Rabbi Who Videotaped Women At Bath Sentenced To 6 1/2 Years

Customwire.ap.org reports:

"A once-prominent Orthodox rabbi who secretly videotaped scores of women undressing and using a changing room at a Jewish ritual bath was sentenced Friday to approximately six-and-a-half years in prison.

Prosecutors had asked that a judge sentence Bernard Freundel to approximately 17 years in prison. His attorney argued community service was an appropriate sentence.

Freundel acknowledged as part of a plea agreement in February that he secretly recorded more than 150 women over several years. A statute of limitations would have barred prosecutors from charging Freundel for every recording, however, and he pleaded guilty to 52 counts of voyeurism, each count punishable by up to a year in jail.

Freundel, 63, led the Kesher Israel synagogue in Washington for 25 years before he was arrested in October after one of his recording devices was discovered. As part of his plea agreement, he acknowledged that starting in 2009 he set up hidden recording devices in a changing and showering area of The National Capital Mikvah, a ritual cleansing bath he worked to have built. His recordings captured women undressing, using the toilet and entering and exiting a shower, prosecutors said..."