By Luke Tress
A former STEM teacher at Northwest Baltimore’s Bnos Yisroel has been sentenced to 23 years in federal prison for committing sex crimes.
In the U.S. District Court of Maryland, Northwest Baltimore resident William “Zev” Steen, 46, pleaded guilty to the felony of sexual exploitation of a child. He was sentenced on Monday, Oct. 1.
Steen, who taught students at Bnos Yisroel of Baltimore, an all-girls high school located at 6300 Park Heights Avenue, 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, according to prosecutors.
Steen was also 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 there 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 Steen’s arrest. Police investigators tracked child pornography to a computer at Steen’s family residence in 2022, executed a search warrant at his home, and found material related to the abuse on Steen’s laptop and an SD card.
At the sentencing, Steen’s wife, mother, brother and one of his children addressed the judge in support of a mandatory minimum sentence. “This is a very sad case,” said U.S. District Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher, “[but] this is not a single victim case.”
Steen will be incarcerated at Fort Dix, New Jersey. After his release, he will be under supervised release for the remainder 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 yet 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, the local agency that aids victims of abuse and trauma.
CHANA said in a statement that it had offered community support after learning about the allegations against Steen.
“From the moment CHANA became aware of the allegations against Zev Steen, we immediately reached out to the community to offer support services and community-wide information and education sessions,” CHANA said in a statement. “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. … CHANA stands with our community and will continue to fight for safety and healing for all.”
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.
Luke Tress wrote this article for the JTA global Jewish news source. Jmore staff contributed to this report.
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