Victim Savors Conviction of Pedophile Rabbi
By Matt Stout
A man once targeted by the pedophile rabbi who pleaded guilty yesterday to preying on boys in the 1970s said he’s relishing the chance to face the “sick man” who used his power as a Brookline religion teacher. “I don’t have any hope of retribution, I don’t want any revenge ... but I have no problem facing him whatsoever,” Michael Brecher, now 48, told the Herald, saying he will address the court when Rabbi Stanley Levitt, 66, is sentenced today in Suffolk Superior court on four counts of indecent assault and battery on a child. Levitt’s guilty plea comes roughly eight months after he initially was expected to admit to the decades-old abuse, but balked at the last minute. “The only gift that came out of that for me was when the judge called a recess, I got the opportunity to stand in front of him, and that was the most powerful moment of my life,” Brecher recalled, adding a friend eventually pulled him away. “I would have said, ‘Look me in the eye, you coward.’ He could not even look at me. Until that point, I had compassion for him. He’s a sick man.” Levitt, who now lives in Philadelphia, faces up to 40 years in prison. Prosecutors say that they will push for prison time.
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