Mein Gott! Sharon Hewitt, office assistant to Jane Pearl, the supervising judge at Kings County Family Court, has been removed from her position, after the court became aware of Hewitt’s long history as a neo-Nazi. Up until a few months ago, Hewitt regularly posted online on neo-Nazi sites under her neo-Nazi screen name. She’s been photographed attending multiple hate-group rallies and helped organize demonstrations in 2005 on behalf of veteran hatemonger Ernst Zündel, who was wanted in Germany for denying the Holocaust. Court spokesman David Bookstaver says Hewitt has been moved out of Judge Pearl’s office and into a general administrative pool where she will not have access to confidential information, and that the court can’t fire her for her Nazi sympathies. “As repugnant as one might find her beliefs, we live in a country where she is entitled to them, as long as they do not impact on her duties,” says Bookstaver, who points out that it was the New York civil service that employed Hewitt, not Judge Pearl. “She sat for an exam, she got it,” he says. Hewitt denies ever being involved in the neo-Nazi movement. “I have hung around with bikers all my life,” she says. “If some of these people were part of that scene, then that’s what happened.”

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Related:

• Archive: “Intelligencer”
• Articles by Sean O’Driscoll
• Table of Contents: Apr 16, 2007 issue of New York | Subscribe!