( 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 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 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.