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

(JTA) — A teacher at a Jewish school in Baltimore has been sentenced to 23 years in federal prison for sex crimes.

William “Zev” Steen, 46, pleaded guilty to sexual exploitation of a child, a felony, in the US 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 took place for five years, including two instances in 2008 when Steen filmed it, prosecutors said. 

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

The school fired Steen, and the software firm, known as TAG Baltimore, said he was no longer employed with it after he was arrested in 2022. 

The defense’s plea for a light sentence said Steen had admitted to some of the misdeeds in 2013, consulted with a family rabbi and had seen a therapist for a year. The memorandum contains more than 10 letters from community members defending Steen, but is heavily redacted and does not contain names.

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

Teacher to be imprisoned in New Jersey

Steen will be imprisoned in Fort Dix, New Jersey. After his release, he will be under supervised release for the rest of his life.

Prosecutors had called for a sentence of 28 years “to protect society from the defendant, whose conduct demonstrates that he poses a clear and imminent threat to young girls.”

A letter from the prosecution to the judge said two rabbis had pleaded for a lenient sentence in a video submitted to the court that has not been released to the public. Prosecutors also said a counselor had treated an individual involved in the case from 2013-2015, and was “informed generally” 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 assault, as an employee of CHANA, a Baltimore nonprofit that aids victims of abuse and trauma.

CHANA said in a Monday statement that it had offered community support after finding out about the allegations against Steen.

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

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

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