Intelligencer

Accused Pedophile Rabbi Still Go-Carting

Many boys nearby.

By Robert Kolker
Published Aug 6, 2006

Rabbi Yehuda Kolko continues chaperoning kids. The Orthodox Brooklyn rabbi named in two sexual-abuse lawsuits was spotted on July 20 handing out tickets, driving a go-cart, and making arrangements with security at Lake Compounce, a family theme park in Connecticut that he’d rented out in the past when he worked for a prominent Flatbush yeshiva and its upstate summer camp. A first-grade teacher at Yeshiva Torah Temimah for four decades, Kolko stands accused in civil court of molesting three boys in the seventies and eighties; the charges are too old to make the criminal statute of limitations, but the school and its summer camp, Silver Lake, still suspended Kolko in May. “Everyone was shocked that he showed his face there,” says an eyewitness. “His sons were all around him, making sure no one started anything up.” The yeshiva’s attorney, Avi Moskowitz, maintains that Kolko has nothing to do with Camp Silver Lake and that he was not in charge of the July 20 event. “Obviously, the camp has no control over where he goes and what he does,” Moskowitz says. But sex-abuse plaintiff David Framowitz is confounded: “He’s walking around kids in bathing suits. Nothing has changed. All of those kids are potential victims, and everyone’s been warned.”