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By REUTERS May 23, 2014
Four Orthodox Jewish rabbis and one of their sons were indicted on Thursday on charges of kidnapping Jewish men and violently forcing them to grant divorces to their unhappy wives, New Jersey authorities said on Thursday.
Between 2009 and 2013, the rabbis – Mendel Epstein, Martin Wolmark, Binyamin Stimler and Jay Goldstein, who also went by “Yaakov” – kidnapped or tried to kidnap men and torture them with beatings and stun guns until they agreed to divorce their wives, according to the indictment filed in New Jersey federal court by U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman.
Orthodox Jewish women cannot get a divorce unless their husbands consent through a document known as a “get.” Experts say such kidnapping schemes are responses to so-called “get abuse,” in which husbands demand a larger share of the couple’s communal property before granting the divorce.
The rabbis face up to life in prison and a $250,000 fine for each kidnapping count if found guilty, Fishman said in a statement.
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