WASHINGTON (DC)
Haaretz
By Uriel Heilman May 13, 2015
JTA – In addition to secretly recording women undressing for the mikveh ritual bath, Rabbi Barry Freundel engaged in sexual encounters with several women, according to prosecutors.
That’s one of several new details about the mikveh-peeping rabbi to emerge from two documents filed in D.C. Superior Court on May 8 — one each by the prosecution and defense — ahead of Freundel’s sentencing on Friday. The documents, which attempt to sway the judge’s sentencing, shed new light on Freundel’s behavior and offer some particulars about the rabbi’s life since his arrest on October 14, 2014 — including that he has resumed some rabbinic teaching.
Freundel pleaded guilty in February to 52 counts of misdemeanor voyeurism for installing secret cameras in the shower room of the mikveh adjacent to Kesher Israel, the prominent Washington Orthodox synagogue he led for some 25 years.
He used one to three cameras, hiding the devices in a digital clock radio, a tissue box holder and a small tabletop fan, and aiming them at the toilet and shower in the mikveh dressing room, according to the prosecution’s memo. In addition to the 52 women he filmed while they were completely naked between March 4, 2012 and Sept. 19, 2014, Freundel recorded an additional 100 women since April 2009 who were not part of the criminal complaint due to the statute of limitations.
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