Boca Rabbi Faces Maximum of 8 Years in Prison for Molesting Boys
By Jon Burstein, Staff Writer
Originally published in the Sun-Sentinel, December 21, 2001
FORT LAUDERDALE — A once-popular Boca Raton rabbi now faces no more than eight years in prison after federal prosecutors on Thursday backed away from seeking the harshest possible prison sentence for sex crimes involving children.
The surprising move came in the opening minutes of Rabbi Jerrold Levy's sentencing hearing and only a couple of weeks after prosecutors filed court documents portraying him as a cunning pedophile who targeted vulnerable boys.
If U.S. District Judge William Dimitrouleas chose to follow prosecutors' initial request, Levy, 59, could have faced up to 60 years in prison.
But prosecutors instead asked the judge to sentence Levy within standard federal sentencing guidelines for the crime: between 6½ and eight years.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Bruce Reinhart declined to discuss what prompted Thursday's reversal, but said the reasons will become clear after Levy's sentencing hearing resumes next Friday.
Ed Shohat, Levy's attorney, said he learned on Wednesday that the U.S. Attorney's Office had backed away from its initial stance.
"They didn't have a basis for [the request for a maximum sentence], and I think they knew it," Shohat said.
Levy, who was an associate rabbi of Temple Beth El in Boca Raton, pleaded guilty in August to four federal charges that include having sex with a 14-year-old Wellington boy he met online and sending child pornography over the Internet.
Levy's April 5 arrest on the first day of Passover left the temple—one of the region's largest Reform Jewish congregations—reeling. The married rabbi had been with the temple for eight years.
About 30 congregation members, along with Levy's wife and children, packed Dimitrouleas' courtroom on Thursday in a day of testimony from mental health experts who had examined Levy. Levy—visibly thinner since his arrest—nodded and smiled to several spectators as he walked in handcuffs and leg shackles into the courtroom.
Levy's attorneys argued on Thursday that the rabbi deserves a sentence of less than 61/2 years because his sexual disorder drove him to illicit behavior with teenage boys.
In addition to the Wellington boy, Levy solicited up to six boys on the Internet for sex, according to court documents. He would approach the teenagers in an Internet chat room for gay teens.
Dr. Fred Berlin, a psychiatric expert in sexual disorders, testified Levy's attraction to teenagers was a preoccupation he couldn't control. An obsessed Levy—who spent up to five hours a night on the Internet—knew what he was doing was wrong, but it was as if he had a gun to his head, said Berlin, founder of Johns Hopkins University's sexual disorder clinic, in Baltimore.
"This was a man who was struggling and losing the battle, and not someone who just didn't give a darn," Berlin said. "This was the culmination of a long history of being a sexually troubled, repressed and confused man."
The government's expert, Dr. Phillip Resnick, is an internationally known forensic psychiatrist who has provided expert testimony or consultation in the cases of Jeffrey Dahmer, Timothy McVeigh and Susan Smith, the South Carolina woman who drowned her two sons. Resnick testified that Levy could control his sexual appetites. Levy never victimized any congregation members because the risk was too high, he said.
But with the Internet, Levy had the opportunity to approach teenage boys in a setting where the chance of getting caught was much lower, Resnick said.
Temple Beth El congregation members who attended Thursday's hearing said Levy is clearly a man who needs mental help.
"It's just a shame that we have to turn our backs on understanding," said Shirley Applebaum, a congregation member. "It's a shame to make a circus out of a sickness."
Stanley Winter, a 10-year member of the temple, said he was shocked on Thursday to hear some of the lurid details of Levy's case.
"In plain English, he just isn't all there," Winter said. "This man belongs institutionalized, not in jail."
Levy's attorneys are set at next week's hearing to call at least three more witnesses. The rabbi also will be given a chance to speak.
