Suicide groom's anguish

New York Post/January 18, 2010

A Brooklyn man who committed suicide two days into his honeymoon had confided to a friend's dad that he was molested by a prominent rabbi now facing charges of sexually abusing other boys.

The friend's father told The Post that Motty Borger, 24, accused ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Baruch Lebovits, 59, whose trial - on 75 counts of sexual assault involving three boys - starts Wednesday in Brooklyn Supreme Court.

Borger's videographer dad, Shmuel, founded the boys choir Amudei Sheish. The Borgers and Lebovits shared strong ties to the Munkatch Hasidic sect. Borger attended the sect's school and summer camp and its synagogue in Borough Park. Lebovits, too, was a regular.

Borger confided his secret to his bride, Mali Gutman, the day after their Nov. 3, 2009, wedding in Williamsburg, a source close to the family said.

At 6:45 a.m. on Nov. 5, as his wife slept, Borger jumped from the seventh-floor balcony of their room at the Avenue Plaza Hotel, cops said.

Lebovits is accused of repeatedly sodomizing two boys and fondling another, sometimes in his car and even in a mikvah, a ritual bath, in a synagogue, from April 2000 to September 2004.

"It was really well known in the community," said a source close to the probe. "It was no secret."

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