In Rabbi Barry Freundel's own sentencing memo, several women are named by the defense and are quoted expressing sympathy for Freundel and even calling for leniency in Freundel's. Most of these remarks, it turns out, were reportedly taken without permission by Freundel and his attorneys from social media posts, stripped of their context and submitted to the court in Freundel's defense.
Above: Rabbi Barry Freundel
Bethany Mandel, a confirmed victim of mikvah voyeur Rabbi Barry Freundel, writes in the Forward about Freundel's official sentencing memo, which purports to show Freundel is not at risk for re-offending and asks for a no-jail sentence for the rabbi who secretly video-recorded 152 naked women as each prepared to immerse in the mikvah (ritual bath) adjoining his Georgetown Modern Orthodox synagogue. (Freundel pleaded guilty to 52 of those cases; the others, including Mandel's, fell outside DC's statute of limitations.)
Mandel writes:
…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.…one [of these women] quoted by [Freundel’s] lawyers was not actually a congregant [of Freundel’s synagogue]. She told me: “I don’t live there, I have never attended the synagogue or seen the mikveh there in my life, I don’t know that I have ever seen him in person, I am not a convert. The only connection I have at all is that as I said I was responding to a Facebook post written by a friend who was somewhat affected and was trying to understand [Freundel’s] actions. I was reassuring her that there was no fault on her part that she couldn’t make sense of the actions of someone who was evil."…
Assuming those four women told Mandel the truth and that Mandel is telling the truth to us – both reasonable assumptions to make – what Freundel and his attorneys did was despicable, and that alone is more than enough reason for the judge to give him a stiff sentence. (The prosecution has asked for 17 years in prison (please also see this) – an unlikely sentence even with these latest revelations. But five or six years? That could happen. Freundel wants a sentence of community service only.)
Mandel goes on to note that Freundel frequently failed to attend life cycle events – weddings, funerals, and shivas and the like – of his congregants and quotes a former Freundel congregant who used to defend Freundel’s absences to what this congregant told Mandel were “dozens” of people who complained to her about Freundel’s conspicuous absences.“…[N]ow that I know what horrible things he was doing with his time, I feel used,” the congregant reportedly said.
And then Mandel notes what is, perhaps, the most important fact of all: in his sentencing memo, Freundel failed to apologize to the women he harmed.
Nowhere in the document Freundel provided to the court does he do one simple thing: apologize to victims,” Mandel writes, noting that Freundel’s claims to be rehabilitated and that women are now safe and do not have to fear him fall flat.
…If there’s any doubt about his rehabilitation thus far, look no further than the very document [the sentencing memo] Freundel filed in his own defense. If he is still willing to violate the privacy of women, both known and unknown to him, by publishing their names and statements out of context for his own gain, what prevents further instances of voyeurism (and worse) across America and Israel?
Indeed.
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