Prosecutors say leaders of a Jewish fundamentalist cult have been sentenced to more than 10 years in prison for kidnapping two children, one of whom was married as a child, and smuggling them into Mexico.
The three brothers, all followers of the Reb Tahor sect, allegedly forced the girl back into the arms of her adult “husband” in a sickening sexual act.
Yakov Weingarten, 34, Smiel Weingarten, 28, and Yoir Weingarten, 36, were convicted Tuesday of abducting the children from their upstate New York home after their mother fled Reb Tahor in 2018, U.S. Attorney Damien Williams said Wednesday. Reb Tahor is a ring of cultists who practice stomach-churning practices including child marriage, sex with minors and the separation of families.
The brothers, who live in Guatemala, used a variety of disguises, false names, bagged phones, false travel documents and encrypted apps to carry out the kidnapping at 3 a.m. that December day, then smuggled the siblings across the border, federal agents said.
Local, federal and international authorities launched a massive three-week search that ultimately found and returned Yante Teller, 14, and Chaim Teller, 12, to their mother.
A federal jury in March convicted the three defendants on child sexual exploitation and kidnapping charges.
As punishment, U.S. District Judge Nelson Roman sentenced Yakov and Smiel to 14 years in prison and Yoyl to 12 years, according to federal authorities.
“The sentences imposed on the Weingarten brothers establish that they are responsible for their crimes, including abducting a child from its mother in the middle of the night with the intent to coerce the child into sexual relations with an adult,” Judge Williams said in a statement.
“This office is committed to protecting children and will use all available tools to investigate and prosecute those who sexually exploit children.”
According to federal investigators, this complicated saga began in 2017 when Lev Tahor leaders arranged a marriage between Yante, who was 12 at the time, and an 18-year-old man.
Although the two were never legally married, Reb Tahor’s leadership, including three members of the Weingarten family, solicited sexual favours from the two and lied to others about their ages and relationships.
“For example, Lev Tahor leaders instructed child brides to give birth at home rather than in a hospital in order to hide the young age of the mothers from outsiders,” the statement said.
The girl’s mother, Sarah Helbrans, fled the Guatemalan community center around October 2018 after deciding it was no longer safe for her children.
It was the only life Helbrans had known: Her father, Shlomo Helbrans, founded the group in Jerusalem in 1987.
Eventually, all six of Williams’ children joined her, Williams said, and a Brooklyn family court banned the children’s father, another cult leader, from having any contact with them.
“I am a cult and its [children’s] “I fear what my father and the other cultists might do now that we are no longer under their power and manipulation,” the frantic mother wrote in court documents.
That’s when the Weingartens hatched a plan to kidnap Haim and Yante and take them back to Guatemala, where prosecutors allege they would also take Yante’s 20-year-old “husband.”
Their plan was initially successful: They would grab the children in the middle of the night, take them from their home in Woodbridge, New York, and fly them out of an airport in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
According to officials, they then reunited the poor girl with her “husband” and allowed him to continue his illicit sexual relationship with her.
Authorities caught up with them three weeks later and released the children in Tenango del Aire, a small town near Mexico City.
Afterwards, they brought them back to New York, but that wasn’t the end of it.
Williams said the cultists tried to abduct children in 2019 and again in 2021 but were unsuccessful.
The group they belong to is “Pure JudaismIt imposes strict modesty requirements on women and girls, who must wear a burqa-like covering from head to toe.
The cult members settled in Brooklyn in 1994, but Helbrans’ father was convicted of kidnapping and conspiracy and later deported.
The group of about 40 families fled to Canada and then Guatemala, where they have been dogged by charges of child neglect and other offences.
