(Guatemala) Authorities in Guatemala are investigating possible child abuse, sexual violence and forced marriages within the Jewish sect Lev Tahor, based on a property near the country’s capital, prosecutors said Wednesday.
A judge was able to enter the property in Oratorio, 60 km southwest of Guatemala City, on Friday, but was prevented by sect members from conducting his investigation properly, Lucrecia Prera, head of child protection at the Guatemalan Attorney General’s Office, told AFP.
“We are very concerned about the situation within the community,” Mr.me Prera.
According to her, “there are complaints of (forced) marriages, pregnant girls, mistreatment within the community.”
The Lev Tahor sect – which means “Pure Heart” in Hebrew – was formed in the 1980s and practices an ultra-Orthodox form of Judaism, in which women wear black tunics that cover them from head to toe.
The group settled in Oratorio in 2016, after police and prosecutors raided several of its buildings in Guatemala, where it arrived in 2013. At the time, authorities said they were acting at the request of Israel, whose police were searching for a missing minor.
According to Mme Prera said the current investigation began following a “call for help” launched earlier this year by a foreign teenager who asked to return to his country, claiming to have been forced into marriage at the age of 13.
The prosecution estimates that about fifty families of several nationalities are part of the community, where about a hundred minors live. On Friday, the judge counted 29 children, but was prevented by the sect from questioning them or checking their health.
On the social network X, Lev Tahor accused the prosecution of “conducting a campaign of persecution against our community, motivated solely by religious intolerance and discrimination” with the participation of the State of Israel.