The Meaux prosecutor’s office on Friday requested the indictments of seven members of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community managing a Talmudic school in Seine-et-Marne, in particular suspected of having subjected minor students to physical or psychological violence, a announced the prosecutor.
“At the end of police custody, seven people were referred this (Friday) morning and are currently presented before the investigating judge” now in charge of the investigation, explained to the press the prosecutor of Meaux, Laureline Peyrefitte. In addition to their indictment, their placement under judicial supervision was requested.
On Monday, 17 members of this ultra-Orthodox Jewish community were taken into custody during an operation that mobilized 130 gendarmes, mainly from the Paris research section.
Yeshiva Beth Yossef is located in Bussières, a village of 500 inhabitants 60 km east of Paris. Renowned for its strict methods, it welcomed around sixty students, aged 13 to 18, mostly Israelis but also some of American, Belgian, Romanian or Irish nationalities.
The investigation was opened for kidnapping in an organized gang, aggravated violence, deprivation of care and food, aggravated abuse of weakness.
The persons implicated – site managers, members of the teaching team, supervisors – “generally denied the facts even if some were able to describe acts like slaps and blows”, declared the prosecutor.
“The state of psychic subjection might be noted in some of them as well as psychic suffering”, described the prosecutor, according to which the students were “not declared to be in school” and “none spoke French”.
“Some were able to confirm, without always criticizing them, acts of physical and psychological violence”, she added, specifying that facts of sexual assault had been reported by one of them and were the subject of an investigation.
– Returned to their parents –
“According to their statements, they were completely isolated from the outside world except for telephone contact with their parents under authorization”. “Their passport was confiscated”, they were “very limited in their access to care” and lived “in unsanitary housing conditions and a general state of disrepair”, continued the magistrate.
Supported by social assistance for children (ASE) in Seine-et-Marne, some of the minors “without parental authority on French territory” will be picked up by their parents this weekend, the department said. . For the others, care will continue in conjunction with the Red Cross.
The establishment had been the subject of “various worrying reports, including one from Miviludes” (Interministerial Mission for Vigilance and the Fight once morest Sectarian Abuses), according to the prosecutor.
From July to December 2021, three students had escaped from the yeshiva, accelerating the investigation into this school.
Avi Ran, a former resident of the school for 12 years, described to AFP this week “brainwashing” and “punishment”: “they bring shame on one or the other publicly by saying that he + gets out of the way + and the others can no longer talk to him” and “there are physical blows”, recalled the young Israeli.
“The establishment is neither a sect nor a recovery center but a place of religious education for adolescents in difficulty”, reacted in a press release sent to AFP Mes Philippe Ohayon and Dan Mimran, advice from the director of the ‘establishment.
No cell phone, no internet, study from evening to morning and little contact with society: the yeshiva belongs to one of the most rigorous movements, called “Lithuanian”, very present in Israel and the United States , but few in France.
According to the school’s website, the Ohr Yossef institution, on which the yeshiva depends, was founded in 1948 by the Orthodox rabbi Gershon Liebman and “brings together more than a hundred students, coming from all over the world”.