Brooklyn Man Tied to 'Cult' Charged in Children's Kidnapping

Two days later, they were with members of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect in Mexico, according to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in White Plains, New York.

A Brooklyn man, Aron Rosner, was arrested Sunday and charged with kidnapping in connection with the children’s disappearance. The complaint accuses him of conspiring with members of religious group Lev Tahor to kidnap the siblings and take them south of the border.

Rosner, 45, is the brother of one of the group’s leaders, who was also involved in the kidnapping plan, according to the complaint.

The men were part of a group of at least six co-conspirators who worked to bring the children to Lev Tahor’s community in Guatemala, the complaint said.

Lev Tahor, which translates to “pure heart” in Hebrew, is an offshoot of an anti-Zionist Hasidic sect. Members of the group practice a strict form of Orthodox Judaism.

The group started in Jerusalem in the 1980s. The rabbi who formed the sect, Shlomo Helbrans, relocated them to a Brooklyn yeshiva in 1990.

Over the years, children in Lev Tahor have often been subjected to “physical, sexual and emotional abuse,” according to the complaint. Helbrans was arrested in New York in 1993 on charges that he kidnapped a teenager who was then studying with the rabbi in preparation for his bar mitzvah.

Helbrans was found guilty of kidnapping and served two years in prison. He was released on parole in 1996 and was deported to Israel in 2000. The rabbi and his followers then established a Lev Tahor community in Quebec in the early 2000s. After legal troubles there involving allegations of child abuse and child marriages, members of the group left and eventually resettled in Guatemala.

Before the kidnapping, the children and their mother were part of the religious community in Guatemala, according to the complaint, when the mother, who is also Helbrans’ daughter, decided to leave the group and move to Woodridge, New York, in October.

It remained unclear Thursday how the children were found in Mexico and whether they had been returned to their mother in New York.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.