cross-examination of Mirlis, Dow drew attention to the decade that it took for Mirlis to finally go to the police in 2016. Mirlis tried to offer explanations, but Dow repeatedly told him that he needed to keep it to “yes” or “no.”
Finally, at the end of the day, Mirlis gave his answer, one that echoed with other accounts of why victims often wait years to speak about experiencing sexual assault, especially as children.
But hours before then, in red marker, Dow methodically made his case against Mirlis’s credibility. Dow wrote out four timelines for the jurors, that showed the wide stretch of time from the alleged abuse to the initial sit-down at the New Haven Police Department. He painted in all the events in the intervening years across multiple pages, projecting them on a television and posting them on a tripod.
“Mr. Dow, don’t become a graphic artist,” Judge Jon Alander said at one point, as Dow underlined the dates on the sheet.
Willie Dow walks down Wall Street after Tuesday’s cross-examination.
Because it had been so long since Greer’s molestation allegedly began, Dow also showed how Mirlis’s memories were inexact. Dow pointed out how Mirlis forgot things he remembered just two years ago during a civil trial (where a jury slapped Greer with a $21 million penalty), while he also added new details that he’d never brought up during that previous civil case.
For instance, Dow said that Mirlis, in describing Greer’s first come-on, had never before mentioned the rabbi touching his upper thigh, as he did in court testimony offered on Monday. He asked Mirlis why he hadn’t included that detail in his interview with a detective, in his deposition and in his testimony in the civil trial.
Yesterday, “you said there was kissing … and alcohol … and touching your crotch,” Dow said. “And on three prior testimonial occasions, when the subject was addressed you never mentioned anything about touching your crotch?”
“Correct, I only talked about the kissing,” Mirlis said.
“That was an intrusion on you, that was the very first time anyone had interacted with you, sexually in an inappropriate manner, is that correct?” Dow asked. “And your memory of that was there was no crotch touching?”
“I never said there was none,” Mirlis said. “I just didn’t mention it.”
“Just didn’t mention it,” Dow repeated.
Dow added that Mirlis had also detailed a new incident for the first time at the criminal trial, saying Greer once took him across the street for oral sex in Edgewood Park as a party went on in the backyard of his West Park Avenue home during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot — something he hadn’t brought up in his previous interviews, depositions and testimony.
When Maxine Wilensky, the senior assistant state’s attorney prosecuting the case, asked him later, Mirlis said he picks up “the more minute details” when he starts to talk about it. “These nightmares, these thoughts,” he said. “Oh yeah, that happened.”
Dow contrasted that with the way Mirlis had entirely forgotten who held his firstborn son as he was named right after a bris, the Jewish ceremony where a newborn is circumcised — even though Mirlis had testified at the criminal trial about two years ago that Greer held that honorary position. He presented the omission as if Mirlis had forgotten a child’s godparent.
Throughout the cross-examination, Dow didn’t linger on the details of the sexual abuse. Instead, he went after Mirlis’s credibility.
Dow suggested Mirlis needed cash after a sibling was busted for illegally importing prescription drugs. And he suggested Mirlis left out the details of having a license revoked in regulatory filings for nursing homes he operates in three states.
But Judge Alander blocked Dow from introducing many of the documents about the rest of Mirlis’s life, saying they were “extrinsic” to the allegations at hand.
“We don’t want a trial within a trial,” Alander said.
Dow also suggested that Mirlis had other motives for blaming Greer. He implied that it gave him an excuse for visiting massage parlors or developing a friendship with a female teacher at the yeshiva whom he told about his sexual abuse around 2014. And he implied that it might help Mirlis collect on the civil judgment.
Judge Alander again blocked Dow from getting answers to most of those questions, striking part of it from the record that jurors are supposed to consider.
Prosecutor Maxine Wolensky leaves court late Tuesday afternoon.
After nearly 11 hours of Mirlis’ testimony over two days, Wilensky ended her redirect examination by asking Mirlis the same questions Dow had been driving at all day: Why did he decide to finally come forward? And Mirlis got the chance to offer his explanation.
Mirlis said he waited until he found a community of his own, replacing the one he’d grown up with in New Haven. With the support of that community, he said, “I was ready to make sure Daniel Greer did not abuse or hurt any other children.”
“How hard was it go to public, in terms of telling everybody what happened, in terms of the deposition, in terms of this here?” Wilensky asked.
Mirlis, red-faced, bent his head into his elbow. He took off his glasses and wiped tears from his eyes. When he spoke up, he said he was thinking about the two pregnancies that ended with his wife losing the baby. He said this experience was the only thing worse.
“I’ve divulged everything about my life; it’s all public,” he said. “People say, ‘Don’t be ashamed; you’re just a victim.’ But there is shame to it, in some aspect of it.”
“You chose to have your own name publicized,” Wilensky pointed out. “Why?”
“I did. I felt that it would help others come forward: both victims of Daniel Greer or any other victim anywhere,” Mirlis said. “It lends it more legitimacy. There’s a real person and life and family behind the atrocities that happened.”
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