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.…