NEW CITY, N.Y. (PIX11) – A 22-year-old Orthodox Hasidic woman from Spring Valley was fighting her mother’s efforts to have her hospitalized Tuesday over sexual abuse allegations involving a family member.
“My mother is trying to have me institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital,” Goldy Lichter told PIX11 News. “Because she wants everyone to believe that I’m crazy for making up allegations of sexual abuse when, in reality, it happened.”
Lichter said she has memories of being sexually trafficked in her native Canada when she was a child.
Lichter’s mother filed a petition with the mental health section of Rockland County Supreme Court to have her daughter involuntarily committed to a hospital. The mother testified in a closed courtroom Tuesday morning, after orders by the judge to remove most spectators.
When PIX11 caught up with the mother as she got into her car, she refused to answer questions.
Goldy Lichter was expected to testify Tuesday afternoon.
The mother’s court papers revealed her daughter claimed in December 2022 she had a “recovered memory of being sexually molested, but without any details of that, including the identity of the alleged molester.”
Goldy Lichter told PIX11 News the alleged molester’s identity. The relative has not been criminally charged, so PIX11 will not disclose the identity.
The mother’s court filing included a psychological evaluation performed on Goldy Lichter when she was 9 years old and attending a Rockland County elementary school.
The mother claimed her daughter recently admitted to “watching pornography, having nightmares of people being tortured…and the need to maintain her facade of being a so-called good girl despite behaviors that left her feeling as though she was the ‘most shameful person on the planet.’
Advocates who support members of the Hasidic community who report alleged abuse showed up in court to support Goldy Lichter.
Julie Globus, a lawyer, said the attempt to institutionalize Goldy Lichter “is a way of removing credibility. If you can hurt the messenger, you hurt the message.”
Asher Lovy, another victims advocate with the group Za’akah — which means “outcry” — said, “I think the (Hasidic) community has a vested interest in pretending sexual abuse doesn’t exist in it. If her family succeeds, it’s going to be a template for other people to do the same things.”
The judge’s decision could potentially come Tuesday afternoon.
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