A rabbi writes:
Levi, Not sure how you get the best scoops on these stories (Mordechai Gafni, Isaac Hersh), but your info seems the most complete.
Regarding "Sherry", what we called Yossi as a teenager, here’s the other side of the story that I got from him: He claims that his wife wouldn’t accept the Get, held out for money, and regularly defamed him – including the charge that he was claiming to have had "married off" his under-age daughter – to cover her own perfidy. He says that he was outside the Orthodox "fold" for a couple of years. When he "returned", he married a sweet Orthodox woman (that’s MY assessment after spending a Shabbat with them), moved to a smaller Orthodox community on the East Coast, where he successfully buys, develops and manages real estate. He’s also been involved in building up that community, including helping bring in a kollel (also based on personal knowledge).
I found his story to be very credible, I saw no tell-tale signs of lying, found no contradictions. (The fact that, as the article you reprinted mentioned, "Yossi Sharashefsky…did not have his act validated by a religious court, as Israel Goldstein did", would also seem to indicate that he either never claimed to have married off his daughter, or only claimed it privately to his ex-wife and/or her family to cause them pain during the bitter divorce.)
Either way, he seems to have straightened his life out – he would say because he was always innocent, others might view this as a "whitewash" – and it would seem unfair to spin this as a story of "a rogue helping other rogues," barring other information that establishes a pattern of roguish behavior for Yossi that extends to this decade.
I believe he gave her the get (divorce) very soon after those rumors came out, & the rumors quieted down. At least 10 years ago.
