Police Search Towson U Professor's Office After Voyeurism Charge

TOWSON, Md. (WJZ) --  Did a prominent rabbi secretly record some of the students he taught at Towson University? It's a key question police want to answer.

Mike Hellgren spoke to one of the students in the rabbi's class---and has disturbing information from the search warrants.

Police found a backpack with several hidden cameras at the rabbi's office at Towson University. The school, though, says it has no reason to believe the rabbi recorded any of its students---but the investigation is continuing.

According to search warrants WJZ obtained, police found a list of names as well as a backpack of hidden cameras and a picture of a nude woman, all inside the Towson University office of Rabbi Barry Freundel.

The cameras were hidden in household objects like a tissue box, a rotating fan and a clock radio.

Freundel, who taught at Towson, was suspended earlier this month after police in Washington DC accused him of recording nude women inside a ritual bath called a mikvah at his synagogue there.

Jonathan Munshaw, one of the rabbi's students and editor of the campus newspaper, says the rabbi offered several of his classmates trips to the bath.

"There was a group of four women who were invited. Three of them were able to attend and that was actually the Sunday before he was arrested," Munshaw said. "My understanding was he planned to invite all of us in the class at different times throughout the semester."

In police documents, several students in past classes told authorities they participated in the bathing ritual and a woman who helped the rabbi at the mikvah in DC told the Washington Post she fears they were recorded.

The rabbi has pleaded not guilty and has another court appearance scheduled in November.

Police have not said whether any Towson students were recorded. They're still going through picture and video storage devices they found.

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