FBI charges Lev Tahor leaders with child exploitation
By Molly Boigon April 19, 2021
New York’s FBI and U.S. Attorney’s offices have charged five leaders of Lev Tahor, a Jewish cult, with child exploitation after the men kidnapped a 14-year-old girl in 2018, the Department of Justice said in a press release Monday.
Nachman Helbrans, Mayer Rosner, Yakov Weingarten, Shmiel Weingarten and Yoil Weingarten brought the girl from New York to Mexico with the intention of returning her to Guatemala, where Lev Tahor is now based, after the girl and her mother escaped the cult in 2018. According to the release, they were planning to reunite her with her “husband” from a religious marriage, who was 20.
“The defendants engaged in a brazen kidnapping of a minor girl in the middle of the night, taking her across the border to Mexico in order to reunite her with her adult ‘husband’ to continue their sexual relationship,” said the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Audrey Strauss, in a statement. “These charges send a clear message that the sexual exploitation of children will not be tolerated.”
Helbrans, the leader of the cult, arranged a religious marriage for the girl, his niece, in 2017 when she was only 12 years old. Her match was at that point an 18-year-old man, Jacob Rosner. Rosner is also being charged with conspiring to kidnap the girl.
The justice department said in its release that local, federal and international law enforcement officials found the girl after a three-week search, and that the men tried to kidnap her and her brother again in March of 2019 and once again last month.
Lev Tahor is an extremist sect previously based in New York and Canada. The group is characterized by strict control, physical beatings and child marriage. Lev Tahor leadership asks, according to the press release, that child brides have babies inside of their homes to conceal their ages from hospital workers and the public. Lev Tahor has been seeking to move to Iran to escape increasing scrutiny from Guatemalan authorities.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Dive In
-
Fast Forward Trump administration can deport Mahmoud Khalil for undermining U.S. foreign policy on antisemitism, judge rules
-
Fast Forward Is the Passover Seder Zionist?
-
Fast Forward David Sassoon, the Jewish royal designer who dressed Princess Diana, dies at 92
-
Fast Forward For a second straight Passover, Jews mark Festival of Freedom while hostages remain in Gaza
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion My Jewish moms group ousted me because I work for J Street. Is this what communal life has come to?
- 2
Opinion Stephen Miller’s cavalier cruelty misses the whole point of Passover
- 3
Opinion I co-wrote Biden’s antisemitism strategy. Trump is making the threat worse
- 4
Opinion Passover teaches us why Jews should stand with Mahmoud Khalil
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture Jews thought Trump wanted to fight antisemitism. Why did he cut all of their grants?
-
Opinion Trump’s followers see a savior, but Jewish historians know a false messiah when they see one
-
Fast Forward Trump administration can deport Mahmoud Khalil for undermining U.S. foreign policy on antisemitism, judge rules
-
Opinion This Passover, let’s retire the word ‘Zionist’ once and for all
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.