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Why didn't you sue Robert I. Friedman?
"Perhaps Rombom's tough guy obsession began in psychiatric institutions where he spent eight years of his youth, according to court documents.  Rombom denies he has ever been institutionalized." � Robert I. Friedman
  05 June 2003
Steven Rambam
Pallorium, Inc
PO Box 155 � Midwood Station
Brooklyn, New York
USA      11230


Steven Rambam:

You deny ever having been institutionalized

In your Rambam v Prytulak BC271433 testimony of 03-Oct-2002, you deny having been institutionalized for eight years in a psychiatric facility:

AFTER HE [Mordechai Levy] WAS RELEASED FROM PRISON, HE AND ANOTHER CONVICTED FELON PUT UP A WEBSITE -- UH-H-H -- CONTAINING STATEMENTS SUCH AS -- UH -- UNTRUE STATEMENTS (NOD OF HEAD), SUCH AS: [...]  UH-H-H -- I HAD SPENT EIGHT YEARS IN A MENTAL INSTITUTION.  [...]  TRULY RIDICULOUS STATEMENTS.
• p. 7, lines 22-27.

A.  THAT I WAS CONFINED TO A MENTAL INSTITUTION.  AND THAT'S TRUE.  [...]
Q.  YOU SAY THAT "THAT'S TRUE"?
A.  NOT TRUE.
Q.  OKAY.
A.  DID I SAY "TRUE"?
Q.  YOU -- YOU DID.
THE COURT:  ALL RIGHT.  [...]
THE WITNESS:  I -- LET -- LET ME -- WAIT A MINUTE.
           SAY THAT AGAIN, SO -- IT IS ABSOLUTELY UNTRUE.
THE COURT:  ALL RIGHT.
MR. KURTZ:  (LAUGHTER).
THE WITNESS:  MY APOLOGIES.  I NEED TO SPEAK A LITTLE SLOWER.
           IT SAYS THAT I'M VIOLENT AND MENTALLY ILL.  THAT IS NOT TRUE.
• p. 10, lines 10-28 and p. 11, line 1.

THAT I SPENT EIGHT YEARS OF MY CHILDHOOD IN VARIOUS MENTAL INSTITUTIONS.  NOT EVEN REMOTELY TRUE.
• p. 11, lines 15-16.

JUST THE KEY POINTS, YOUR HONOR, [...]; CLAIMING I WAS IN A MENTAL INSTITUTION; [...] ALL OF THESE ARE ABSOLUTE FANTASIES, YOUR HONOR.  NOT AN IOTA OF TRUTH IN ANY OF THAT.
• p. 12, lines 3-9.

AND A MAN WITH MORE PROFOUND ACQUAINTANCE WITH PSYCHIA - [SIC] --" OOO-OOO [SIC] "-- PSYCHIATRIC INSTITUTIONS AND FEDERAL PRISONS THAN WITH TRUTH."
UM-M-M -- I COULD DISSECT THIS FOR YOU.  BUT IT'S ALL RIDICULOUS.
• p. 14, lines 2-7.

UH -- I HAD TO GO ON THE STAND AND TESTIFY TO RIDICULOUS THINGS.  THAT I HAD NEVER BEEN IN A MENTAL INSTITUTION.
• p. 19, lines 16-18.

However, your statements clash with those of Robert I. Friedman

Robert I. Friedman, of course, knows you by the surname you use in New York courts, "Rombom," and not by the AKA you prefer to litigate under in Los Angeles, "Rambam":

Perhaps Rombom's tough guy obsession began in psychiatric institutions where he spent eight years of his youth, according to court documents.  Rombom denies he has ever been institutionalized.  Maybe his relationship with the JDL, which began when he was 12, gave him a channel to vent his considerable anger.
• Robert I. Friedman, Oy Vey, Make My Day, Village Voice, 22-Aug-1989, p. 16.

Steven Rombom was a particularly tragic example of the sort of psychopaths Kahane attracted to the JDL.  The violence-prone youth, who, according to court records spent eight years in psychiatric institutions from the age of six, joined the JDL when he was twelve years old over the frantic objections of his doctors and social workers who called JDL officials, begging them not to allow Rombom to get involved in the militant organization.
• Robert I. Friedman, The False Prophet: Rabbi Meir Kahane, From FBI Informant to Knesset Member, Lawrence Hill Books, Brooklyn, NY, 1990, p. 183.

The above quotations are significant because Robert I. Friedman is a writer of integrity and stature, and because in his first statement above, he affirms your having been institutionalized in full awareness of your denial.  Friedman indicates that his assertion is based on a reading of court records.  Friedman appears to have no motive to injure you by making false assertions, whereas you can be seen to have the motive of protecting yourself by making false denials.  Friedman's statements are published by the reputable periodical, The Village Voice, and by the reputable book publisher, Lawrence Hill Books.

Why haven't you sued these three?

You have had opportunity for well over a decade to sue for defamation any or all of the following parties for having published what you claim to be the falsehood that you had been institutionalized for eight years:  Robert I. Friedman, The Village Voice, and Lawrence Hill Books.  Your not having sued any of these three parties carries at least the following implications:

  1. You consented to the dissemination of the alleged defamation for as long as fourteen years, thus conferring absolute privilege upon anyone who chose to repeat it.

  2. The reason that you did not sue these three parties might have been that you knew they could prove what they said was true.

  3. From which it would follow that your six denials of having been institutionalized for eight years in your 03-Oct-2002 Rambam v Prytulak testimony perpetrated fraud on the court.

I am not the only source

Thus, you were in error when you said that I was the only source of the information concerning you, as other sources are Robert I. Friedman, the Village Voice, and Lawrence Hill Books, and these other sources have readerships that are possibly thousands of times larger than mine.

BY MR. KURTZ:  Q.  TO YOUR KNOWLEDGE, OTHER THAN MR. PRYTULAK'S WEBSITE, IS THIS MATERIAL HARBORED -- ELSEWHERE?
A.  OF COURSE NOT.  OTHERWISE, I WOULD'VE RETAINED YOU FOR OTHER LAWSUITS.
• p. 14, lines 18-22.

Q.  OTHER THAN MR. PRYTULAK'S WEBSITE, DO YOU KNOW OF ANY OTHER LOCATION -- UM-M-M -- THAT THIS DEFAMATORY MATERIAL IS ALSO PUBLISHED?
A.  I HAVE SEARCHED AND FOUND NONE.
• p. 17, lines 15-18.

I did make attempts at verification

You were also in error when you said that I had made no attempt to verify accuracy.

A.  ON EVERY LEVEL THAT YOU CAN IMAGINE, HE MADE NOT THE SLIGHTEST ATTEMPT TO DETERMINE THE TRUTHFULNESS OF ANY OF THIS MATERIAL.
• p. 31, lines 7-9.

Here, for example, is my request for relevant information from you (made six months prior to your testimony above) to which you did not respond:

Come to think of it, why have you never published a contradiction of these same allegations, whether the biographical ones, or the Fifty-Confessions Hoax one?  If you had, then you would at least be able to point to your publication and say, "Here's what you should have known!  Here's an image of my birth certificate, and you can see that the names of my parents are on it!  Here are the schools I attended throughout my youth, and you can see that there was no opportunity for prolonged institutionalization!  Here's my rap sheet, and it is evident that I never spent time in federal prison!  Here are the transcripts of the Fifty Confessions, so you should stop calling them a hoax!"  With such information published on the Internet, you could then well argue that anybody repeating the negative allegations could and should have known them to be untrue, but in the absence of any such publication, what substantiation can you adduce for your claim that people could have known and should have known?  With even you yourself failing to rise to your own defense, what is anybody to wonder except that there may not be much of a defense to rise to?
13-Mar-2002, Prytulak to Rambam: Steven Rambam (Rombom) shakedown for $25,000

Or here at the end of that same letter, I invite your input, to which you also failed to respond:

You Are Not Without Recourse

In any case, if you can detail for me precisely where you think the record needs to be set straight in that Fifty-Confessions-Abella-Letter, then you can rely on my standing ready today, as I always have stood, to publish your statement on the Ukrainian Archive at www.ukar.org, and to make any changes called for by considerations of fairness and justice.
13-Mar-2002, Prytulak to Rambam: Steven Rambam (Rombom) shakedown for $25,000

And my attempts at verification did turn up additional confirmation

The page below does look very much like a trial transcript, it does appear to be discussing your psychiatric condition, including whether or not you would benefit from extended institutionalization, and it does mention your having been separated from your home for almost half your life, which would make you approximately fifteen years old at the time it was written:



36



and as I recall his testimony, had no more than an hour and a half of contact with Mr. Rombom, that they were not, both Mr. Jaffe in his statement and the psychiatrists, satisfied with the environment at home.

Because of my position here I cannot reiterate at great length.  Your Honor is, suffice it to say, familiar with Mr. Rombom's rehabilitation from his viewpoint, which is what is critical to his rehabilitation.  He is in a home of loving parents.  Whatever emotional difficulties psychiatrists reading reports, not interviewing the people directly, as Dr. Bryskin did not, feel exists at home, as Dr. Collins has pointed out, Mr. Rombom has been separated from his home too long and for too many years, almost half his life from his home.  And that from a psychiatrict point of view and from a humane point of view I don't believe that can be used as a basis for removing him from the community.

Your Honor, I would like to read to you three lines concerning a prognosis for rehabilitation of Mr. Rombom, and I quote: "As to extended extensive psychotherapy from which he can benefit does not require institutionalization, but he will need a plan for structure, social and academic experience concomittant with his treatment activity."


SOUTHERN DISTRICT COURT REPORTERS,   U.S. COURTHOUSE


Who cares?

I certainly don't, and I think that the world doesn't.  Your institutionalization is only of the remotest interest to me, and to the public, and would have dropped out of my consciousness, and everybody's consciousness, years ago, and certainly would not be the subject of my discussion today, had you not decided to try to seize my property by (among other things) misrepresenting that institutionalization in court � upon which you obligated me to bring it forward for the sort of scrutiny that you see above, and you thus pressed it upon the world's attention as well.

An insight you might benefit from � nobody will refuse to hire you as a private investigator because you were institutionalized for eight years when young, but many will refuse to hire you as a private investigator because you lie about your institutionalization in court in an effort to seize someone else's property now that you have grown to adulthood.

Another insight that could be of use � a lawyer who was either competent or ethical or protective of your interests would have kept you from perjuring yourself the way you did in your 03-Oct-2002 Rambam v Prytulak testimony.  If your lawyer had done his job, then this letter would not have been written.




Lubomyr Prytulak
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