Orthodox Jewish woman who accuses four men of rape and pimping her out from age 13 is in Israel taking a martial arts and weapons course as her case crumbles in Brooklyn.
The young Jewish woman at the center of the crumbling Crown Heights rape case is in Israel, training in martial arts, shooting firearms — and still hoping the men she accused stand trial, the Daily News has learned.
While the case against the four men charged with raping and pimping her out unraveled this spring amid revelations she recanted, the accuser was at a self-defense program learning how to shoot an Uzi.
In one of a series of photos posted online, the flaming redhead strikes a femme fatale pose, clutching an oversized pistol. She also appears atop a tank, practicing the Israeli martial art krav maga on a beach, and shooting a submachine gun.
“She’s doing very good,” said the co-director of the intensive fitness course, where the 22-year-old has been enrolled for the past months.
But the attorney for one of the four men she accused was up in arms over the weapons training, noting that she had been diagnosed with mental issues in the past.
“What is she doing firing machine guns?” fumed lawyer James Phillips. “Is this the person you want with a loaded Uzi?”
The case has been plagued with problems and charges against at least some of the suspects could be dismissed as early as Monday, when all four are due in court, according to sources.
The defendants deny the sex-trafficking and rape allegations, saying any sex they had with her was consensual.
The alleged victim wants the case to move forward, her father told The News.
“My daughter, despite the pain and embarrassment, is eager to go to court,” he said. “The worst possible outcome would be for it to be thrown out on a technicality.”
Defendants Darrell Dula, 25, and Damien Crooks, 32, were released after spending 10 months in jail, while the other two — brothers Jamali and Jawara Brockett — remain locked up on unrelated charges.
The delayed disclosure led to an internal probe by the district attorney’s office, which cleared Lauren Hersh, chief of the sex trafficking unit, of breaking ethics rules.
She stepped down anyway last month.
Additional evidence that went undisclosed includes a recorded conversation where the accuser backtracks and the diaries she kept throughout the ordeal, said Phillips, who is Dula’s lawyer.
“It is shameful and it is scandalous,” he wrote of prosecutors’ conduct in a motion to dismiss the indictment, submitted to a Brooklyn Supreme Court judge.
In the cache of photos taken at the Israeli self-defense program, the striking woman appears content and collected, posing with other members during a desert trip and sending a playful kiss to a young man in a bar.
he woman declined to be interviewed.
She’s depicted with an instructor learning to aim and fire an Uzi and a pistol, then kneeling and training the weapons like a pro. She was also captured smiling on a turret of a tank in a group photo and hanging cheerfully off its main gun.
Another picture shows a man’s back with a large red handmark that the woman inflicted in class, according to the caption. “And this is why you don’t p--- off the . . . girls,” it says.
The program’s co-director, a karate master, said the five-month course, which costs $10,450, caters mostly to young American Jews seeking to build up their confidence or enhance their résumés.
“A lot of them are looking to find themselves,” he said. “It’s a way to recalibrate.”
The News is withholding his name and the name of the program to shield the identity of the alleged sex victim.
Participants wake up just after 7 a.m. and usually have two martial arts sessions per day. In between, they learn Hebrew, visit army bases and tour historic sites across the Holy Land, meeting with pilots and other military personnel.
An essay describing reasons for joining the course and future plans after completing it is required as part of the application process.
Despite her recantation, the woman testified against the men in the grand jury last June, describing how she was forced to have sex with Crooks, who was her neighbor, when she was barely a teenager. She claims she was then prostituted repeatedly over eight years.
When she tried to walk away, she was threatened and beaten, the woman testified. She claimed that earlier attempts to seek help from police — some of which are documented — were ignored.
“It’s like a cancer eating away at our family for years,” her father said. “This is about good people versus bad people, and these are four bad people.”
By Oren Yaniv / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
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