The one-time director of Leo Baeck Day School in Toronto pleaded guilty to a child pornography charge in California, received a 100-day jail term and has returned to his native England.
David Prashker pleaded guilty in April to the felony charge of possessing child pornography. He served 100 days in county jail (before and after sentencing) and was released, Jordan Sanders, the Contra Costa County deputy district attorney assigned to the case, told The CJN in an email.
Prashker admitted in a plea agreement that he knowingly possessed “electronic matter depicting a child under 18 years of age engaged in sexual activity,” prosecutors said in a statement.
Prashker, 60, is required to stay on probation for three years and register under California law as a sex offender.
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Upon his release, he returned to the United Kingdom, Sanders said.
When he was arrested at his home in Lafayette, Calif., on Feb. 18, Prashker allegedly threw a laptop from a second-floor bedroom into his backyard while a search warrant was being served. Investigators found evidence of child porn on the computer’s hard drive.
Prashker was also charged with attempting to destroy evidence, but that charge was dropped in the plea deal.
He served as director of Leo Baeck Day School from 2004 to 2008, when he resigned over violent and sexually explicit poetry he wrote and posted online.
Parents of Leo Baeck students had complained that the poetry was inappropriate and that posting it online reflected poor judgment. Parents were alerted to the poems via an anonymous email.
The London-born Prashker was a substitute teacher at two private schools in Contra Costa County outside San Francisco, but there was no evidence found that his activities involved students at the schools.
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According to his website, Prashker is the author of 30 books, “including contemporary and historical novels, short stories, poetry, songs, plays and scholarly works, as well as being a painter, musician, singer-songwriter, the owner of the Argaman Press (his own publishing imprint), the author of TheBibleNet and the founder and CEO of the Campaign for a Charter of Human Responsibilities.”
As a teacher and school administrator, he “has covered every age from nursery to adults, including day and boarding schools, religious schools, kibbutz schools, summer camps, and regular Shabbat morning Torah shi’urim for adults.”
