Orthodox Jewish Sex Offender Abuses Sleeping Woman on El Al Flight From Tel Aviv to Newark

Yoel Oberlander, 35, was previously convicted of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl. On the overnight flight from Israel, he repeatedly placed his hands on the woman sitting next to him without her consent.

Haaretz

A New York man was charged Friday with sexually abusing a woman on an overnight El Al flight from Tel Aviv to Newark, repeatedly placing his hand on her upper thigh and breast as she attempted to sleep. 

According to the indictment, Yoel Oberlander, a 35-year-old from Monsey who was previously convicted of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl, was seated in the window seat next to the woman and her mother. Oberlander started touching the woman after dinner was served and the lights were dimmed. He is accused of placing his hand on the woman’s upper thigh and then taking it away after she moved.

Some time later into the night, when the woman was trying to sleep, Oberlander then placed his hand on her left breast. She pulled away and he removed his hand, at which point the woman asked her mother, who had woken up, to switch seats with her, and then complained to the flight crew. 

Oberlander was charged by federal prosecutors with abusive sexual contact on an airplane in a New Jersey court.  He faces up to two years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted. 

In 2012, Oberlander, then an employee of kosher food company Golden Taste in Monsey, trespassed on the premises of an Orthodox all-boys camp in the Catskills in the early hours of the night. According to reports, he went into the Camp Shalva in South Fallsburg to deliver milk, and then snuck into a bunkhouse where 13 and 14-year-old boys were sleeping.

The boys’ parents said the children told them Oberlander tickled their feet. He was charged with second-degree trespassing and a misdemeanor, after turning himself in to the police about a week after the incident.