Lawyer Says Accused Child Molester’s Low IQ Makes Confession Inadmissable

By RACHEL SILBERSTEIN

Accused child molester Meir Dascalowitz’s 2010 confession to police should be thrown out of court due to the defendant’s low IQ, said his attorney after his 30th pretrial hearing on Tuesday.

“The issue is whether he was capable of understanding at the time when he was read his Miranda rights,” said defense attorney Israel Fried in a phone conversation with the Brooklyn News Service.

Dascalowitz, a Hasidic unemployed clerk, who appeared via video conference from Riker’s Island prison, is accused of molesting now 17-year-old Mordechai Jungreis in a ritual bathhouse 2 ½ years ago.

The prosecution submitted a medical report on Dascalowitz’s intellectual capacity and Brooklyn Judge Joseph E. Gubbay  adjourned the hearing to allow time for a second evaluation, asking Dascalowitz if he understood. Dacalowitz nodded and said “yes” to the camera.

Dascalowitz initially told cops that he also had been molested by Rabbi Baruch Lebovitz, who was convicted in 2010 of eight counts of abuse and sentenced to 32 years in jail, though the conviction has since been overturned on a technicality and was set for retrial.

Dascalowitz has only held menial jobs such as moving boxes and his wife and child had left him, said Fried.