Haredi Lev Tahor Cult Members Who Fled To Guatemala Apprehended

Recently unsealed documents give a window into a broad-reaching investigation into the sect that spanned both provinces, beginning more than two years ago with allegations dating back to May 2012. The allegations, which sect members categorically deny and have not been proven in court, include sexual abuse, confinement, beatings with crowbars, belts, whips and a coat hanger, and more.

File photo: Unidentified Lev Tahor girls

The Toronto Star reports:

Guatemalan officials peacefully apprehended six Lev Tahor children and their parents Friday night, whisking them away to a local courthouse after the family attempted to find refuge at a hotel tucked into the bucolic mountainside of the tourist town of Panajachel.

Late Friday night, a Guatemalan judge ruled that the children can stay with their parents until another hearing Monday in a court in Solola, a nearby town, according to a senior government official who was in the court. An official from the Central American country’s attorney general’s office said it is up to Canada to file the appropriate paperwork for their return, but Canadian officials did not respond to the Star’s request for information about the case on Friday.

Four police officers and an unknown number of detectives arrived at the hotel on the outskirts of town around 11:30 a.m. local time Friday. One of the detectives left with a stack of passports and then came back. It is unclear where the passports were taken. After the judgment Friday night, the official said the family can retain their passports.

“Everywhere they persecute us and we have never done anything bad for anybody. Never have we done anything bad for the children,” Yoil Weingarten, a member of the controversial ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect who travelled with the family from Canada, said Friday.

[Yoil Weingarten is a son of convicted child rapist Rabbi Israel Weingarten, a man who repeatedly raped his own daughter of the course of many years. Despite the evidence against his father, Yoil Weingarten supported him and attacked his sister who raped. – FailedMessiah.com]

He expressed sadness at the fact that police apprehended the family on Friday evening, the beginning of Sabbath, a sacred day in the Jewish faith. The police officers “didn’t even know,” Weingarten said.

The father of the children, who cannot be identified owing to a publication ban, also spoke to the Toronto Star Friday.

“I’m asking please that you close the case,” he said.

Two of his other children, teenage girls, were apprehended by Canadian authorities last week with another Lev Tahor group that flew into Trinidad and Tobago.

Hours before the children in Guatemala were apprehended Friday, they played in a courtyard in the hotel, enjoying the spring weather. As is customary, the children were dressed in traditional Lev Tahor attire: the boys in black pants and pressed button-up shirts, the girls shrouded in black from head to toe. The mother, who also cannot be identified, was seen.

Mayer Rosner, one of the directors of the Lev Tahor Jewish Community, says he has been in frequent contact with the members since they fled to Guatemala and was speaking to them earlier Friday while police were present.

Rosner described them as “calm” when police arrived, saying they were not surprised when the authorities showed up at their hotel.

He added the group had not been trying to avoid police since landing in the country.

“They have nothing to hide,” he said.

The father and Weingarten said the children were happy and well-fed. A nearby market provides raw fruit and vegetables appropriate for their kosher diet.

The group says they are being persecuted by the Canadian government following a long court saga over the removal of 14 children from three families in the sect culminated in an emergency order to apprehend the children.

The sect says they are being persecuted by the state of Israel over their anti-Zionist beliefs.

“(The father of the children) has never done any crime,” said Weingarten. “Never beat his child. Never any of these allegations.”

A source in Guatemala’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the group had applied for refugee status. Officials at the Ministry of Immigration said they had no record of the application, but if there is one it would be confidential.

Weingarten refused to talk about any matters related to the group’s immigration status in Guatemala. He did not confirm or deny the refugee application.

He said Quebec child protection authorities did not make allegations directly against the children’s father — “they didn’t blame him nothing what he has done.”

“They just make allegations against the community. This is real persecution,” he said.…

Recently unsealed documents give a window into a broad-reaching investigation into the sect that spanned both provinces, beginning more than two years ago with allegations dating back to May 2012. The allegations, which sect members categorically deny and have not been proven in court, include sexual abuse, confinement, beatings with crowbars, belts, whips and a coat hanger, and more.

In one case, it is alleged that a 17-year-old pregnant girl had been sexually abused by her father, beaten by her brother and married off at age 15. The documents also alleged disobedient girls as young as 13 and 14 were confined in basements of the homes. Further allegations include the use of forced medication.…

Comments

[RWisler]

Canada is well known for oppressing ultra-Orthodox Jews. The Canadian Mounties are well known to wield heavy iron truncheons that they use to bash in the doors of the homes of hareidim in order to attack them because of the anti-Zionist views. Large concentration camps in the Canadian Arctic are well-known to house ultra-Orthodox Jews where they are worked to death building igloos. They are starved in these Arctic hell-holes where they barely survive by clubbing penguins.

[Alter Kocker]

Yes we have a national holiday out west called Stampede where we chase Hareidi toddlers, rope them, tie them and drink their blood. Delicious. Good accompaniment to a Back Bacon on a Bun sandwich.

[laylahb]

RWisler seems to need some of those anti-psychotics that these nut-cases are feeding their wives and children. He seems to be suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, with delusions of Mounties bludgeoning Jews and forced labour building igloos somewhere in a concentration camp in the Arctic. He's either paranoid, or he has a strange sense of black humour, satire, irony. He also may be confusing Canada with North Korea.

[jancsibacsi]

laylahb--Boy youre dummer then a dor knob.

[anuran]

In fact, here's a traditional Canadian festival, the Running of the Jew

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6Q2MBhHHxw

[Robert J. Barron, Attorney-at-Law]

@RWisler ------> HILARIOUS! However, factually, you are a bit off....there are no penguins in the Canadian Arctic. However, there are quite a few seals- which are both a main food source for both the Polar Bears, and the Inuit (they used to be called Eskimaux, but that is no longer politically correct) who live there.

Since I collect frequent flyer miles and hotel points, I visit Canada at least once every year.

[Jeff]

“Everywhere they persecute us and we have never done anything bad for anybody. Never have we done anything bad for the children”

Well, that's enough for anchell. I'm sure he's on his way to Guatemala right now to act as defense council for these poor, persecuted victims.

[RWisler]

Robert... Yes, I know that penguins are indigenous to the Antarctic, not the Arctic. I was trying to be "purposely ignorant" as a "comedic device" by placing a cold weather animal in the wrong polar region, just like a hareidi.

laylahb -- you MUST have realized that my idiotic initial comment was a sarcastic joke!

[Robert J. Barron, Attorney-at-Law]

@RWisler -----> Gotcha....and yes, it would not surprise me if the typical haredi believed that Penguins do in fact live in the Arctic.

That is, if they even allow their children to read animal books FEATURING Penguins...since Penguins, and for that matter, Seals, are not kosher animals.

I wonder if ANY of the animals indigenous to the Canadian Arctic ARE kosher? Let's see....there are (obviously) Polar Bears up there....the Narwhal whale..the Beluga Whale..the Muskox....Caribou...seals, of course...and of course, the Walrus....

....anyone want to chime in on this? I'm sure we have SOME kosher scholars in attendance!

[anchell]

“Everywhere they persecute us and we have never done anything bad for anybody. Never have we done anything bad for the children”

Well, that's enough for anchell. I'm sure he's on his way to Guatemala right now to act as defense council for these poor, persecuted victims.

Posted by: Jeff | March 16, 2014 at 05:45 AM

. . . Jeff . . . what is this, evidence of more random thinking? there is nothing random here everything is mechanistic. That is why it may be possible to map it all throught the use of mathematics by science.

Now onto your attempt to bait me. From the same article published in Saturdays Toronto Star, it states that the community has "been butting heads with Quebec's child protection authority over a secular curriculum the religious group was being ordered to teach the children, who are home-schooled." it also added that the Lev Tahors believed that in Ontario they would have more "freedom for faith-based schooling."

When i first read the allegations I was aghast froze at the idea that some one would use a "crow bar" to descipline their children. Now corporal punishment is frowned upon here in Canada so whether using a belt or any other instrument to lash a child, it will not be seen as kosher by our government.

Here we parents routinely ground their children as a means of descipline. Grounding in many ways equates to some form of confinement. Normally, it is to their room but making it the basement does not make it any more abusive or cruel.

It also got me to wonder about two things. Firstly, how are the authrities able to gather this kind of information from a community that it claims is practically hermitically sealed off from any outside contact. Secondly, What language does the children speak? Is it Hebrew or Yiddish. Have they garnered this kind of information from eyes witnesses or personal observation. The truth is in the details. I understand yiddish is a very difficult language to command and consequently interpret. I've been told they speak Yiddish.
So, as of this moment I do not know whether these families are truly "abusive" to their children or whether The Quebec authorities have an axe to grind, as the saying goes. If the courts function as it should then the just result is expected. However is the court's bais is with what it considers to be the propper authorities then there will not be justice in this case.

[Shmarya Rosenberg]

anchell –

I realize that this is all very hard for you, because it demands that you honestly think and evaluate evidence – two things that are evidently very difficult for you. But do try to process:

It is not one Quebec court, genius. It was a year-long investigation by youth services, a Quebec court and an Ontario court – along with (previously) a US court and an Israeli court.

Your inability to even admit the basic facts of the case is just another proof that you are sick, dishonest and very stupid man.

[anchell]

Shmarya . . . *smiles* . . . you are definately a character. But before i respond to the meat of your post let me ask you this. Can a sick man rationally be blamed for being dishonest or stupid. . . ok, so it's not really the kind of question that really needs an definitive answer. One other question. Does the Torah have any application as to the right or wrong of heaping such venom on a group of families that really has an extremely uphill climb.

Now for you assertion. Listen when our countries respective countries goes to war we only hope they do so for on a pro humanistic front. That for example they wont destroy millions and millions of people and their offsprings so that they can control their oil, let say. This to the concionable is counter productive.

So what does that have to do with three or four sets of governments chiming in on a case, which at every stage, has becomes more and more laden down with bureaucratic garb. How do you even "ever" assume to know what is trully going on here. Call in the ambusdman and let her give us the facts, then and only then will i be convinced as to the legitimacy of this whole kick the pinyada game that they seem to be playing.

And another thing, i hope you have taken the advice of some here and are in good and propper health. Taking care of yourself, and not everly saturating yourself with what you do. . . no shame in wishing you the best. idiot!

[Shmarya Rosenberg]

Three separate countries, several separate groups of experts, all find Lev Tahor to be abusing children.

Firsthand accounts by people who have left the cult confirm those findings, as well.

But anchell the fool wants to disregard all of that because he believes in some fanciful conspiracy theory.

You are sick. But worse than that, you don't give hoot about those kids.

Rot in hell.

[anchell]

Shmarya . . . listen what i'm holding to is a propper and democratic application of the judicial process. Irregardless of what Israel or the USA have said (Though this would never happen, that much i know).

But why would i ask for less. As far as i know the Lev Tahor's greatest failing is their unwillingness to be compliant with the education curriculum mandated here.

And don't try so hard by suggesting that you believe i don't truly care for these children. Children are not to be used as pawns by conscionable people. And so that assertion cannot be true no matter how you spin it.
What are the applicable Torah passages to resolve this situation.