Trial Question: Can Sex Crimes Victims Love Their Abusers?

Is it possible for child sex abuse victims to truly love their molesters? Enough to continue wanting to see them years after? Even with their wife and kids there?

Two experts who took the stand this past week in Rabbi Daniel Greer’s criminal trial in state Superior Court to try to explain the complicated psychology of sexual abuse differed in their conclusions.

Greer is facing charges of sexual assault and risk of injury to a minor.

A former Yeshiva of New Haven student, Eliyahu Mirlis, testified earlier this week that Greer repeatedly raped him during his high school years from 2002 to 2005, and another former student, who went by the initials R.S.A., testified Greer came on to him too in 2009.

Greer’s defense attorney, Willie Dow, has focused on why it took so long for Mirlis to go to the police, implying that he’s making the accusations against Greer to get rich or fix his marriage.

He repeatedly asked why Mirlis continued to return to the Yeshiva of New Haven, where Rabbi Greer presided over religious ceremonies, almost monthly up until about 2014, despite arguments with his wife that lasted most of the two-hour car rides from New Jersey.

In presenting the case for the defense Friday morning, Dow put David Mantell on the stand. Mantell has been evaluating kids for the Connecticut Department of Children & Families since 1976, said those visits struck him as unusual too.

“I have never seen that pattern,” he said.

Dow asked if Mantell knew about any research that could explain why a child sex abuse victim would keep going back, to ​“even have meals and participate in services led by that individual.”

Mantell said that he couldn’t find anything, after about that 50 hours of searching databases for ​“post-abuse patterns,” both within families and institutions.

“I did not find any research confirming that experience had been identified by any others or a single case example, which is sometimes given in the professional literature,” Mantell said.

“What I found i my research is an occasional reference to a small number of children abused in institutional settings reporting an ongoing sexual relationship, so that [at that point] it is mutual. It’s a very tiny percentage of the cases,” he went on. ​“But there was not one in which the student leaves the institutional setting, has no more contact and then returns and resumes without a sexual relationship between them.”

Mantell added that would also run counter to a widely accepted concept of ​“avoidance,” where many survivors try to avoid anything that might remind them of the sexual assault.

But on cross-examination, Mantell admitted that part of the reason he might not have found anything is that there are not many research papers at all about child sexual abuse within Judaism. An Orthodox Jew himself, he said that the research is ​“delayed” compared to the extensive studies done within Christian parishes.

An expert witness for the prosecution had earlier testified that Orthodox Judiasm, in particular, comes with its own fraught power dynamics between rabbis and students that make reporting abuse especially difficult for survivors.

Karen Roberg, a state prosecutor, also asked Mantell if there might be understandable reasons why the relationship would continue. Do sex abuse abuse survivors ever ​“love” the perpetrator? she asked.

Mantell said he’s definitely seen that, especially when another family member’s behind the molestation.

“They love their parent or sibling or grandparent who’s an abuser, despite knowing that they’re being improperly treated in so many of those cases,” he said.

Mantelll added that it can be more complicated when sexual abuse happens in other settings, like a boarding school.

“I think children like to be be treated and regarded positively,” he said. ​“As a general statement, I think children want affection.”

Other experts who testified for the state earlier in the week said they didn’t see a discrepancy.

Lisa Melillo, a school psychologist in Monroe who interviews children when they first report sexual abuse to law enforcement, said survivors often say they feel ​“love and respect and loyalty” to the perpetrator.

They can see the perpetrator as ​“an essential person in their life,” even as they wish the sexual abuse would stop, she said.

“Oftentimes, the abuser is well known to the child,” Melillo said. ​“We think about ​‘stranger danger’ from a random person, but more often than not, it’s a person known to them, who has access to them. That can be a parental figure.

“The sex abuse, in itself, is just one aspect of a relationship,” she went on. ​“It’s not defining their whole relationship. That’s where loyalty comes in.”

“Participating at a christening or a bris — being invited by the complainant to attend — would that be consistent” with those feelings? Dow asked.

“I think, as I testified before, this could be an indication of how much love and respect they have, even though there’s been an abusive part,” Melillo said.

“Or not?” Dow asked. ​“There could be no abusive relationship and a valid invitation?”

“It could be,” Melillo admitted.

“How about an honored position, holding a baby?” Dow asked.

“Is that consistent with a valid claim?” Melillo wondered aloud. ​“Sometimes a person can have love and respect for their abuser: It’s only one aspect of their relationship.”

At the end of his multi-day testimony, Mirlis himself was asked what he thought and how he would define his relationship with Greer.

“As you sit here today, was there ever a point in time, from 2003 to 2013, where you loved the defendant?” Maxine Wilensky, the senior assistant state’s attorney working with Roberg, asked.

Mirlis repeated the question back and paused to think about it. ​“Wow, um, I don’t think I ever loved the defendant, no,” he said. ​“Did I care about the defendant? Yeah. Maybe I don’t know what love is. But I don’t think I loved him, no.”

“Did you care about him?” Wilensky clarified.

“I cared,” Mirlis said. He repeated himself. ​“I cared.”

“About what?” Wilensky asked.

“Just as someone cares about someone: what’s happening; what was,” Mirlis explained. ​“At some point in my high school years, I cared. I don’t know, it’s a huge bag of emotions from back then. Now it’s not. But back then, it was many moving parts and emotions and thoughts.”

Wilensky had one final question before she sat down. ​“And now?” she asked.

“No,” Mirlis said. ​“I don’t care about the defendant now.”

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
• Another Greer Accuser Testifies