Rabbi who forced 12-year-old girl to perform oral sex on him after parents sent her for counseling convicted of 59 counts of sexual abuse

New York's ultra-orthodox Jewish community was rocked Monday as a religious counselor for the insular sect was convicted of 59 counts for sexually abusing a young girl.

Rabbi Nechemya Weberman was accused of fondling a teenager, forcing her to perform oral sex on him, and making her act out porn films, over the course of many years beginning when she was 12.

Weberman, led away in handcuffs after the verdict was read, faces 25 years in prison for the worst of the charges and two to seven years on lesser charges.

Rabbi Weberman was supposed to be re-indoctrinating the girl and bringing her back to the ultra-conservative standards of the community after she was branded a 'heretic.'

Instead, she told a counsellor years later, that he was abusing her.

The rabbi's lawyers fiercely denied the allegations. They say the girl made up the story to retaliate against him.

They claimed the girl went to police only after Weberman and her parents set up hidden cameras to secretly record the girl having sex with her boyfriend when she was still underage.

Weberman turned the tapes over to police in the hopes that the boyfriend would be prosecuted.

The charges against the boyfriend were later dropped.

Weberman's lawyers also claim that he had been business partners with the girl's parents and that the families had a falling out.
The Satmar Hasidic community in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, rallied around the rabbi - sponsoring fundraisers to pay for his legal defense.
The community numbers around 250,000 - the largest sect of its type outside of Israel.

Weberman's supporters were so protective of him they disrupted the course of the trial when they allegedly photographed the accuser during her testimony.

Four men were led out of a New York court room and arrested in late November after jumping up to take pictures of her on their phones while she gave evidence.