2 Lev Tahor leaders sentenced to 12 years for child sexual exploitation, kidnapping
Two senior leaders of an ultra-Orthodox sect formerly based in Quebec have been sentenced to 12 years in prison for orchestrating the 2018 kidnapping of a 14-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy in New York state, the U.S. Department of Justice announced in a statement Thursday.
Nachman Helbrans, 40 and Mayer Rosner, 45, known leaders of Lev Tahor, were convicted in November 2021 of child sexual exploitation offences and kidnapping, in a U.S. District Court in White Plains, N.Y.
They were found to have smuggled the children over the border to Mexico, in order to return the girl to a 20-year-old man considered within the sect to be her husband, for the purposes of facilitating the sexual exploitation of the girl, according to the statement.
"Today's sentencings send a clear message: those who kidnap and sexually exploit children will be prosecuted and punished to the full extent of the law," said Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, in the statement.
According to the Justice Department, the two children were kidnapped in December 2018 from their mother's home in Woodridge, N.Y. The mother had fled the Lev Tahor community, then based in Guatemala, in October, before being granted full custody of her six children in November.
The children were recovered from Mexico and returned to their mother following a three-week search by law enforcement.
"No mother should ever have to wake up to find her children missing. And no child should ever be forced into a sexual relationship," Williams said.
In addition to their prison terms, Helbrans and Rosner were also sentenced to five years of supervised release.
Lev Tahor was previously based in Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts, Que., before moving suddenly to Chatham-Kent, Ont., in 2013 while under investigation by Quebec youth protection officials. The Sûreté du Québec had also been investigating the group since 2012.
The following year most of the members moved from Canada to Guatemala amid allegations of child abuse, but they were expelled from a Guatemalan village in August 2014.
