Baltimore Jewish school teacher sentenced to 23 years in prison for sex crimes

A teacher at a Jewish school in Baltimore has been sentenced to 23 years in prison for sex crimes.

William “Zev” Steen, 46, pleaded guilty to sexual exploitation of a child, a felony, in the U.S. District Court of Maryland. He was sentenced on Monday.

Steen, who taught students at Bnos Yisroel of Baltimore, an all-girls high school, admitted to filming himself abusing a young girl and sharing child pornography online. The abuse continued for five years, including two instances in 2008 when Steen filmed it, prosecutors said.

Steen was also director of Baltimore’s Technology Awareness Group, a company that installs filtering software on the phones of observant Jews, which would have given him access to the personal devices of hundreds of community members. The case also included allegations of trafficking in child pornography online, although there is no known connection between the crimes and either organization.

The school fired Steen and the software company, known as TAG Baltimore, said he no longer worked at the school afterward he was arrested in 2022.

The defense’s plea for a light sentence stated that Steen had admitted to some wrongdoing in 2013, consulted a family rabbi and visited a therapist for a year. The memorandum contains more than ten letters from community members defending Steen, but is heavily redacted and does not include names.

Although the crimes came to the attention of community members, they appear not to have been reported to authorities for years before he was arrested. Police investigators tracked child pornography on a computer at Steen’s family home in 2022, executed a search warrant and found material related to the abuse on Steen’s laptop and an SD card.

Steen will be incarcerated at Fort Dix, New Jersey. After his release, he will be under supervision for the rest of his life.

Prosecutors had sought a 28-year prison sentence “to protect society from the suspect, whose conduct demonstrates that he poses a clear and imminent threat to young girls.”

A letter from the prosecutor to the judge said two rabbis had argued for a lenient sentence in a video submitted to the court that has not been released to the public. Prosecutors also said counsel had treated a person involved in the case between 2013 and 2015 and had been “generally” informed about the sexual abuse, but had not sought further information. The counselor was identified by Za’akah, an advocacy group for Jewish victims of sexual violence, as an employee of CHANA, a Baltimore nonprofit that helps victims of abuse and trauma.

CHANA said on a Monday statement that it had offered community support after learning about the allegations against Steen.

“Our crisis intervention services are designed to protect victims and survivors of abuse and the community at large, including our strict adherence to mandatory reporting when child abuse is suspected,” the statement said, without saying whether the group reported the abuse to authorities. .

Steen’s family members and other supporters attended his hearing on Monday, with some arguing for a light sentence.

According to Steen’s LinkedIn profile, he began working at the school in 2017 — after community members learned of his abuse, but before his arrest.