Englewood Man Agrees to Ban From Synagogues After Abuse Conviction, Report Says

An Englewood man who lost his teaching job at Yeshiva College last week after news of his abuse conviction surfaced has been “voluntarily barred” from local synagogues, the Jewish Standard reported Friday.

Ex-Hebrew teacher Akiva Roth agreed to a request that he not show up at several Englewood Orthodox synagogues, the newspaper reported.  

Roth, 42, pleaded guilty in 1997 to four counts of lewdness following accusations that he allegedly sexually abused boys while working as a private bar mitzvah tutor in New Jersey, according to a Jewish Forward article and state court records. He was sentenced to 10 years probation.

“The defendant is very arrogant and continues to blame the victims for the trouble he is in,” Judge Barnett Hoffman wrote of Roth, according to the New York Post. “Furthermore, he does not even see his conduct as sexual in nature, which it clearly is. In short, he doesn’t get it.”

In a statement to the New York Times, Yeshiva said it “erred” in the Roth case but found no evidence he “engaged in any inappropriate conduct during his time at YU.”