Guatemalan officials said Sunday that members of an ultra-orthodox Jewish sect broke into a shelter attempting to recapture 160 minors taken from their compound two days earlier by authorities, who accuse the sect of child sexual abuse. The farm compound in Oratoria, southwest of Guatemala City, was raided on Friday by authorities to rescue 160 minors who “were allegedly being abused by a member of the Lev Tahor sect,” said Interior Minister Francisco Jimenez.
About 100 of the children’s relatives who belong to the sect gathered on Sunday outside a care center in Guatemala City, where the children were being held, to demand their return. Sect members then “broke into” the center around 4:30 pm local time (2230 GMT Sunday), “forcing open the gate and abducting the children and adolescents sheltered there,” a statement from the Attorney General’s Office said.
Those outside the shelter tried to prevent the authorities from bringing back the minors, leading to some scuffles with police, according to a photographer at the scene. With police help, the center “managed to locate and protect everyone again,” the Attorney General’s Office said, although the Secretariat of Social Welfare of the Presidency later clarified some “evaded” authorities, and a search alert has been activated.
“We want them to let the children out of here,” Uriel Goldman, a representative of the families, said outside the center before the attempted recapture of the minors. According to the Prosecutor’s Office, Friday’s raid was carried out due to suspicion of human trafficking crimes “in the form of forced pregnancy, mistreatment of minors and rape.”
The skeleton of a minor was found during the raid, the Prosecutor’s Office alleged. But Lev Tahor has accused authorities of religious persecution. “The authorities… tell lies with false accusations,” Goldman said.
Members of the Lev Tahor sect practice an ultra-Orthodox form of Judaism under which women wear black tunics covering them from head to toe. They settled in Oratoria about a decade ago after being expelled from an Indigenous village in 2014 due to conflicts with locals.
Officials had previously tried to check the condition of the minors but were blocked from entering the farm by members of the community. Authorities estimate that the community is made up of roughly 50 families from Guatemala, the United States, Canada and other countries.
