A former assistant principal at a Jewish day school jailed for tricking his students into sending him nude photos made a bizarre plea to a federal judge, claiming he’s “asexual” and only wanted the photos for “research” purposes.
Jonathan Skolnick, 40, was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison Oct. 6 after he pleaded guilty to child enticement and child pornography charges and gave an unusual explanation for his actions in a letter to the judge he penned from the Metropolitan Correctional Center.
In the 10-page letter dated Sept. 30, Skolnick insisted that he is asexual, not a pedophile, and wanted to learn more about puberty and sexual development.
“It’s not just minors that I have no sexual desire for,” Skolnick wrote. “I don’t wish to have sex with anyone at all.”
Skolnick went on to whine about his struggles with puberty and lack of a sexual identity in his letter to the judge.
He said he struggled to do research online and in the library so he decided to make a fake Facebook account and email address to ask teenage boys about puberty — which he now recognizes as an “enormous moral lapse.”
“Looking back now, I’m so furious with myself for how disgusting and how stupid I was,” Skolnick wrote. “In retrospect after therapy it seems so clear, so obvious.”
Prosecutors said Skolnick posed as a teenage girl to contact children, some of whom were his own students, while he worked as a teacher at Yeshivah of Flatbush High School from August 2012 until July 2018.
He then got a job as an associate principal at Salanter Akiba Riverdale Academy until his arrest in September 2019. The school fired Skolnick immediately after his arrest and sent an email to faculty and school staff urging potential victims to come forward.
Prosecutors later said that Skolnick used more than 20 fake social media accounts and email addresses to solicit explicit photos and videos from almost 100 children.
In some cases, when the child victims stopped responding to Skolnick’s fake profiles – which included the names “Molly Dejmal” “Tina Warner,” and “Anna Freed” – he threatened to release their photos, according to court documents.
“Since I have been in jail, I can count on one hand the number of times my conscience has allowed me to sleep through the night,” Skolnick wrote.
“For approximately seven years, Jonathan Skolnick abused his position of trust as an associate principal and teacher in New York City schools by posing as a teenage girl online and successfully enticing minor victims, including his own students, to send him child pornography,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said. “This lengthy prison sentence holds Skolnick accountable for his horrific crimes and the extraordinary harm and trauma he caused to many minor victims and their families.”