Canadian police reportedly raided the haredi Lev Tahor cult’s compound in Chatham-Kent, Ontario, executing two search warrants for two separate dwellings.
Lev Tahor cult women
Cops Raid Haredi Lev Tahor Cult
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
Shortly after 5 pm Wednesday, eight Quebec police officers and local police in rural Ontario reportedly raided the haredi Lev Tahor cult’s compound in Chatham-Kent, Canada, executing two search warrants for two separate dwellings.
Sources told the Stratford Beacon-Herald the warrants were part of a criminal investigation into immigration issues.
Police ordered the two families to leave their homes as the search was carried out.
Officers were seen carrying out a box with items from one of the homes, the CBC reported.
“We are crying SOS,” Lev Tahor’s director, Mayer Rosner, who noted police took many photos during the raid, reportedly said.
“It’s harassment,” Uriel Goldman, a Lev Tahor activist, added. “It’s terrorizing our life.”
The vehemently anti-Zionist Lev Tahor cult fled Quebec in November when it became clear child welfare authorities there were about to seize at least 14 of the cult’s children due to various forms of neglect, physical and emotional abuse.
It settled in Chatham-Kent in rural Ontario – the heart of Canada’s bible belt.
No children were removed Wednesday, and no criminal charges have been filed so far.
On Monday, Lev Tahor is due in court for a ruling on whether Chatham-Kent’s child-welfare agency can enforce a Quebec order to remove 14 of the cult’s children from their homes and put them in foster care.
Lev Tahor’s Rosner blamed the raid and the ongoing court case on a Zionist conspiracy.
Founded and led by convicted felon Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans, Lev Tahor has only several hundred members, most of whom are children.
It allegedly practices deprivation, shunning, banning and corporal punishment, sometimes removing children from a family’s home and forcing them to live with other cult member families as a punishment for misbehavior by the child or by their parents. Couple are sometimes forcibly separated by Helbrans. Beatings of children are reportedly common and, before child welfare authorities and police were closely watching the group, children reportedly frequently appeared to be unkept and underfed.