BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe
Editorial
August 04, 2012
The sentence given to Rabbi Stanley Z. Levitt, the former religious instructor who pleaded guilty to four counts of indecent assault and battery on children, harks back to the long-discredited view that shame alone is enough to punish a prominent person who violates his position of authority. The 66-year-old Levitt was given 10 years of probation and ordered to stay away from children, register as a sex offender, and wear a GPS bracelet. It’s not enough. He should have been put behind bars.
Not all sex-abuse cases are alike, but Levitt’s followed a now-familiar pattern of a teacher or religious leader who shattered the trust that parents placed in him. Levitt’s crimes took place 37 years ago, when he was a teacher at the Orthodox Jewish Maimonides School in Brookline. He touched three boys in a sexual manner, and all were prepared to testify against him.
Though Judge Geraldine Hines could only consider these offenses, Levitt also was charged with molesting three boys in Philadelphia after he left the Boston area in 1980. As Mitchell Garabedian, the lawyer who took on the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston in sex-abuse cases, pointed out, “This could be just the tip of the iceberg.”
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