A Hudson County judge, slamming arguments by a Jersey City-based gay conversion therapy organization as “preposterous,” ordered the group to cease operating once and for all.

Hudson County Superior Court Assignment Judge Peter Bariso ruled Monday on a lawsuit that Arthur Goldberg and Elaine Berk, founders of Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality, or JONAH, blatantly violated his 2015 court ruling that forbid the pair from performing the discredited gay-to-straight treatment.

Bariso noted overwhelming evidence that showed Goldberg and Berk restarted the business — under the name Jewish Institute for Global Awareness (JIFGA) — two weeks after the December 2015 decision stemming from a lawsuit filed by former JONAH clients in 2012.

“What they do hurts people, so we are extremely pleased at this court’s ruling and hope that it will finally put a stop to the fraud that they have perpetrated for more than a decade,” said Lina Bensman, one of the attorneys for the five plaintiffs.

In March 2018, the plaintiffs in the case filed a motion asking the court to enforce the 2015 ruling after they learned that Goldberg and Berk, operating as JIFGA, had violated both Bariso’s ruling and the settlement agreement by collecting fees to refer new clients to businesses that perform gay conversion therapy.

In March 2019, the Southern Poverty Law Center filed an injunction in Superior Court in Hudson County to stop JIFGA from engaging in and promoting conversion therapy.

READ THE JUDGE’S RULING

"It is horrifying that anyone would go to such lengths — actually setting up multiple businesses — with the sole intent of irreparably harming and abusing LGBTQ people,” Garden State Equality spokesman Jon Oliveira said Wednesday.

"The science is clear that anti-LGBTQ conversion therapy is dangerous, discredited malpractice, and it is nothing short of abuse.”

JONAH promised clients they could overcome their sexual urges through techniques such as requiring men to undress in front of each and touch themselves sexually, as well as pummeling effigies of their mothers, according to trial testimony in 2015.

In that civil trial, the jury found JONAH and its founders engaged in unconscionable commercial practices and had misrepresented their services.

In his latest decision, Bariso called JIFGA "a mere continuation of JONAH.”

A man who answered the phone at JIFGA declined comment.

Bariso also ordered JIFGA to permanently cease all operations within 30 days, dissolve as a corporate entity and liquidate its assets within 180 days — the same terms of the permanent injunction against JONAH.

The judge ordered Goldberg and Berk to give back any money they made while operating as JIFGA, pay the plaintiffs’ legal fees and barred the pair from holding any position in a tax-exempt entity in New Jersey.

The defendants were ordered to pay $3.5 million in legal fees to the plaintiffs following the trial that ended in 2015. But the plaintiffs and defendants entered into a settlement in which a smaller amount would be paid in exchange for an agreement by the defendants regarding "a number of restrictions on their conduct which we hoped would stop them from continuing to hurt people,” Bensman said.

As a result of breaching the agreement, the defendants are on the hook for the whole amount, Bensman said Wednesday.

Bensman said desperate, confused and terrified young gay men who reached out to the defendants for conversion therapy would be told they were sick and had a mental disorder.

“That if they pursued a romantic relationship with other men, they would become addicted to drugs and die alone and unloved,” Bensman said. “It caused some people to become depressed, some to contemplate suicide, and it impacted their relationships with other people.”

Bensman said sometimes therapy involved a client undressing while blindfolded and touching himself while surrounded by staff members who claimed to be formerly gay. Sometimes therapy involved “healthy holding” with another man in what the attorney said was fraudulent therapy based on pseudo-science, she said.

One client said he was told to beat an effigy of his mother with a tennis racket until his hand bled and while screaming “Why mom? Why did you make me gay?” Bensman said.

Luke Barefoot, another attorney for the plaintiffs, said Bariso’s ruling, coming during national Pride Month, shows that with time comes progress.

“It’s an indication that although it may take time, justice was ultimately served,” said Barefoot. “These individuals can take solace in the fact that this will hopefully prevent individuals in the future from going through the difficult process they were subjected to.”

Barefoot said the defendants defrauded people out of tens of thousands of dollars, but “the court’s ruling makes it clear that what they were engaged in was nothing more than ordinary fraud.”