Rabbi, 63, Gets 78 Months in Prison for Secretly Taking Videos of Women Preparing for Bath
A 63-year-old rabbi in Washington, D.C. was sentenced by a court on Friday to six years and six months in prison after he was found guilty on 52 counts of voyeurism when he secretly took videos of women preparing for a Jewish ritual bath.
Bernard "Barry" Freundel worked for a Jewish congregation in Washington, D.C. and took the videos between 2009 and 2014, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
He pleaded guilty in February 2015 to the misdemeanor charges before the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.
More than a dozen women told the court that they continued to suffer emotional distress because of what Freundel did.
The court sentenced Freundel to 45 days in prison for each of the 52 victims, calling his actions "a classic abuse of power and violation of trust."
From 2009 to 2014, Freundel was the sole rabbi at Kesher Israel congregation in Northwest Washington, D.C. The congregation is adjacent to the National Capital Mikvah, a Jewish ritual bath.
The mikvah has two changing and showering rooms. Freundel installed and maintained electronic recording devices in the larger of the two changing/showering rooms.
A mikvah is a pool of water in which observant married Jewish women are required to take a dip once a month, seven days after the end of their menstrual cycle.
Based on Jewish beliefs, dips in the mikvah take a woman from a state of impurity ("tumah" in Hebrew) to a state of purity ("taharah").
Once a woman immerses herself in mikvah, she is considered free to have sex with her husband, which is not allowed when she's still in a state of impurity. This is the point in a woman's cycle when she is most fertile.
Last Oct.12, Freundel placed a clock radio with video recording device in the larger changing-showering room. The clock radio was taken by an individual associated with the mikvah, who turned it over to the Metropolitan Police Department, which led to an investigation.
Freundel was arrested on Oct. 14, 2014.
Electronic devices and digital media storage at Freundel's home revealed recordings he made of at least 52 women who were totally or partially undressed in the large changing-showering room of the mikvah on 25 different dates between March 4, 2012 and Sept. 18, 2014.
In addition, it was found that Freundel secretly recorded about 100 other women in the changing-showering room at the National Capital Mikvah between 2009 and September 2014.