CANADA
Montreal Gazette
BY JASON MAGDER, THE GAZETTE SEPTEMBER 10, 2014
MONTREAL — Sûreté du Québec investigators got help from Interpol and authorities in Israel to establish a criminal case against the ultra-Orthodox sect Lev Tahor.
These are among several new revelations from search warrants unsealed by a judge on Wednesday. The warrants were issued by a Quebec judge to SQ investigators to search the homes of Lev Tahor members in Chatham-Kent, Ont., last Jan. 28.
The warrants allege members of the community falsified government documents, and engaged in human trafficking.
The community of about 250 lived in Ste-Agathe-des-Monts for about a decade before youth protection authorities were alerted to allegations of widespread abuse and neglect. The Department of Youth Protection in the Laurentians ordered the parents of 14 children to appear in court last November, but the community fled en masse to Chatham-Kent, Ont. Last March, the community relocated again to Guatemala, though two of its members remain in foster families in Toronto.
The case against Lev Tahor began in April of 2012, after the SQ received a letter from the lawyer of Nathan Helbrans, the adult son of the group’s leader, Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans. Nathan had left the sect earlier that year, telling Israeli media his resistance to orders brought him in conflict with the community’s leaders. Several members twisted his legs until they broke, he said.
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