Friday, November 12, 2021

Leader of cult-like Jewish sect that fled Canada is convicted of nighttime kidnap of child bride

They used burner phones, an encrypted phone app, disguises, aliases, false passports, and a secret pact to execute their plan

Author of the article: Adrian Humphreys
Publishing date: Nov 12, 2021 
Mayer Rosner in 2013.
 PHOTO BY DAVE CHIDLEY FOR NATIONAL POST

Two members of an extremist sect, including the group’s spokesman when they lived in Canada, were convicted in New York of kidnapping and child sexual exploitation.

Nachman Helbrans and Mayer Rosner were found guilty of masterminding the kidnapping of a 14-year-old girl and her 12-year-old brother from their mother, who had fled the Lev Tahor compound in Guatemala, to return the girl to her adult “husband.”

Rosner, 45, was the genial but guarded spokesman for the Lev Tahor when 200 members of their sect left their homes in Quebec and settled on the outskirts of Chatham, Ont., east of Windsor.

“Everything is written upstairs,” Rosner said, pointing skyward, in an exclusive interview with National Post in 2013 , when he was asked about the group’s battles with child protection workers.

A U.S. jury found this harrowing plot was crafted closer to earth.

The Lev Tahor were founded in Israel in the 1980s by Helbrans’ father, Shlomo Helbrans, who built a cult-like sect on fringe beliefs and practices with an austere lifestyle and manner of dress, even by the usual standards of ultra-Orthodox Judaism, leading the Israeli media to call them the “Jewish Taliban.”

The Lev Tahor opposes the existence of the state of Israel, believing Jews must live in exile until the Messiah comes. Rosner said this is why his group is hounded from place to place.

They have always been trying to destroy our community

“This is something the Zionist government hates,” Rosner said in 2013. “They have always been trying to destroy our community.”

After leaving Israel, and later the United States, Shlomo settled with his acolytes in Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts, Que., 100 kilometres northwest of Montreal, in 2001, where he was granted refugee status on the grounds of persecution in Israel.

The group fled from Canada in 2014 ahead of child welfare investigations and settled in Guatemala. There, Shlomo’s 39-year-old son, Nachman Helbrans, took over as supreme leader after his father drowned in 2017.

Rosner was described by U.S. authorities as Helbrans’ “top lieutenant” and right-hand man in the Lev Tahor’s authoritarian regime.

Under the new leadership, the sect’s practices became even more extreme, authorities said, particularly with child marriages. The practice met with resistance by some.


Controversial sect dismisses child neglect allegations as ultra-orthodox Jews settle into new homes in Ontario


The two child victims of the kidnappings and their mother are relatives of Helbrans, and he arranged for the young girl to be religiously married at the age of 13 to a 19-year-old member of the sect, who was Rosner’s son.

They were not legally married, but a sexual relationship started immediately, court heard, as was the directive from Helbrans to start procreating as soon as possible.

The girl’s mother, a U.S. citizen, fled with her children in October 2018. A Brooklyn court granted her sole custody.

Shortly after, the Lev Tahor came for the children.

They were stolen in the night from the mother’s New York State home in 2019 and smuggled across the U.S. border to Mexico.

Although the group adopts a distinctly traditionalist lifestyle, the kidnapping plot was a modern enterprise.

They used burner phones, an encrypted phone app, disguises, aliases, false passports, and a secret pact to execute their plan. It fell apart after a three-week international manhunt by police, who found the children in a hotel in Mexico.

“Nachman Helbrans and Mayer Rosner brazenly kidnapped two children from their mother in the middle of the night to return a 14-year-old girl to an illegal sexual relationship with an adult man,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said after the four-week trial ended this week.

Even after the children were returned to their mother, members of the Lev Tahor tried twice more to kidnap them, authorities said

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Mayer Rosner at his home in Chatham, Ont., 
after the Lev Tahor group moved from Quebec in 2013.
PHOTO BY DAVE CHIDLEY FOR NATIONAL POST

Child kidnapping charges do not make members of the Lev Tahor pariahs in their community. Instead, it is a mark of leadership.

Shlomo Helbrans himself was convicted in New York in 1994 of kidnapping a 13-year-old boy who he was tutoring for bar mitzvah. Rosner told the Post when he was in Ontario that his rabbi was only protecting the boy, who had run away from his parents, but the court saw it differently.

It was Shlomo’s conviction that led to his deportation to Israel followed by his move to Canada.

The community drew little attention in Quebec until 2011 when authorities stopped two teenaged girls arriving from Israel to join them; their uncle in Israel obtained a court order to have the girls returned, over fears they would be forced to marry.

It raised an alarm for Canadian authorities.

Quebec’s youth protection services investigated the group and sought to remove 14 children from the community.

Child welfare workers said the children suffered from poor dental health, skin problems and poor hygiene, and no adherence to the province’s school curriculum. There were rumours of beatings and child marriages.

Before Quebec authorities could act, the families boarded three buses in the night and headed west, settling in an out-of-the-way complex of identical one-story rental cottages on the outskirts of Chatham, 80 kilometres east of Windsor.

At that time Rosner denied his community beats their children or forces marriages on young girls.

“They say we have forced marriage. We don’t. But, like many orthodox religious communities, we have organized marriages,” Rosner said. A marriage broker pitches couples to parents and if both sets of parents approve, the children meet. If either of them objects to the union the marriage is halted, he said.

“Our boys are not allowed to pick up girls on the street. We allow marriage at the age of 16. Some people object to that; everyone has their own choice.”

At the time of the Post’s visit with the Lev Tahor, Rosner had nine children of his own, five of them girls. The boys, like all boys in the Lev Tahor, were in school studying religious texts while the girls were cooking, cleaning, listening to their father or quietly playing.

Rosner and Helbrans were convicted of conspiring to transport a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, conspiring to travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct, international parental kidnapping, and other charges.

The convictions could lead to a life sentence. There is a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison.

• Email: ahumphreys@postmedia.com | Twitter: AD_Humphreys

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