WASHINGTON (DC)
The Jewish Week
05/18/15
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer
Rabbi Barry Freundel will appeal the 6.5-year sentence he received for 52 counts of misdemeanor voyeurism, according to his lawyer, Jeffery Harris, who said the sentence was “illegal.”
Rabbi Freundel was sentenced to six and a half years in prison on Friday for videotaping dozens of nude women at a ritual bath.
“You repeatedly and secretly violated the trust your victims had in you and you abused your power,” Senior Judge Geoffrey Alprin of D.C. Superior Court said at the sentencing, the Washington Post reported. Alprin also fined Freundel more than $13,000.
Bethany Mandel, one of Freundel’s victims who attended the sentencing, said she thought the sentence was fair.
“A lot of us worried that he would only be given a year,” she said. “We wanted this crime to be taken seriously, not for our own sake, but because if sexual crimes of this nature go largely unpunished, people will be more hesitant to press similar charges in the future.” Freundel’s sentence set an important precedent, she said.
In February, Freundel pleaded guilty to 52 counts of misdemeanor voyeurism for installing secret cameras in the shower room of the mikvah adjacent to Kesher Israel, the prominent Washington Orthodox synagogue he led for some 25 years.
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