News
2006-09-09
Closeted rabbi
caught in TV sex sting convicted in Virginia
A Maryland rabbi
caught in a nationally televised sex sting was convicted
Wednesday of traveling to Virginia for sex with who
A Maryland rabbi
caught in a nationally televised sex sting was convicted
Wednesday of traveling to Virginia for sex with whom he
believed to be a 13-year-old boy he met over the
Internet. A federal judge in Alexandria,
Va., found David A. Kaye, 56, of Rockville, Md., guilty
of coercing and enticing a minor and of traveling
across state lines for illegal sexual contact.
During a bench trial last month, prosecutors
presented evidence of sexually graphic chats between
Kaye and adults from an Internet watchdog group called
Perverted Justice who were pretending to be minors. The
group was working with the NBC newsmagazine Dateline,
which paid the watchdog group to create a pedophile
sting. Kaye was one of several men who showed up at a
Herndon, Va., home and were confronted on camera by
correspondent Chris Hansen.
U.S. district judge James C. Cacheris wrote that
prosecutors presented overwhelming evidence, including
outtakes from the NBC show and a log of chats that
Kaye initiated with the supposed 13-year-old. The judge
noted that when confronted, Kaye told Hansen, "You
know I'm in trouble. I know I'm in trouble."
Kaye acknowledged during his trial that he
traveled to the home in hopes of having sex, but he
said he always believed the person on the other end of
the conversation was a young adult role-playing as a
13-year-old. Kaye, who is divorced, acknowledged that
he frequently had homosexual encounters with people he
met in online chat rooms but said none were minors. He
said he hid his homosexual activity over many decades from
his wife of 30 years and from his former congregants
in Potomac, Md.
In the wake of the sting, he resigned from his
job as vice president of Rockville-based Jewish youth
organization called PANIM: the Institute for Jewish
Leaders and Values. Kaye, who has been jailed since his
arrest in May, faces up to 60 years in prison when he
is sentenced Dec. 1. (AP)
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