Metro

Yeshiva University hires convicted sex molester

So much for cleaning up its reputation as a haven for sexual predators.

Yeshiva University, dogged by allegations it covered up decades of sex abuse at its boys’ high school, has put a convicted child molester on its payroll.

Kiddie predator Akiva Roth, 42, is teaching at the school’s Yeshiva College unit in Washington Heights, despite pleading guilty in 1997 to four counts of lewdness against several male students.

A judge at the time blasted Roth for being unrepentant and for blaming his schoolboy victims for “enticing him” into the abusive behavior.

Roth, the son of New York Rabbi Joel Roth, started at the college at the beginning of the academic year as a full-time instructor, teaching four classes a week, according to the Jewish Daily Forward, which first reported the twisted staffing decision. Some high school students also attend the all-male college.

The Roth gig calls into question the university’s hiring practices as it deals with a $380 million lawsuit filed by 34 former students who claim officials at Yeshiva’s prestigious boys’ high school ignored reports of sexual abuse dating back to at least the 1970s.

In August, a special report commissioned by the university found that Yeshiva brass for years turned a blind eye to “multiple incidents” of “sexual and physical abuse.”

Yeshiva said in the report that it had, “especially in the last decade, instituted many policies, procedures and practices that addressed these issues.”

In 1996, Roth was teaching at Solomon Schechter Day School in West Orange, NJ, when he was arrested for exposing and touching himself to 11- and 12-year-old boys in his private bar mitzvah classes, and encouraging the boys to do the same, according to court records.

He got 10 years probation and a sharp rebuke from New Jersey Judge Barnett Hoffman, who said Roth displayed a “lack of appreciation for the wrongfulness of his conduct.”

“The defendant is very arrogant and continues to blame the victims for the trouble he is in,” Barnett wrote in a sentencing memorandum obtained by the Forward.

Roth blamed his young charges for “enticing him into this behavior [and] has very little empathy for his victims and an unawareness of the harm done to them by his actions,” the judge noted.

“Furthermore, he does not even see his conduct as sexual in nature, which it clearly is. In short, he doesn’t get it.”

The sentencing came just four years after Roth’s rabbi father resigned as dean of the Jewish Theological Seminary after making sexually suggestive remarks to a male student in front of colleagues.

“He said inappropriate things [and] has some deep-seated problems for which he needs help,” an official said at the time. Joel Roth also was accused of sexually harassing a male student in 1984.

Akiva Roth has not been accused of any misconduct at Yeshiva.

A Yeshiva spokesman Tuesday said Roth’s hiring is under review and that the school “maintains an unwavering commitment to preventing sexual misconduct or harassment of any kind.”

Akiva Roth, who lives with his parents in New Jersey, declined to comment yesterday as his mother, Barbara, rushed to shield him.

“You can get off our property,” she snapped.

Additional reporting by Jennifer Bain