Boca Rabbi Gets 78 Months in Prison in Child-Sex Case
Originally published by the Sun-Sentinel, December 28, 2001
FORT LAUDERDALE — A popular Boca Raton rabbi was sentenced on Friday to 78 months in federal prison for sex crimes involving teenage boys.
The 6-1/2-year sentencing of Rabbi Jerrold Levy by U.S. District Judge William Dimitrouleas followed a 3-1/2 hour hearing that started around 10:15 a.m.
Levy, 59, has already served about seven months in jail at the Federal Detention Center in Miami. He will be given credit for that time served and it is expected he will serve at least another 60 months, or about, five years, in prison to complete the sentence. It was not immediately known where Levy will serve his sentence.
Defense attorney Ed Shoat said he would not appeal the sentence.
If Dimitrouleas had chose to follow prosecutors' initial request, Levy could have faced up to 60 years in prison.
But prosecutors later asked the judge to sentence Levy within standard federal sentencing guidelines for the crime—6-1/2 to 8 years.
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.
He was initially arrested on state charges after the father of a 16-year-old boy discovered an e-mail soliciting his son for sex. The father exchanged e-mails with "CoachBoca" and then went to sheriff's investigators, who set up a sting operation.
Levy's April 5th 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.
Levy's attorneys had argued the rabbi deserved a sentence of less than 6-1/2 years because a 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 teens 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 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."
