Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

He Set Up Hooker Sex Tape To Keep Abuse Victim Quiet: Police

NEW YORK (JTA) — Three people were indicted for participating in a scheme to pressure an alleged sexual abuse victim not to testify against her  abuser, an Orthodox Brooklyn man.

The alleged abuser, Samuel Israel, was arraigned Tuesday along with Tanya Freudenthaler and Vincent Paro, a private detective, acting Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said Tuesday in a statement. The charges included witness tampering, promoting prostitution, and unlawful surveillance.

In March 2016, Israel, who lives in Borough Park, was arrested and indicted for sexually abusing the woman when she was 12 years old.

According to the Gonzalez statement, Israel allegedly paid Parco in July 2016 to film compromising videos of a relative of the woman to intimidate her not to cooperate with the investigation.

Parco allegedly enlisted Freudenthaler to lure the relative to a hotel in December, where she had set up equipment to record the relative having sex with a prostitute whom she had hired.

The video equipment did not work properly, so Freudenthaler hired an additional prostitute and recorded the relative having sex with the two women, according to the indictment.

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.

In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.

At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.

Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.

Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly. 

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.