For months, a Brooklyn Shomrim leader coerced a teenage girl into an illegal sexual relationship, using his status as the anti-crime patrol’s chief to scare her into keeping quiet, federal prosecutors hope to prove in court this month.
Jacob Daskal, 64, is slated to face trial in Brooklyn Federal Court on allegations he groomed the 15-year-old girl, transported her across state lines to rape her and convinced her to participate in a lurid Skype call.
“It’s just going to ruin your life if you tell people,” he warned the teen, according to the feds.
Daskal has denied the allegations, and filings from his lawyers show that his defense will likely be painting the girl as a liar who fabricated her accusations out of whole cloth. A woman who answered the phone at a number listed for Daskal declined to comment to the Daily News.
The alleged abuse started in 2017, after the teen, who was a member of the Orthodox Jewish community in Borough Park, started having problems with her family and asked a local mentor for help that spring, according to filings by federal prosecutors.
That mentor contacted the Borough Park Shomrim Society, which in turn linked the girl up with Daskal.
The Shormim, a volunteer group with ties to the NYPD and city politicians, works as a nonprofit auxiliary police of sorts in Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods. It has about 130 members, a 24-7 dispatch service and vehicles that have markings resembling police cars.
The group has been credited with helping the police make arrests and has raised the alarm on antisemitic hate crimes. It has also seen its share of controversy, with critics accusing its members of violent vigilantism and stoking racial tensions with the borough’s Black population.
Daskal, who was the Borough Park Shomrim’s founder and chief, ostensibly stepped in to help the victim, letting her move in with him and his wife in Brooklyn in the short term, prosecutors allege. And when she moved in with her aunt and uncle to…
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