A Rockville, Md., rabbi caught in a Dateline NBC sting of online sexual predators, was found guilty last week on charges of “coercion and enticement” and travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual contact with a minor.
Each count carries a maximum sentence of 30 years; the minimum is five years. Sentencing will take place Dec. 1.
In his court testimony, Rabbi David Kaye, who described his urges as an addiction, told the court that he had “struggled with sexual identity issues” since he was a young adult and for his “entire married life” of 30 years. “It was quite a burden on me,” Kaye said, and he felt a “tremendous amount of shame” about it.
But Kaye, 55, claimed in court that he believed he was going to be meeting a “young adult,” despite his AOL chat partner’s claims of being just 13 years old. Kaye had been chatting online with an adult who was posing as a 13-year-old named “Conrad.”
When Kaye arrived at a Herndon, Va., house on Aug. 17, 2005, he instead met Dateline NBC reporter Chris Hansen and a camera crew. NBC had rented the house and had been working with an organization called Perverted Justice, a controversial group whose volunteers pose as children online to expose potential Internet predators. The show was rebroadcast this summer.
The rabbi has been in jail since his indictment in May. Dateline broadcast the segment last November and Kaye immediately resigned after three years as vice president for programming at the Rockville-based teen educational group Panim: The Institute for Jewish Leadership.
Kaye previously had been a rabbi for 16 years at Congregation Har Shalom in Potomac, Md.
In his opinion, Alexandria (Va.) U.S. District Court Judge James 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, as well as his statements to Hansen, “I know I’m in trouble,” and his response to the question of what he was doing there: “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 Panim. 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, the synagogue’s president.
Kaye’s attorney Peter Greenspun 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. He 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.
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.”