Teen sex rap for principal of Bensonhurst private school
By Simone Weichselbaum, Daily News Police Bureau
Originally published by www.nydailynews.com, January 26, 2009
Two teenage boys told cops they endured years of sexual abuse at the hands of a Brooklyn high school principal who was arrested over the weekend, police said.
Emanuel Yegutkin, 30, was suspended Sunday from Elite High School, a private Jewish school in Bensonhurst with mainly Russian-American students.
Yegutkin forced a 17-year-old into lewd sex acts from the age of 7 to 14, cops said.
He subjected a 19-year-old to five years of fondling, beginning when the teen was 12, police said.
Neither child attended Elite, school officials said.
"This has nothing to do with the school," said Elite High School Headmaster Tzvi Koff. "But we have to protect our students. He no longer has access to the school building and he is not part of our institution anymore."
The disgraced educator - who also worked in upstate Gilboa as a lifeguard at Oorah summer camp last year - was charged with endangering the welfare of a child and sexually abusing children for more than a four-month period, according to a spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney's office.
A message left at Yegutkin's Ocean Parkway home was not returned.
Oorah Camp Director Elisha Lewenstein said Yegutkin came highly recommended.
"We investigated him before we hired him and never had a complaint," Lewenstein said.
Yegutkin, a one-time rising star within the Orthodox Jewish community, lost a second prominent job yesterday: volunteer medic for the Flatbush Hatzoloh ambulance service.
"If anybody in Hatzoloh is accused of any criminal issue, we suspend them until the issue is cleared up," Hatzoloh spokesman Heshey Jacob said.
Yegutkin "suspended himself" when he was contacted yesterday, Jacob said.
Yegutkin's arrest is the latest blow to Brooklyn's Orthodox Jewish community. Since October, at least four Orthodox Jewish men in the borough have been charged with sexually abusing children.
© Copyright 2009 Daily News, L.P.
| ||||
