UNITED STATES
Haaretz
By The Forward and Bethany Mandel | May 13, 2015
I follow the Barry Freundel case quite closely, closer than most. I have a dog in the race: I’m a confirmed victim (though the videos he took of me inside the preparation room at the mikveh was recorded outside the statute of limitations). When news broke yesterday of a defense memo I immediately got my hands on an unredacted version. The Washington Post soon published a redacted copy, obscuring the identities of several women who were named by the defense expressing sympathy or confusion about the prominent rabbi’s arrest.
Why did the Washington Post remove their names? They were protecting their privacy, because it wasn’t clear to editors that their remarks were made public with their permission. The section of the defense memo in question is named “Internet Posting (sic) of Women Congregants of Rabbi Freundel.”
The instincts of the editors of the Washington Post were correct. I spoke to four out of the five women named by the defense and they all confirmed they were neither asked or told by the defense that their remarks would be used. The fifth didn’t return my request for comment. All said they had not been contacted by Freundel or his lawyer before their statements, taken from Facebook immediately after the arrest took place and without context, were placed in a sentencing request for leniency by the court. Of the four that returned my request for comment, none of them would have granted consent had they been asked.
Freundel’s lawyers asked for community service, in stark opposition to the prosecution’s request for 17 years incarceration, one-third of the maximum allowed by law for the 52 charges (another 100 videos fall outside of the statute of limitations).
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