Rabbi’s sentence angers victims

Rabbi’s sentence angers victims
August 03, 2012 By Wesley Lowery, Globe Correspondent

Despite tearful pleas from victims, a judge sentenced a one-time religious instructor for a prominent Brookline school to 10 years probation Thursday for sexually abusing three of his students in Boston during the 1975-1976 school year.

The sentence for Rabbi Stanley Z. Levitt, who pleaded guilty Wednesday to four counts of ­indecent assault and battery on a child, stunned and angered the victims, who gathered in the ­Suffolk Superior courtroom to face their abuser and witness the sentencing. Levitt was also ordered to stay away from children, register as a sex offender, and wear a GPS monitor....

“He should have served jail time,” said Michael Brecher, who along with the two other former students at the Maimonides School, an Orthodox Jewish school, said that Levitt touched him sexually when he was a sixth-grader.

Delivering a victim-impact statement before the sentencing, Brecher said Levitt groped him while Brecher was recovering at Boston Children’s Hospital after part of his finger was sliced off in a classroom door....

The Globe has reported that after leaving Massachusetts in 1980, Levitt was charged with molesting three boys in Philadelphia. In the first of those cases, Levitt was found not guilty. In the second case, he pleaded no contest to accusations that he had showered with a young boy and received five years’ probation. The third allegation was withdrawn.
http://bostonglobe.com/metro/2012/08/02/rabbi-stanley-levitt-gets-years-probation-for-abusing-three-boys/5iygfQPcpYpvPcJ8SPI0cK/story.html