Yosef Kolko Case: Abuse, Guilty Plea, and Sentencing

The Yosef Kolko case involved a Lakewood, New Jersey yeshiva teacher and summer camp counselor who sexually abused an 11-year-old boy he met at a religious camp in 2007. Kolko pleaded guilty in May 2013, midway through his trial, to aggravated sexual assault, attempted aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault, and child endangerment. He was sentenced that October to 12 years and nine months in state prison. The case became widely known less for the crimes themselves than for what happened to the victim’s family after they went to police: public shaming, ostracism, a witness tampering indictment against a community member, and the loss of the father’s rabbinical position.

The Abuse and How It Came to Light

Kolko worked as a counselor at a camp run by Yeshiva Bais Hatorah School in Lakewood and at a camp called Yachad. He met the victim at camp in 2007, when the boy was 11. The abuse began the following summer and continued into early 2009.¹

In February 2009, the boy disclosed the abuse to a therapist. His father, a prominent Lakewood rabbi, confronted Kolko, who did not dispute what the boy had said. According to trial testimony, Kolko’s main concern during that confrontation was that the accusations would hurt his marriage prospects.²

Why the Family Went to Police

The father first tried to resolve the matter within the community. He approached a senior Lakewood rabbi and sought to bring the case before a rabbinical court, hoping to see Kolko required to get therapy and kept away from children. Months went by. Kolko stayed in his teaching job. When the father learned Kolko planned to return to the same summer camp where the abuse had happened, he called the camp director, who redirected him to a rabbi in Brooklyn.²

In July 2009, alarmed that children were still at risk, the father reported the abuse to the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office.¹ He testified that reporting to secular law enforcement is “not at this time common within the Orthodox Jewish community.”³ The concept of mesirah, informing on a fellow Jew to secular authorities, carries deep stigma in Lakewood’s Orthodox community.

Backlash After the Report

Assistant Prosecutor Laura Pierro told the court the family faced “a tremendous amount of pressure not to go forward” with the case. Anonymous fliers circulated in Lakewood naming the father and branding him “Harav HaMosser,” meaning the rabbi, the informer. They accused him of making “a mockery of the Torah” by contacting police “without going to a beis din and without the Haskama (permission) of any” rabbi. One unsigned letter told him “the ground in Lakewood should be shaking by your reaction” and called what he had done a “Chilul Hashem Hanorah,” a desecration of God’s name.⁴

The father lost his rabbinical position. Prosecutors said the family was ostracized. Eventually they moved to Michigan.⁵

The pressure went beyond fliers. Shaul Luban, a 30-year-old Lakewood man, was indicted on witness tampering charges for sending text messages urging community members to pressure the victim’s father not to testify. One recipient was instructed to “forget ever having received” the message. Luban faced up to five years in prison.⁴

Rabbi Aaron Kotler, CEO of Beis Medrash Govoha, Lakewood’s flagship yeshiva, said those involved in the intimidation acted as individuals and did not represent the institution. “We consider intimidation in any form or format to be entirely wrong and improper,” he stated. The Jewish Star also reported that “prominent members of Beis Medrash Govoha” had approached the victim’s father to dissuade him from going to police before he made the report.⁴

Indictment and Trial

An Ocean County grand jury indicted Kolko in late June 2010 on charges of aggravated sexual assault, attempted aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault, and child endangerment. He had been free on $125,000 bail since July 2009 and faced up to 60 years in prison if convicted on all counts.¹

The trial opened in May 2013 before Superior Court Judge Francis R. Hodgson Jr. in Toms River. The victim, then a teenager, took the stand and testified about what Kolko had done.

The Mid-Trial Guilty Plea

On May 13, 2013, with the trial still in progress, Kolko pleaded guilty to all four counts.⁶ The Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office called the case a “potential watershed” for its relationship with the Lakewood Orthodox community.

Almost immediately, Kolko tried to take the plea back. His attorney, Alan Zegas, argued Kolko had been “significantly pressured” by members of the Orthodox community to plead guilty to head off further negative publicity.⁶ In filings, Kolko described an “unrelenting campaign” of coercion, saying community members had shown him YouTube videos of inmates killing incarcerated sex offenders. “If not for the extreme pressure by members of my community, I would not have pled guilty as charged,” he stated.⁷

Kolko’s brother, Shabsi Kolko, testified that Yosef had handed him a signed note on the morning of the plea saying it was made “under duress, and to save my life.”⁸ At the original plea hearing, when Judge Hodgson asked whether he had been threatened or coerced, Kolko answered ambiguously, saying there were things “not part of the court system.”⁶

Judge Hodgson rejected the motion. He found Kolko had “set out before he even pleaded guilty to game the system” and saw a chance “to get a do-over” of a trial that was not going his way. Kolko’s own trial attorney testified that the real reason for the plea was the emergence of two additional alleged victims who were prepared to take the stand.⁷

Sentencing and Appeal

In October 2013, Judge Hodgson sentenced Kolko to 12 years and nine months in state prison.⁹

Kolko appealed, once again arguing that community coercion had made his plea involuntary. On January 6, 2016, a two-judge panel of the Appellate Division of the New Jersey Superior Court, Judges Harry G. Carroll and Thomas W. Sumners, rejected the appeal as “meritless.” The panel noted that Kolko “never claimed to be innocent in his appeal documents.”¹⁰ At the time of the appellate decision, Kolko was incarcerated at South Woods State Prison with an earliest possible parole date of 2026.

Why the Case Mattered Beyond Lakewood

The Kolko prosecution came in the middle of an open conflict between Lakewood’s Orthodox community and secular law enforcement over how child sexual abuse should be handled. In the summer of 2010, nine leading Lakewood rabbis signed a proclamation instructing followers to bring abuse allegations to a rabbinical court before contacting secular authorities.¹¹ That position collided with New Jersey law, which requires all adults, clergy included, to immediately report reasonable suspicion of child abuse to authorities.

Ocean County Prosecutor Marlene Lynch Ford publicly criticized what Judge Hodgson called a “parallel judicial system.” Ford described a “wall of silence” that hindered investigations and said mandates requiring victims to seek rabbinic permission before reporting “clearly conflicts with the law.” By mid-2010, 29 of the county’s 125 sex crime investigations originated from Lakewood. Three years earlier, Ford said, such cases from the Orthodox community had been “nonexistent.”¹²

Connection to Rabbi Yehuda Kolko

Yosef Kolko is the nephew of Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, a Brooklyn yeshiva teacher who pleaded guilty in 2008 to child endangerment after being charged with molesting two students. The elder Kolko’s plea deal required no admission of sexual wrongdoing, no sex-offender registration, no prison time, and only three years of probation. Yosef Kolko received nearly 13 years; his uncle served none. Commentators attributed the contrast to a far more aggressive approach by the Ocean County prosecutor’s office compared with the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office, which handled the uncle’s case.¹³

1
USA Today. Prosecutor: Yeshiva Camp Counselor
2
ABC11. Father Takes Stand in NJ Yeshiva Teacher Abuse Trial
3
Bishop Accountability. Father Takes Stand Against Yeshiva Teacher
4
The Jewish Star. Witness Tampering Charged in Abuse Case
5
Ynet News. Yosef Kolko Sentenced to 13 Years
6
NJ.com. NJ Yeshiva Teacher Seeks to Pull Sex Abuse Plea
7
NBC New York. NJ Yeshiva Teacher Sex Abuse Sentence
8
NBC Philadelphia. New Jersey Yeshiva Teacher Sex Abuse
9
San Diego Union-Tribune. NJ Yeshiva Teacher Gets Nearly 13 Years for Abuse
10
Bishop Accountability. Yosef Kolko Appeal Rejected
11
Bishop Accountability. Sex Abuse and the Wall of Silence
12
Bishop Accountability. Lakewood Orthodox Community and Abuse Reporting
13
JTA. On Abuse Prosecutions, a Tale of Two Cities