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	'A Human Tragedy'as Judge Finds Rabbi Guilty of Sex Crimes, fellow Clergy Saddened by Verdict By Eric Fingerhut Washington Jewish Week [Alexandria VA] September 13, 2006 http://www.washingtonjewishweek.com/main.asp?SectionID=4&SubSectionID=4&ArticleID=5872&TM=529.936 A local rabbi's reaction to a hidden camera sting of online sexual predators was a key factor in the guilty verdict handed down last week. Alexandria U.S. District Court Judge James Cacheris found David Kaye guilty of "coercion and enticement" and travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual contact with a minor. Sentencing will take place Dec. 1. The Rockville rabbi, who has been in jail since his indictment in May, faces a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison and a maximum of 60 years. In his opinion, Cacheris wrote that Kaye's defense was not credible, citing as evidence his "demeanor, body language and facial reaction ... of complete and utter shock" when confronted by Dateline NBC correspondent Chris Hansen, as well as his statements to Hansen, "I know I'm in trouble," and, in response to the question of "what are you doing here," "not something good." The judge decided the case after Kaye waived his right to a jury trial. Those who have known and worked with Kaye in the community reacted sadly to the verdict. Kaye's conviction is the culmination of a "human tragedy," said Rabbi Sid Schwarz, executive director of the Rockville-based teen educational group Panim: The Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values, where Kaye had worked prior to the Dateline report. Kaye has "contributed to the community in many ways," Schwarz said, but sometimes people "have a piece of their personal lives that sabotages" the work they do. "It's very sad," he said. At Congregation Har Shalom in Potomac, where Kaye had been a rabbi for 16 years, people are "still saddened and disturbed by the course of events," said Jodi Susser, president. She stressed that Kaye had not been a rabbi at the shul for five years, and also said that an investigation uncovered "absolutely nothing" to indicate that Kaye acted inappropriately with children during his tenure with the congregation. Schwarz also noted that an investigation of Kaye's time at Panim found that there was a "division" between the rabbi's professional behavior and what he did on his own time, and that no one came forward with any evidence of improper conduct by Kaye at Panim. A Panim staffer, however, testified at the trial that she found two explicit photos of Kaye on his computer after he resigned from the organization. Washington Board of Rabbis director Rabbi Saul Koss said he knew of a handful of local rabbis who were friends of Kaye and have visited him in jail since his arrest. Among them is Rabbi Jonah Layman of Silver Spring's Congregation Shaare Tefila, who said that Kaye has been "able to find comfort and solace in prayer." Layman also said that the rabbi is "lonely in jail" and "would welcome letters of support" from friends in the community. Agudas Achim Congregation Rabbi Jack Moline also has visited the rabbi regularly since his jailing, and advised those upset by the situation to remember that everyone is fallible. "Everybody has somebody they love do something they don't approve of," said the Alexandria rabbi. "The measure of love is not whether the person meets your expectations," but whether one is "strong enough to accept their imperfections." Moline said that "sometimes that can be harder than others," but that Kaye is the same man he has known and loved for 20 years. "I have a broken heart and not a lot of anger," he said. "It's easier to heal from sadness than to let go ... of anger." Kaye, who resigned after three years as vice president for program at Panim just days before Dateline broadcast the segment last November, had testified in court last month that he thought he had been engaged in a "role play." He said believed that he was meeting a young adult, not a child, when he walked into a Herndon house in August 2005. The house had been rented by Dateline, which had been working with an organization called Perverted Justice, a controversial group whose volunteers pose as children online to expose potential Internet predators. Kaye had been chatting online with an adult member of Perverted Justice who was posing as a 13-year-old named "Conrad." Kaye had testified that role playing was fairly typical over the dozen or so years he had been meeting men via America Online chat rooms, something he had done as part of a "secret life" of engaging in "secret adult homosexual liaisons" that he had hid from family and friends for 30 years. Cacheris wrote that he did not find Kaye's testimony in the courtroom to be credible in its "veracity, demeanor, cadence, tenor and inflection of ... voice, as well as the consistency of his answers on cross examination." The judge said that the extensive chat log in which Kaye first broached the subject of his chat partner's age and repeatedly mentioned it was evidence that the defendant believed he was speaking to a 13-year-old. Kaye attorney Peter Greenspun said his client was "devastated" by the verdict but was "trying to make the best of a bad situation." "He's going to continue to be positive," Greenspun said, adding that Kaye hoped that others could learn from his predicament. The lawyer noted that the Internet, with its hundreds of thousands of people participating in chat rooms, makes it very easy for someone to cross the "line of self-discipline" and "fall into this type of situation." Greenspun said he was now concentrating on Kaye's sentencing, and that he could not talk about any possible avenues for appeal until that phase of the trial was complete. But he criticized the sting conducted by Dateline and Perverted Justice, saying that the "public interest is not served" when there is a confluence between the media, private sector and law enforcement. "Law enforcement should be left to law enforcement," Greenspun said. He also questioned Perverted Justice's motives, arguing that if the group were truly concerned about Internet predators, it would advise children on how to avoid them online. Instead, he charged that the group is "out to grow their profile" by working with a major television network such as NBC. He also noted that the group posts the explicit chats it conducts on its Web site, where children can see them. Cacheris wrote in his decision that Perverted Justice was paid $100,000 for its participation in the Herndon sting. The organization denies on its Web site that it was paid any money for that particular operation, but media reports have stated that the organization was paid at least $100,000 for subsequent stings it has conducted this year. Dateline's "To Catch A Predator" series has been so successful ratings-wise that the network has already scheduled four fresh installments of the program over the next month, culled from two new stings. (The first of the four was scheduled to air last night.) On its Web site, Perverted Justice trumpets the Kaye conviction, noting that it is the group's 75th conviction since 2004 and 35th this year, and that it was "one of our most anticipated convictions of 2006." In a statement on the site purportedly from "Don Pedro" ‹ the alias of Sean O'Connor, who posed as "Conrad" on the chats with Kaye ‹ the Perverted Justice contributor thanks the FBI, the U.S. attorneys who worked on the case and the judge. "I hope everyone can now see that it's been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that what we do here at Perverted Justice is the real deal ‹ we catch real bad guys," the statement said.
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