Responsa for Ezra 10:10

The rabbinical court must, due to this bad report, force him to remove her or to emancipate and marry her. Even though this is akin to a sin, because one who is rumored to have slept with a slave woman may not, ab initio, marry her if she has been emancipated, we have already ruled several times on cases such as this that he should emancipate and marry her. We do this to pave the way for those who wish to repent, and we say that it is better for him to eat the sauce than to eat the actual fats. We rely on the words of the Sages: “It is a time to act for God, for they have breached Your Torah” (Tehilim 119:126; Berakhot 54a). We subtly and softly help him marry her, and we set a time by which he must marry her or remove her, as Ezra did (Ezra 10:10-44).