NEW YORK, March 19 (UPI) -- A New York lawyer has been suspended from the bar for six months for being married to two women at once, one a Jamaican-born stripper and Santeria priestess.
Joseph Rosenweig, 56, a noted philanthropist in New York City, was suspended from practicing law Feb. 26 following allegations he was married to two women -- one his wife of nearly 30 years and the other a stripper he met in 1995 and has supported financially since.
Court documents obtained by the New York Daily News indicate Rosenweig married Radiah Givens Nunez in a Jamaican ceremony in 2005, because "I wanted to demonstrate to her my commitment to her in terms of our relationship." He'd been carrying on an affair with Nunez since the two met in a strip club a decade earlier. Rosenweig purchased an apartment for Nunez, paid her bills and gave her a monthly allowance, the court documents state.
In her apartment, she set up a "very large altar with all kinds of unusual things upon it" to practice Santeria, Rosenzweig said in the court documents.
All the while he was married and living with his wife Theresa and their two daughters.
The ruse was discovered when Rosenweig's first wife opened a FedEx envelope containing her husband's Jamaican marriage certificate.
Rosenweig had the marriage to Nunez annulled in 2007, the Daily News said.
