US prosecutors ask for 17 plus years in rabbi voyeurism case
US prosecutors say a once-prominent Orthodox rabbi who pleaded guilty to secretly videotaping scores of women in a changing room of a Jewish ritual bath in Washington should spend more than 17 years in prison. Prosecutors made their recommendation as part of a court filing submitted ahead of Bernard Freundel's sentencing hearing, which is set for May 15.
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.
