For His Victims, the Nightmare of "Peeping" Rabbi Freundel Didn’t End with His Sentencing

By Allison Kaplan
The Haaretz
May 21, 2015

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-features/.premium-1.657617

Watching a downcast Rabbi Barry Freundel being led away to face incarceration immediately after he was sentenced to six and a half years in prison on May 15 may not have healed the trauma and pain of his victims, but it marked a milestone for many of them.

Two of the many women in the courtroom who knew they had been videotaped naked by the rabbi while were preparing for their ritual immersions in the mikveh said they had been deeply worried the judge might heed his plea for leniency. They said they were emotionally prepared to see him receive a minimal term or no prison time at all, as Freundel’s defense team had requested.

“There was a lot of fear in the group that he would get nothing or basically nothing,” Kate Bailey, 28, said in a telephone interview shortly after the sentencing.

Bethany Shondark Mandel, 29, said she had tried to keep her expectations low so as not to be disappointed. “I kept saying to myself, as long as it’s more than a year, that will be okay.” When the sentence was finally announced, she said, “I was shocked. We were all anticipating hearing that he would only get six months.” Ultimately, she said, “I think nearly everyone was relieved to hear the sentence. I think people wanted the sentence to make it clear that while this wasn’t rape, it was incredibly traumatic for his victims and total betrayal of trust.”