In December of 2023 Zev Steen, a former teacher at Bnos Yisroel in Baltimore, and former head of TAG Baltimore, an internet filtering nonprofit, pled guilty to one count of sexual exploitation for repeatedly raping a child, filming it, and distributing it along with numerous other images and videos of children being sexually abused to a network of pedophiles online. The abuse and filming of his victim occurred in his own house. Steen was found with some of the footage on his person on an SD card at the time of his arrest.

After his initial arrest Steen was granted release on bail, but shortly afterwards was rearrested on more serious charges when the repeated sexual abuse and filming of his victim was discovered in the course of the investigation. After he was remanded to jail for the duration of his case Steen filed a habeas corpus motion to petition the court for bail. In support of his petition Rabbi Shraga Neuberger, a bigwig at Ner Israel and head of an important leading family in Baltimore, wrote a letter attesting to Steen’s character, referring to him as “honest and dependable.”

Some community members, outraged at Neuberger’s public support of Steen, began a petition meant for the court to ask the judge to deny Steen pretrial release. The petition received 364 signatures. It’s unclear whether that factored into the judge’s decision, but Steen’s petition was denied.

In early September of 2024, a former student of Ner Israel reached out to Neuberger to ask him about the letter he’d written in support of Steen. In emails leaked from the conversation Neuberger expresses sympathy for Steen, implying that there’s more to the story, mitigating circumstances unknown to the former student, and the possibility that Steen is not as guilty as he was being made to seem (in other words, what he’d pleaded guilty to).

Ahead of Steen’s sentencing on September 30th his attorneys filed a motion asking the court to allow them to file his sentencing memorandum under seal to protect sensitive information about the case and victim from being made public. The motion mentioned letters of support that had been written on behalf of Steen by his family and members of the community who no doubt wanted their letters to be filed under seal to prevent them from facing scrutiny for their public support of a pedophile. Thankfully the judge denied the motion and ordered that redactions be restricted to “redacting only identities of minors and other similarly sensitive information while otherwise preserving public access to court filings.”

On September 25th the prosecution filed its sentencing memo. Contained within it are additional horrific details about the abuse, as well as sickening details about what Baltimore community leadership knew about Steen’s abuse, when they knew it, and the measures they took to cover it up. Baltimore has outdone itself with this case. When people say that Baltimore is a uniquely dangerous place for children, this case is a perfect example of why.

The sentencing memo begins by detailing what Steen did. Zev Steen sexually abused the victim in this case from when she was 2 years old until she was 8 years old. He videoed his sexual abuse of her at least twice, once in a video depicting the two of them naked in bed where Steen had her sit on top of him so their genitals were touching until he ejaculated. He continued to abuse her repeatedly over the next 6 years.

In another video Steen is shown in bed with the victim, both naked, with her sitting on his torso, her anus and genitals shown, and Steen’s penis in between her legs in contact with her genitals. In some of the images he is shown holding his penis on her buttocks which are covered in his semen. The victim was 5 years old in this video.

Steen was also in possession of numerous images and videos of child sexual abuse materials which he downloaded and uploaded on a peer-to-peer network. The play history on his VLC player showed that he had been watching videos of a 10 year old being sexually abused, a little girl performing oral sex on a man while wearing a collar, a young girl sitting on a toilet being ejaculated on by an adult who makes her lick it off herself, and a video of a young girl being urinated on in a bathtub, among many other disturbing images and videos.

While Steen’s sentencing memo has not yet been filed publicly, the prosecution’s memo includes descriptions of some of the materials which were filed when the motion to seal was filed. Along with his motion he submitted multiple letters of support from family and members of the community along with a video compilation of some of his family and two rabbis in support of lenient sentencing.

One of the big questions surrounding any case like this is why a serial pedophile’s wife would stay with him after she knows that he’s sexually abusing children. This sentencing memo offers some insight in this case as to why Steen’s wife stays with him. The memo states that in 2013 Steen and his wife came to Rabbi Shragi Neuberger and disclosed Steen’s conduct. Neuberger then sent the two of them to a “counselor who had experience in this area.” Neuberger then describes on the video how he supported Mrs. Steen’s decision to remain in the marriage.

How much of that is actually an informed decision and how much of that was pressure from Neuberger is anyone’s guess, but it’s not unreasonable to assume that being told by a very prominent and influential rav in the community that you should stay with your pedophile husband may have had something to do with it. One might also assume from this that Neuberger sent them to a licensed therapist who specializes in the area of sexual abuse of children to perform some kind of official assessment.

As an aside, such an assessment still wouldn’t be grounds to advise a woman to stay married to a pedophile especially when she has children with him, but at least one could understand the rationale. No, the “therapist” Neuberger sent them to was Yehuda Bergman, an unlicensed “drama therapist.” He has no professional specialty in sexual abuse or trauma counseling and does not treat minors.

In May of 2023 Bergman testified before a grand jury about the “therapy” he provided the Steens. He said that he had treated them for a year after Neuberger sent them to him. He also said that Steen had admitted to him that he’d sexually abused his victim over a period of years and stated that the last instance of abuse was “a little bit earlier.” Despite having a duty to report the abuse, Bergman and Neuberger decided not to report the abuse because the consequences would be too difficult for the victim. Right, because being sexually abused and filmed for 5 years wasn’t difficult.

Following this disclosure the victim was sent to a therapist for a year who said that there were no sexual indications at all during her treatment of the victim. The therapist, Laura Greer, an LCSW who serves as clinical coordinator for CHANA, a support organization for victims of abuse, said that she was informed generally that there had been some kind of sexual abuse but was given no further information. She also said that the nature and extent of the abuse was never described to her. She said that she never received a direct disclosure, and never asked. She seems to have adopted a don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy regarding the repeated sexual abuse of a child. No report was ever made by her.

Notably in the emails referenced earlier between the former NIRC student and Neuberger, Neuberger makes the claim, by way of trying to minimize what Steen did, that CPS had investigated Steen for sexual abuse in 2013 and that no disclosure had been made to them by his victim. He failed to mention that Steen had disclosed repeatedly sexually abusing her.

Rabbi Mordechai Shuchatowitz, Av Beis Din of the Baltimore Beis din, implied in his video on behalf of Steen that Steen has an “addiction” because of something unhappy in his life. He then opines that Steen did not produce, collect, and distribute CSAM because he wanted to see inappropriate material, but because something was gnawing at or bothering him.

This addiction trope is one that pops up again, and again, and again in sexual abuse cases. Rabbis love characterizing pedophilia and sexual abuse as a “sex addiction” rather than what it is: The criminal urge to rape children. An addiction is something that can be treated or cured. Pedophilia cannot be cured or effectively treated. It’s also an insult to sex addicts to be lumped in the same group as pedophiles. Sex addiction is a real but specific phenomenon where someone is compulsively engaging in consensual sex that is harmful to their lives or relationships. Sexual abuse is another thing entirely.

The frum community tends to use the term sex addiction to describe any kind of sexual activity it doesn’t approve of. This includes watching porn, even if not excessive, masturbation, homosexual intercourse, sex out of wedlock, pedophilia, and sexual assault. An unfortunately popular web forum, Guard Your Eyes, a frum organization that claims to exist for the purpose of helping people with sex addiction, frequently uses the language of addiction for all of those categories – despite them all being radically different from each other.

Shuchatowitz’s rationalization of Steen’s pedophilia also rings disturbingly similar to the excuse Gershom Selinger gave for his sexual abuse of a number of children in his infamous interview with Mendy Pellin. In that video Selinger blames his pedophilia on his wife for not having enough sex with him. To be clear, there is no amount of sex an adult woman can have with a pedophile that will make him no longer a pedophile. Abusers love placing blame on everyone except themselves for their predations, simultaneously offloading blame for the crimes while also forcing their partners to stay with them out of a distorted sense of responsibility to keep them from preying on children. It’s disgusting, and Shuchatowitz is clearly playing into that here.

Later in the video Shuchatowitz says that Steen had admitted to him that he “struggled with a problem” that he had not overcome and that he had slipped “back into certain things.” The level of understanding, limmud zechus, and advocacy someone can get from the Av Beis Din of the Baltimore Beis Din is incredible if they only admit to being a serial sexual abuser of children. And yet, if you’re a victim in Baltimore and you ask your rav if you should report the abuse, chances are you’ll be instructed not to. If you go ahead anyway and report, you can forget about ever getting any help from any of them. Shuchatowitz has never publicly advocated for victims and never will. Yet here he is advocating for a convicted pedophile and blaming it on Steen’s wife.

Later in the video, Neuberger states, in asking the court for leniency, that having Steen separate from his family for a long time is a death sentence to the emotional health of the family, which is a family and can continue as a family the sooner Steen could be in a state of being protected not to hurt anybody else. This from a man who knew for ten years that Steen was an active pedophile and did nothing but cover it up and guilt Steen’s wife into staying with him. “They’ve already gone through hell through all of this,” Neuberger said, “Whatever considerations can be given with balance, I think, is well worth considering.”

Neuberger is the reason that Steen was able to continue procuring and sharing CSAM with his online network of pedophiles, including the videos he had made of himself repeatedly sexually abusing a girl between the ages of 2 and 8. He’s also the one who pushed Steen’s wife to stay with him all those years despite them knowing what he’d done and was doing. And yet, he has the chutzpah to talk about tearing apart a family, as if freeing Steen’s family from him wouldn’t have been the greatest service he could have done for them.

The memo states two things that taken together are heartbreaking. The prosecution writes that the victim herself submitted a sentencing recommendation letter on Steen’s behalf, and also that to date she has never disclosed the abuse directly and has never received any treatment for it.

It’s notable that Steen decided to produce a video to submit in his defense. After all, he was, as we know, an amateur video producer whose videos enjoyed wide distribution. What’s incredible also is the fact that these rabbis continue to submit sentencing recommendation letters even though to date I have yet to ever see a judge indicate that these letters do anything but make them loathe the communities that write them. Over and over again, in case after case, judges have noted with bewilderment the fact that prominent communal leaders write letters on behalf of these abusers while never acknowledging the crimes they committed or expressing any concern for the victims. If anything these letters count against the perpetrator at sentencing, and yet they keep being written.

These people should all be deeply, deeply ashamed of themselves. How Neuberger, Bergman, Shuchatowitz, and Greer live with themselves all these years without the guilt eating them up is anyone’s guess. One wonders if they even have a conscience left to erode at this point.