NEW YORK (CMC) – New York State court has suspended a highly respected lawyer and philanthropist whom it claimed lived a double life by secretly marrying a prostitute in Jamaica while living with his first wife and two daughters in Manhattan.

According to court documents, Joseph Rosenzweig, 56, was suspended by the state court system’s Departmental Disciplinary Committee on February 26, for six months, for bigamy.

In his testimony, Rosenzweig pledged to be “honest, trustworthy, and not engage in any conduct that would reflect badly on myself or the profession.

“I betrayed the people who love me, who trust me, and everybody who knows me,” he said in court papers.

According to the court documents, Rosenzweig had married the prostitute, Radiah Givens Nunez, in a secret ceremony at the Rockhouse hotel in Negril, Jamaica in 2004.

But the secret marriage was revealed a few months later, when his first wife, Teresa, opened a letter, sent via FedEx from Jamaica, with the marriage license, court document said. 

Rosenzweig met Nunez, then 23, at the New York Dolls strip club in 1995 and fell in love, he was 38 years old at the time.

He gave Nunez a credit card, set an allowance, paid for all of her bills, and they even took lavish vacations together, according to the court documents.

“I wanted to demonstrate to her my commitment to her in terms of our relationship, and the way that I thought I could do that was by marrying her even though we both knew it was not a valid marriage,” said Rosenzweig.

“I was so much in love with her, it didn’t really matter to me at that time,” he added.

But, according to the court documents, Rosenzweig cut off contact and financial support to Nunez by April 2005, annulling the second marriage two years later.

In 2009, Nunez won a lawsuit filed by Rosenzweig, claiming he took out two mortgages on a property, which he claimed constituted a loan to her. They later reached a settlement, court document said.