Family escapes Lev Tahor cult in Guatemala, arrives safely in Israel
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A family of 12, including two parents and 10 children, has left the extremist Haredi sect Lev Tahor in Guatemala and arrived safely in Israel, authorities said Thursday. The family is receiving support from social services and other relevant government agencies.
Efforts to dismantle the remnants of the sect are ongoing. Dozens of women and children have previously left Lev Tahor for the United States, Canada and Israel.
The family had been staying in Guatemalan welfare facilities before leaving the country with assistance from government officials. Upon arrival in Israel they were transferred to a local absorption center.
Lev Tahor returned to headlines in December 2024 when Guatemalan security forces raided one of its compounds and rescued 160 children, teenagers and women.
The group was founded in Israel in 1988 by Shlomo Helbrans and enforces a strict form of Judaism with its own interpretations of Halacha. Since its inception it has faced allegations of kidnapping, child marriage and physical abuse. On July 7, 2017, Helbrans drowned while performing a ritual immersion in a river in Chiapas, Mexico at the age of 54.
Tn 2021, former leaders Nahman Helbrans and Meyer Rosner were convicted in New York of kidnapping and sexually exploiting children. According to court records, in 2018 they abducted a 14-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy from New York and transported them to Mexico where the girl was forced into a sexual relationship with an adult man. The children’s mother, Helbrans’ sister, left the cult that year citing her brother’s extreme behavior.
Reports indicate Helbrans prohibited members from eating meat, fish and poultry. Children were separated from their parents, forced into early marriages and subjected to public corporal punishment.
Between 2014 and 2017, the sect settled in Mexico and Guatemala. In 2022, police in Chiapas, southern Mexico near the Guatemalan border, rescued a group of children and teenagers from a Lev Tahor camp, arresting some members on suspicion of involvement in child abuse.
Content retrieved from: https://www.ynetnews.com/article/ry00rrhidel.
