text:
Case of Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans
Monsey, NY
Brooklyn, NY
Brooklyn, NY
Rabbi Shlomo Helbran and his wife Malka and Mordechai Weisz,were originally accused of physical abuse and kidnapping of a 13-year-old boy. The rabbi was also accused of having cult like practices. Rabbi Helbran was convicted in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn in 1994 of
kidnapping a young boy.
At the time Helbran headed a small group described as an offshoot of the Satmar movement of the Hasidic Jews.
At the time Helbran headed a small group described as an offshoot of the Satmar movement of the Hasidic Jews.
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Table of
Man Is Charged in Disappearance of Child (04/10/1992)
Kidnapped or Converted? (08/02/1992)
Update; U.S. Still Searching For Missing Boy (12/12/1992)
Rabbi and Wife Arrested in Disappearance of Boy (02/13/1993)
Religion and Law Clash, And a Boy Is Still Missing (02/14/1993)
Bail Posted For Rabbi In Kidnapping (02/15/1993)
Rabbi Is Said to Have Offered Deal for Missing Boy (02/16/1993)
Rabbi Pleads Not Guilty in Kidnapping (02/17/1993)
- Perjury Conviction In Abduction Case (02/04/1994)
- Boy, 15, in Religious Tug-of-War Meets With Parents After 2 Years (03/01/1994)
- Father Requests Return to Israel For Boy in Religious Tug-of-War (03/04/1994)
- Rabbi Agrees to Guilty Plea in Boy's Kidnapping (03/08/1994)
- Corrections (03/12/1994)
- Custody Settled in Case of Boy Who Disappeared (03/18/1994)
- Jewish Youth And Parents To Split Again (03/25/1994)
- Judge Orders Abduction Trial In Dispute Over Jewish Youth (04/14/1994)
- Jewish Teen-Ager Fights Return to His Parents (04/21/1994)
- Withdraws Plea (07/12/1994)
- Custody-Rift Youth Is Reported Missing (09/18/1994)
- Trial Is Set for 3 on Charges of Kidnapping Hasidic Youth (10/12/1994)
- Mother Tells Of Pressures On Jewish Son By a Rabbi (10/12/1994)
- Tactics in the Battle Over Hasidic Boy Push the Case Toward Melodrama (10/17/1994)
- Metro Digest (10/251994)
- Boy's Father Testifies in Kidnap Trial of Rabbi (10/25/1994)
- Transcript at Rabbi's Trial Is Interpreted in Two Ways (10/26/1994)
- Orthodox Rabbi Found Guilty Of Kidnapping a Jewish Youth (11/10/1994)
- Rabbi Given Prison Term In Kidnapping Of Teen-Ager (11/23/1994)
- Metro Digest - Gets Prison Term (11/23/1994)
- Man Pleads Guilty in Plot to Kidnap Jewish Youth (12/11/1994)
- Judge Upsets Conviction of Rabbi's Wife (12/16/1994)
- Computer Replaces Razor For Rabbi's Prison Picture (12/29/1994)
- U.S. Asks Whether Leniency for Rabbi Had Link to a Pataki Backer (04/26/1998)
- Widening Inquiry On Pataki Donors And Parole Board (08/19/1999)
Rabbi Is Deported 5 Years After Conviction, Lawyer Says (05/12/2000)
- Former Parole Official Is Indicted in Influence-Peddling Inquiry (06/13/2000)
- Overcoming Tug of War Of His Family and Rabbi (04/01/2001)
- The Brooklyn D.A.'s Office Is Having a Terrible Day (06/05/2012)
Man Is Charged in Disappearance of
New York Times - April 10, 1992
The police arrested the operator of a Brooklyn yeshiva and charged him with
kidnapping a 13-year-old former student whose whereabouts were still unknown
as of this morning.
Sgt. Tina S. Mohrmann, a Police Department spokeswoman, said the man, Rabbi
Schlomo Helbrans, 35, of 2245 Beach 45th Street in Coney Island, took the
youth away because he disapproved of the way the child's parent were raising
The parents of the missing youth, identified as (Name Removed), had withdrawn
their son from the yeshiva that Mr. Helbrans operates at 691 Dahill Road
in Borough Park. The youth had been living in Manhattan with his father and
mother before he disappeared.
Sergeant Mohrmann said the boy's parents, who were disturbed at the rabbi's
influence over their child, had enrolled him in a yeshiva in Williamsburg
after removing him from the Borough Park yeshiva in March.
The police believe that Mr. Helbrans had managed to trace the youth's whereabouts
and continued to instruct him daily. Sgt. Mohrmann said that on April 5,
his parents notified the police that the boy had not returned home.
Kidnapped or Converted?
By MARY B. W. TABOR
New York Times -August 2, 1992
Hiding behind Dumpsters and parked cars, Jacky (Name Removed) has spent long
nights waiting outside the tan-brick yeshiva in Brooklyn, hoping to catch
a glimpse of his son, (Boy's Name Removed).
Nearly four months ago, the 13-year-old boy disappeared amid a clash of religious
and secular Jewish worlds -- a bitter dispute between his mother and stepfather
and the Hasidic rabbi who runs the yeshiva in Borough Park.
The rabbi, Schlomo Helbrans, who was teaching the boy in preparation for
his bar mitzvah, accused Mr. (Last Name Removed) a and his wife, (Wife Name
Removed), both non-religious Jews, of abusing the boy. The (Name Removed),
who have three younger children, countered that the rabbi had become obsessed
with converting their son to his ultra-orthodox ways. Two Letters Since
Since (Boy's Name Removed) vanished on April 4, there have been two letters,
apparently in his handwriting, and a host of theories, suspicions and contentions
about what has happened to him.
At the Brooklyn District Attorney's office -- which brought kidnapping charges
against the rabbi last spring, then dropped them, citing insufficient evidence
-- officials speculate that (Boy's Name Removed) may have run away to live
a more religious life than his parents would have wanted.
Federal prosecutors, though, have now taken up the case, saying they have
reason to believe the boy may have been kidnapped. The (Name Removed)s believe
the rabbi is responsible for taking the child, a charge that the rabbi denies.
The police in Israel have begun investigating as well, saying the case of
(Boy's Name Removed) is just one of a series of reported abductions linked
to the rabbi and his yeshiva, Lev Tahor (pure heart), which the rabbi describes
as loosely affiliated with the anti-Zionist Satmar Hasidim. Until recently,
the yeshiva was based in Jerusalem.
And as the days wend on, the rabbi and the (Name Removed)s, also recent Israeli
emigres, have traded accusations not only of kidnapping, but also of bribery,
extortion and attempted murder.
Both the rabbi and the (Last Name Removed) acknowledge that (Boy's Name Removed)
first came to Lev Tahor to prepare for his bar mitzvah and quickly became
deeply religious and wanted to stay at the yeshiva. Unwelcome Spotlight on
But from there, they present startlingly different versions of a story that
has thrown an unwelcome spotlight on the insular Satmar community, which
is concentrated in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn.
"He has his own movement," Rabbi David Niederman, a Satmar spokesman, said
of Rabbi Helbrans. "He has his own constituency. But we don't know too much
about it."
Rabbi Niederman and others describe Rabbi Helbrans and his yeshiva as a small,
obscure group that arrived just before the Persian Gulf war, in part for
fear of another Holocaust, in part because of continued pressure by the Israeli
Government over its extreme anti-Zionist views.
Rabbi Helbrans, who appeared before a Federal grand jury June 11, said in
an interview last week that he knew nothing of (Boy's Name Removed)'s whereabouts
and disclaimed any connection with his disappearance. Any suggestion to the
contrary, he said, "is Walt Disney information, it's Mickey Mouse information."
And he said that while helping non-religious Jews become religious was one
of the most important acts for a Hasidic rabbi, he could not break civil
law to do it.
The (Name Removed)s say the rabbi took an immediate interest in (Boy's Name
Removed) when they met in February at the yeshiva.
"The rabbi said, 'I see light on your face; I want to know what big things
you are going to do,' " said (Name Removed), 31. The next day she said she
received the first of dozens of calls from the rabbi and his associates,
who pressed her to leave (Boy's Name Removed) at the yeshiva and move to
Brooklyn from New Milford, N.J.
She says she considered the request at first, but then declined. Still, what
began as a one-week stay at the yeshiva for (Boy's Name Removed) soon turned
into three weeks as Rabbi Helbrans and the (Name Removed)s began arguing
over whether the boy should return to his family. Police Help the Mother
On March 1 things came to a head. Mrs. (Name Removed) arrived to pick up
her son but Rabbi Helbrans and his wife Malka refused to give him up. Mrs.
(Name Removed) called the police, who helped her remove the child from the
In the days that followed, (Boy's Name Removed) tried to run away from New
Milford, apparently to go back to the yeshiva. But the police found him in
New Jersey and took him home. "I believe the rabbi brainwashed him," Mrs.
(Name Removed) said.
On April 4, she let a young Hasidic man who had befriended (Boy's Name Removed)
take the boy to Brooklyn for a night, provided (Boy's Name Removed) not be
taken to the yeshiva. (Boy's Name Removed) was wearing black sweat pants,
a black T-shirt and a blue and red baseball hat. She has not heard from him
Last week, as he sat behind a semi-sheer white curtain in his office at the
yeshiva, Rabbi Helbrans said he had not seen the boy since the night the
police came to his yeshiva.
But that encounter with the police was not the last run-in (Boy's Name Removed)'s
parents would have at Lev Tahor. 'Forgewt About Your Son'
On April 5, Mr. (Name Removed) went inside to look for his son, at which
time, he said, Mrs. Helbrans said that her husband had just taken the boy
away and that, "you can forget about your son."
Mr. (Name Removed) left and returned later that night with the police.
This time, the rabbi's wife and three children were gone, but "the men from
the yeshiva came down with sticks in their hands," said Mrs. (Name Removed).
In mid-May, a 22-year-old Hasidic man was charged with attacking Mr. (Name
Removed) and (Father), (Boy's Name Removed) natural father, as the two men
sat in a car outside the yeshiva.
The police said Joseph Cohen, one of the 20 to 30 people who live at the
yeshiva, attempted to stab the men and sliced off one of Mr. (Name Removed)'s
fingers, leaving two others dangling. Mr. Cohen was charged with attempted
murder. Mr. (Name Removed) says the attack caused him to be laid off from
his job as superintendent of an apartment building in Washington Heights
where he maintained an apartment in addition to his home in New Jersey.
The rabbi describes that encounter, like others involving the (Name Removed)s,
as defensive maneuvering. Mr. (Name Removed) and Mr. (Father's Name Removed),
he said, had attacked Mr. Cohen.
Even before the assault, however, Mr. (Father's Name Removed) had tangled
with the rabbi.
After reading reports of the case in the Israeli papers last spring, Mr.
(Father's Name Removed)s, who lives outside Jerusalem, contacted the rabbi,
who told him that he could come speak with him if he wanted to find his son
-- an account confirmed by Rabbi Helbrans.
Mr. (Father's Name Removed)s later told the police that the rabbi's followers
were armed. With a tape recorder supplied by law-enforcement authorities,
he recorded conversations with the rabbi, who told him that his son had been
the victim of beatings at home, a statement the (Name Removed)s deny.
(Step-mother's Name Removed), Mr. (Father's Name Removed)'s current wife,
who was interviewed in Jerusalem, says the rabbi offered her husband $60,000
in return for keeping the boy at the yeshiva, and the rabbi also offered
to pay for an annual visit by the father.
Rabbi Helbrans counters that Mr. (Father's Name Removed) came looking not
for the boy, but for money. He says Mr. (Father's Name Removed) tried to
extort him.
Such troubles with the outside world are not new for Rabbi Helbrans. Other
Reports of Abductions
Since he set up the yeshiva in Brooklyn two years ago, there have been several
reports in Israel of teen-agers either lured or abducted to the Borough Park
yeshiva. Parents of these youths say that yeshiva representatives in Israel
operate by sending the youths letters, following up with long heart-to-heart
conversations described by the parents as "brainwashing."
Ultimately, the teen-agers leave to join the yeshiva. Some parents say the
youths were kidnapped and spirited away to the United States under false
passports. One of the most recent to go was a 16-year-old from Jerusalem,
Yehoshua Yehezkel, who was taken in the spring, said his father, Rabbi Eli
The Hasidic community in Brooklyn, which shuns public handling of intercommunity
problems, has been reluctant to search on their own for the boy, at least
in a public way.
"We basically as a community are an insular community, not trying to reach
out," said Rabbi Niederman. "If the boy were lost, that would be one thing.
This is a more sophisticated incident. And generally I think this thing is
the kind of thing we leave to the professional people, the police and other
specialized agencies." Rabbi Arrested and Released
Four days after (Boy's Name Removed) was reported missing, Rabbi Helbrans
was arrested and charged with kidnapping and endangering the welfare of a
child. Hours later, however, the District Attorney, Charles J. Hynes, ordered
the arrest voided for lack of evidence.
Though the Hasidic community forms a strong voter base for Mr. Hynes, a spokesman
from his office, Kathleen Healey, said there had been no political pressure
to drop the charges.
The (Name Removed)s say that they received calls from others in the Hasidic
community for a while, asking them not to go to the police. "They just say
to us to be quiet, that it's not good for the Jewish people," said Mrs. (Name
In June, the United States Attorney in Brooklyn, Andrew J. Maloney, and the
F.B.I. began investigating the disappearance. "There is evidence that the
child has been kidnapped and that individuals associated with the rabbi may
know where he is," said an official close to the inquiry.
The (Name Removed)s, meanwhile, have secured pro bono services of the divorce
lawyer Raoul Felder, who describes the Satmar as "zealots" and "dangerous
people." Letters the Only Inkling
Their only indications that their son may be safe are the letters. One was
addressed to the rabbi, the other to them, and both were delivered by Federal
Express in early May.
"The one to the rabbi said, 'I want to thank you for everything you do, '
" said Mrs. (Name Removed). "He says that he is staying with a Hasidic family
in Brooklyn" and that he hoped to return to the rabbi's yeshiva.
In the letter to her, she said: "He asked me to stop looking for him and
to ask the police to stop looking. He said he felt good and didn't miss anything.
He said to tell the police to stop bothering the rabbi. He wrote that if
we became religious, he would come back to live with us."
The return address was fake. But, the (Name Removed)s say, the Federal Express
office reported that a male adult had sent the letters.
Rabbi Helbrans says that he had worried only for a short time about (Boy's
Name Removed)'s disappearance.
"The first two weeks, I was working all the day to find him," he said. "But
after he wrote the two letters, that he's happy and everything is well, then
I didn't worry anymore. If he's happy and in a good place, what's the trouble?"
Update; U.S. Still Searching For Missing
New York Times - December 13, 1992
More than eight months have passed since Boy's Name Removed, a 13-year-old
Jewish boy, disappeared in Brooklyn. But despite search efforts by Federal
investigators, (Boy's Name Removed) is still missing.
The boy disappeared last April after a series of combative meetings between
his parents, Jacky and (Name Removed), and an ultra-orthodox rabbi who has
a yeshiva in Brooklyn.
Since then, the (Name Removed)s have insisted that their son was kidnapped
by the rabbi, Schlomo Helbrans. And even with continuing investigations by
the police, a Federal grand jury and the F.B.I., no one has had any luck
recovering him.
"We still don't have the child back," said Raoul Felder, the lawyer for the
(Name Removed)s, who sent (Boy's Name Removed) to Rabbi Helbrans' yeshiva
last spring for bar mitzvah training. "I have to say it's one of the most
frustrating things I've been involved in since I've been a lawyer," he said.
Mr. and Mrs. (Name Removed), who are non-religious Jews, contend that the
Rabbi, a member of the Satmar sect, became obsessed with converting their
son to his ultra-orthodox ways and masterminded his kidnapping. Mr. Helbrans
counters that he does not know (Boy's Name Removed)'s whereabouts, and disclaims
any connection with his disappearance. But he says the boy had wanted to
escape his abusive parents.
The police initially arrested Mr. Helbrans and charged him with kidnapping.
But the Brooklyn District Attorney, Charles J. Hynes, later voided the arrest,
saying there was not enough information to prosecute Mr. Helbrans.
Mr. Felder said Friday that (Boy's Name Removed) is still believed to be
alive. "We just don't know where he is."
Rabbi and Wife Arrested in Disappearance
of Boy
By SETH FAISON
New York Times - February 13, 1993
A Hasidic rabbi and his wife were arrested early yesterday on charges of
kidnapping Boy's Name Removed, the teen-ager who disappeared last year amid
a struggle for control of his care and religious training, law-enforcement
officials said.
Rabbi Schlomo Helbrans and his wife, Malka, were taken into custody at 8
A.M. at their upstate residence in Monsey, N.Y., by a task force of New York
City detectives, New York State troopers and agents from the Federal Bureau
of Investigation, the officials said. The couple were held in Brooklyn last
night, awaiting arraignment on Tuesday. The boy's whereabouts had not been
Rabbi Helbrans was arrested in the boy's disappearance once before, shortly
after (Boy's Name Removed) was reported missing last April, but the charges
were dropped for lack of evidence. Federal authorities joined the investigation
two months later.
The law-enforcement officials, who insisted on anonymity, declined to discuss
what new evidence had led to the rabbi's second arrest. The indictment was
sealed. The authorities did not know the teen-ager's whereabouts, one official
said, but they believed that the couple did. The two were being questioned.
Clash of Religious Worlds
Boy's Name Removed (pronounced shy FEE-mah) was 13 years old when he disappeared
10 months ago amid a clash of religious and secular Jewish worlds -- a bitter
dispute between his mother and stepfather and the Hasidic rabbi who runs
Lev Tahor yeshiva in Borough Park.
Rabbi Helbrans, who was teaching the boy in preparation for his bar mitzvah,
accused (Boy's Name Removed)'s parents, Jacky and (Name Removed), of physically
abusing the boy. The couple, who have three younger children, countered that
the rabbi was trying to convert their son to the ultra-orthodox ways of the
Satmar sect. After the boy's disappearance, the enmity between them escalated
into several violent encounters, and Mr. (Name Removed) lost a finger in
one of them.
"Of course it makes me happy that they were arrested," said Mr. (Name Removed)
late last night in the living room of his new home in Floral Park, Queens.
"I'm waiting for the law to do its job, and if the law doesn't do its job,
then I'm going to do my job." He declined to elaborate.
Raoul Felder, a lawyer for the (Name Removed)s, said last night that the
arrest appeared to be bringing the long, unhappy case closer to an end.
He said the (Name Removed)s' hopes had been raised -- and then dashed --
by many reported sightings of their son that were never substantiated. Mr.
Felder said that the boy's parents had not received any evidence of his
whereabouts since two letters apparently signed by him arrived shortly after
his disappearance.
Law-enforcement officials have struggled with the case ever since the boy
disappeared on April 4, and have had to contend with conflicting theories,
suspicions and contentions.
The rabbi and the (Name Removed)s -- all immigrants from Israel -- agree
that (Boy's Name Removed) first came to the Borough Park yeshiva to prepare
for his bar mitzvah, and that he had expressed a desire to stay there.
But the (Name Removed)s said that the rabbi began to manipulate the boy to
persuade him to stay. Rabbi Helbrans accused the parents of beating (Boy's
Name Removed).
Since Rabbi Helbrans set up the yeshiva in 1990, parents of several Israeli
teenagers who joined him accused the rabbi of kidnapping.
On April 4, Mrs. (Name Removed) let a young Hasidic man who had befriended
(Boy's Name Removed) take the boy to Brooklyn for a night. She has not seen
her son since.
Four days after (Boy's Name Removed) was reported missing, Rabbi Helbrans
was arrested and charged with kidnapping and endangering the welfare of a
child. Hours later, however, the District Attorney, Charles J. Hynes, ordered
the arrest voided for lack of evidence. The (Name Removed)s later accused
him of succumbing to political pressure from the Satmar community, and last
night Mr. (Name Removed) said he did not believe Mr. Hynes had uncovered
any new evidence.
United States Attorney Andrew J. Maloney and the F.B.I. began investigating
in June. Officials said last night that a Federal grand jury had not found
sufficient evidence for an indictment on Federal charges. But they said that
a state grand jury had found enough evidence for an indictment on the charges
of kidnapping in Kings County.
No one answered the door at the yeshiva last night, the Jewish Sabbath. Two
young children peeked from behind the white blinds of a second story window.
Religion and Law Clash, And a Boy Is Still
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
New York Times - February 14, 1993
In the 10 months since her son, (Boy's Name Removed), disappeared amid a
struggle over his care and religious training, (Name Removed) has lived a
life of despair and suspicion. The only indication he might be safe came
in May, shortly after he disappeared, in the form of two letters, apparently
in his handwriting and asking that no search be made, but with a nonexist
ent return address in Brooklyn.
Now, the authorities have charged the two people Mrs. (Name Removed) has
accused from the start -- a Hasidic rabbi and his wife -- with the kidnapping
of her son. But the boy remains missing, and Mrs. (Name Removed)'s anguish
appears no closer to an end.
"All I can say is I want my son back," Mrs. (Name Removed), who with her
husband, Jacky, and three other children, lives in Floral Park, Queens, said
yesterday. "I hope these people stay in jail until they return him. I hope
that my son is going to come back soon."
A task force of detectives from the city, state and the Federal Bureau of
Investigation arrested Rabbi Schlomo Helbrans and his wife, Malka, on Friday
morning at their home in a Hasidic enclave in Monsey, N.Y. But yesterday,
even as the couple was held awaiting a bail hearing scheduled for today,
details of the kidnapping or whereabouts of Boy's Name Removed remained unclear
-- a case, shrouded in mystery and suspicion, that centers on the clash of
religious and secular Jewish worlds.
Kidnapping Charge
Patrick Clark, a spokesman for District Attorney Charles J. Hynes of Brooklyn,
said yesterday that Rabbi Helbrans and his wife would be charged with kidnapping
in the second degree and conspiracy to kidnap in the fourth degree.
Rabbi Helbrans was arrested four days after the boy disappeared in April,
but the District Attorney's office dropped the charges a few hours later,
saying there was not enough evidence. The Federal Bureau of Investigation
later joined the inquiry.
Mr. Clark and other law-enforcement officials declined to comment further
on the case or what evidence led to the rabbi's second arrest, saying the
couple's indictment remained sealed. The search for the boy is continuing,
and others familiar with the investigation say they believe the couple know
where he is.
Boy's Name Removed ) was 13 when he disappeared on April 4 during a bitter
dispute between Rabbi Helbrans, who runs a Hasidic yeshiva, or school, called
Lev Tahor (Pure Heart) in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn, and (Boy's
Name Removed)'s mother and stepfather, who describe themselves as secular
The (Name Removed)s had sent their son to Lev Tahor to prepare him for his
bar mitzvah, but he soon became deeply religious and wanted to stay at the
yeshiva, his parents said. From there the (Name Removed)s and Rabbi Helbrans
have told very different stories.
Within the insular Satmar movement of Hasidic Jews, Rabbi Helbrans heads
a small group, which he led to Brooklyn from Israel just before the war in
the Persian Gulf. He accused the (Name Removed)s of physically abusing the
boy, a charge they have denied. The (Name Removed)s countered that the rabbi
was trying to convert their son against their wishes.
Ever since, the authorities have struggled to contend with conflicting theories
and contentions -- often far removed from the laws of the State of New York.
"It's a clash of values," said one official familiar with the investigation,
who spoke on condition of anonymity, "the old world versus the new."
The official said that Rabbi Helbrans's religious beliefs hold that a boy,
once bar mitzvahed, becomes a man capable of making his own decisions regardless
of his parents' wishes. But evidence presented before a grand jury led to
the indictment of the rabbi and his wife on Monday, the day (Boy's Name Removed)
turned 14.
"It's New York State law, even though in their tradition, a bar mitzvah
emancipates the boy," the official said. "Under New York State law you don't
get emancipated until you're 18."
For Mrs. (Name Removed), the arrest of the rabbi has brought a glimmer of
hope after months with little to hold on to. She said she hoped the arrest
of the Helbrans would force them to tell the authorities where her son is.
She said that perhaps Mrs. Helbrans, now separated from her children, would
understand what she has endured.
"I feel bad about the rabbi's wife," Mrs. (Name Removed) said. "She's not
with her kids now. I really hope she feels toward me, how I have not seen
my son for 10 months. I hope that if she feels this way she will return my
Bail Posted For Rabbi In
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
New York Times - February 15, 1993
As a large, angry crowd of Hasidim shouted and chanted outside, a judge in
Brooklyn yesterday ordered a Hasidic rabbi held on $250,000 bail on charges
of kidnapping a teenager in a dispute over the boy's religious upbringing.
And prosecutors for the first time said that a third person had conspired
with the rabbi and his wife in the alleged abduction.
At a bail hearing in the case, which has provoked outrage in the insulated
Hasidic community in Brooklyn, the judge ordered Rabbi Schlomo Helbrans held
but released his wife, Malka, because she is ill and is nursing a newborn
Rabbi Helbrans was released from the Brooklyn House of Detention at 11:15
P.M. after "a group of supporters" posted bail, said Vito A. Turso, a spokesman
for the Correction Department.
With the court proceedings punctuated by emotional pleas and an outburst
from the missing boy's father, prosecutors revealed that a third person,
a rabbinical student named Mordechai Weisz, had also been indicted in connection
with the kidnapping of the teenager, (Boy's Name Removed), who is still missing,
10 months after he disappeared. Warning From Prosecutors
Before Rabbi Helbrans was released, Justice Alan L. Lebowitz of State Supreme
Court ordered him held on bail pending arraignment on Tuesday after prosecutors
argued that the couple would flee if freed, saying that the third suspect
still remains at large and that the couple is in this country illegally.
"If these people are released and are gone to the wind," said Harvey Greenberg,
a prosecutor in the District Attorney's office in Brooklyn, "that will be
the end of what we know about the boy."
A task force of detectives from the city, state and Federal Bureau of
Investigation arrested the couple on Friday morning at a home in the Hasidic
enclave of Monsey, N.Y. As the head of a small group of Hasidic Jews within
the Satmar movement, Rabbi Helbrans operates a small yeshiva in the Borough
Park section of Brooklyn, where the boy's mother and stepfather, and Jacky
(Name Removed), sent him for religious training.
Rabbi Helbrans was arrested in the boy's disappearance once before, four
days after the boy disappeared last April 4, but the District Attorney's
office dropped the charges hours later, saying there was not enough evidence.
The F.B.I. entered the investigation in June.
The couple's arrest, which came four days after a state grand jury indicted
them and the rabbinical student on charges of kidnapping and conspiracy,
has provoked anger in the Satmar community, as well as among other Hasidic
More than 400 Hasidim, many of whom arrived in school buses, gathered outside
the courthouse on Schermerhorn Street in Downtown Brooklyn, where yesterday's
bail hearing was held, chanting prayers and blocking the entrances to the
Rabbi Efroim Stein of Brooklyn said that the arrests had created "an atmosphere
reminiscent of not so long ago in Europe," saying there was no evidence of
wrongdoing against the rabbi or his wife.
"This is a Tawana Brawley case if there ever was one," he said, accusing
the missing boy's parents of having fabricated his disappearance. Many Reporters
The crowd became so large and boisterous that officials refused to open the
courtroom to the public, allowing only a few people in for the hearing, which
was delayed by the confusion. The officials barred many journalists from
the hearing, permitting only one reporter, a photographer and a television
cameraman to attend and provide an account.
As demonstrators pushed on sidewalks outside, the lawyer for the Halbrens,
George Meissner, argued that the authorities had harassed his clients and
even beaten Mrs. Helbrans as she was taken to prison after her arrest, according
to the pool account.
Mr. Meissner denied that the Helbrans knew anything of the boy's whereabouts
and at one point he accused the boy's father, mother and stepfather of having
physically abused him.
The remark prompted the boy's father, (Father's Name Removed), to leap from
his seat and shout, "It's a lie! It's a lie! How can you say that when you
take my kid away?" The judge ordered him from the courtroom. Few New Specifics
The prosecutors offered few new specifics about the case at yesterday's hearing
-- giving almost no information about the third suspect or about what evidence
led them to charge the suspects 10 months after the boy disappeared.
Justice Lebowitz ordered Mrs. Halbrens freed after the prosecution agreed
to allow her to care for her four children, including a newborn, but he ordered
her to surrender her passport by today.
As she left the courthouse, supported by a woman on either side and surrounded
by a cordon of court officers and police officers in riot gear, dozens of
demonstrators pressed to reach her, shouting prayers for her. Her head bowed,
she appeared deeply shaken, nearly collapsing at several points as the
demonstrators sang and clapped their hands.
___________________________________________________________________________________Rabbi Is Said to Have Offered Deal for Missing Boy
By MARY B. W. TABOR
New York Times - February 16, 1993
Video and audio tapes, letters and accounts of threats and bribes are among
the major pieces of evidence against a Hasidic rabbi in the disappearance
of a Jewish boy in Brooklyn, law-enforcement officials and relatives said
Much of that evidence, which was presented to a grand jury recently, was
produced more than 10 months ago, shortly after the boy, (Boy's Name Removed),
disappeared amid a dispute between his parents and the rabbi over the boy's
religious upbringing.
But additional evidence has surfaced since then, law-enforcement officials
said. The officials would not talk about the evidence, but (Boy's Name Removed)'s
relatives said it included information that showed the rabbi offered to make
a deal to retain custody of (Boy's Name Removed). Father Lives in Israel
(Boy's Name Removed)'s father, (Father's Name Removed), who is divorced from
the boy's mother and lives in Israel, said he turned that information over
to the police. "What I gave them were things that we needed to show that
I had a deal with the rabbi before I came to the United States," he said.
It was unclear yesterday how large a role new evidence played in prompting
District Attorney Charles J. Hynes of Brooklyn to bring the case before a
state grand jury after he had deferred prosecution last spring. Federal
authorities subsequently joined the investigation, but a Federal grand jury
chose not to indict the rabbi, Schlomo Helbrans, and his wife, Malka.
The Helbranses were arrested on Friday and charged with kidnapping and
conspiracy. They were released Sunday night after other Hasidic Jews posted
$250,000 bail. A third person, Mordechai Weisz, a rabbinical student and
a follower of Rabbi Helbrans, has also been indicted in (Boy's Name Removed)'s
disappearance and is expected to turn himself in soon to the authorities,
law-enforcement officials said.
The 14-year-old boy's whereabouts are still unknown.
Many details of the case against the Helbranses are included in indictments
to be unsealed today when the couple are arraigned in Brooklyn.
But the parents of (Boy's Name Removed) and
law-enforcement officials said yesterday that at the heart of the case were
tapes on which the rabbi offers Mr. (Father's Name Removed) $10,000 in exchange
for custody of (Boy's Name Removed), and one of the rabbi's bodyguards threatens
to kill Mr. (Father's Name Removed) as the two men stand on a balcony outside
a Borough Park yeshiva, Lev Tahor (pure heart).
'Everything Was Arranged'
Mr. (Father's Name Removed) said the meeting in Brooklyn occurred in May
after telephone calls between Israel and Brooklyn in which the rabbi told
Mr. (Father's Name Removed) that he knew where (Boy's Name Removed) was.
"The rabbi invited me to come to visit with my son," Mr. (Father's Name Removed)
said. "So when I came to the U.S., three of the Hasidic people from the rabbi's
yeshiva came and took me straight to the yeshiva. Everything was arranged
before I got here. I didn't have to do nothing."
In a separate interview yesterday, (Boy's Name Removed)'s mother, (Name Removed),
said the rabbi had offered her $60,000 in exchange for custody of (Boy's
Name Removed). She also said that in April, two days after (Boy's Name Removed)
disappeared, members of Mr. Helbrans's yeshiva had called her at her home
in New Jersey.
"They said, 'Don't get the police involved if you want to see your son,'
" she said.
Investigators say they also have copies of two letters, delivered to his
mother in May, apparently in (Boy's Name Removed)'s handwriting, that ask
that no search be made. A Small Group
Rabbi Helbrans heads a small group that he describes as an offshoot of the
Satmar movement of the Hasidic Jews, which he led to Brooklyn from Israel
just before the Persian Gulf war. He accused Mrs. (Name Removed) and her
husband, Jacky, of physically abusing the boy, an allegation they have denied.
The (Name Removed)s countered that the rabbi was trying to convert their
son against their wishes.
The police in Israel have investigated Rabbi Helbrans as well, saying the
case of (Boy's Name Removed) is just one in a series of reported abductions
linked to the rabbi and his yeshiva.
Members of the Satmar sect, which numbers about 40,000 in Brooklyn, have
described Rabbi Helbrans as a good, religious man, while clearly keeping
their distance from him. "He's a religious Jew," said Rabbi Hertz Frankel,
"but he is not a member of the Satmar community."
They also spurn talk of new evidence and characterize the arrest of the
Helbranses just hours before the Sabbath as an act of harassment. The couple
was arrested on Friday morning at a home in Monsey, N.Y.
Rabbi Pleads Not Guilty in
By JOSEPH P. FRIED
New York Times - February 17, 1993
The father of a boy who disappeared 10 months ago collapsed in grief yesterday
after a Hasidic rabbi, his wife and an associate entered not-guilty pleas
to charges that they kidnapped the teen-ager.
The rabbi, Shlomo Helbrans, and his wife, Malka, rocked back and forth as
they stood before the judge's bench in the Brooklyn courtroom, seemingly
lost in their silent prayers. They and the third defendant, Mordechai Weisz,
were arraigned in a case representing a bitter clash over the care and religious
upbringing of a Jewish boy, (Boy's Name Removed).
After their lawyer entered not-guilty pleas and the three were released pending
further proceedings, the missing 14-year-old boy's father, (Father's Name
Removed), screamed in the courthouse corridor: "My son is dead! My son is
dead! Nobody cares!" He crumpled to the floor and was taken to Brooklyn Hospital
Center, where he was in stable condition. Believed to Be Alive
The authorities say they believe that (Boy's Name Removed) is alive and unharmed
and being kept in a Brooklyn location known to the defendants. They are accused
of refusing to return him to his family and of offering the family money
to "relinquish legal custody of (Boy's Name Removed)," in the words of the
indictment that accuses the defendants of kidnapping and conspiracy.
The 30-year-old rabbi runs a Hasidic yeshiva, or school, in the Borough Park
section of Brooklyn. (Boy's Name Removed)'s mother, , and stepfather, Jacky,
Israeli immigrants who were living in New Jersey last year, sent the boy
to the yeshiva for religious training to prepare him for his bar mitzvah.
They say that the rabbi manipulated the teen-ager to persuade him to stay
as part of an effort to convert their son to the rabbi's devout brand of
Judaism against their wishes.
Last March, the month before (Boy's Name Removed) disappeared, the youth
tried to run away from home, apparently to go back to the yeshiva. But he
was found by police officers in New Jersey and returned home. Accusations
of Abuse
The rabbi accuses the (Name Removed)s of physically abusing the boy, a charge
they deny. The rabbi was arrested several days after (Boy's Name Removed)
was reported missing, but the Brooklyn District Attorney's office dropped
the charges at that time because of what the office said was insufficient
Yesterday, George Meissner, the lawyer who represented the three defendants
at the arraignment, said his clients "absolutely" do not know where the boy
Much of the evidence, which the authorities say includes tape-recorded
conversations between the rabbi and the boy's father, Mr. (Father's Name
Removed), has been available for months. This led reporters at yesterday's
arraignment in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn to ask aides to District Attorney
Charles J. Hynes why criminal charges were now being brought.
Michael Vecchione, an assistant district attorney, replied that a "redeveloped
investigation" had produced "appropriate information to present to the grand
jury." He declined to specify what new evidence might have been developed
to permit the grand jury last week to hand up the indictment of the rabbi,
his 31-year-old wife and Mr. Weisz, 19.
Rabbi Helbrans, who heads a small group that he describes as an offshoot
of the Satmar branch of Hasidic Jews, and his wife live in a Hasidic enclave
in Monsey, N.Y. Mr. Weisz lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which has a large
Satmar population.
Justice Nicholas Coffinas set $100,000 bail yesterday for Mr. Weisz, who
surrendered in the morning to face the charges and who was freed after the
arraignment when "the community put up a bond for him," Mr. Meissner said,
referring to the Hasidic communities of Williamsburg and Borough Park. Justice
Coffinas continued the $250,000 bail on which Rabbi Helbrans had been freed
Sunday, after his arrest Friday, and he continued the release of Mrs. Helbrans
without bail.
As the session ended, Mrs. (Name Removed) tried unsuccessfully to get the
judge's attention, then bowed her head and cried. Later she told reporters
that granting the rabbi and Mr. Weisz bail was unjust. Shortly before he
collapsed, Mr. (Father's Name Removed) screamed at supporters of the defendants
who were leaving the courtroom, "How can you do something like this?"
Perjury Conviction In Abduction
New York Times -February 4, 1994
A man who prosecutors say helped a Hasidic rabbi kidnap a boy in 1992 was
convicted on Wednesday of lying about the case to a Federal grand jury in
(Boy's Name Removed), then 13 years old, disappeared in April 1992. Prosecutors
contend that Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans, who runs a Borough Park, Brooklyn, yeshiva
that the boy attended, abducted him because the boy's parents, (Father's
Name Removed) and (Name Removed), disagreed with the rabbi about his education.
The rabbi, his wife, Malka, and an associate, Mordechai Weisz, are scheduled
to go on trial next month in state court on kidnapping and conspiracy charges.
Tobias Freund, 36, the man convicted Wednesday, had told the grand jury that
he was not involved in the boy's disappearance, but prosecutors said he drove
the boy out of the city. The boy has not been found. A jury convicted Mr.
Freund of three counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice,
for altering his phone records. He faces a prison sentence of up to five
years for each count.
Boy, 15, in Religious Tug-of-War Meets With
Parents After 2 Years
By MARY B. W. TABOR
New York Times - March 1, 1994
Almost two years after he vanished in Brooklyn amid a tug-of-war between
his secular family and an ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect, a 15-year-old boy was
reunited with his parents today, but told them he wanted to be placed in
the custody of an Orthodox Jewish rabbi in Rockland County.
The appearance of the boy, (Boy's Name Removed), in Family Court here was
the latest twist in a complex case that has pitted a strictly religious rabbi
against non-religious Jews in a clash over the boy's spiritual upbringing.
The parents have charged that (Boy's Name Removed) was kidnapped in April
1992 by members of a Brooklyn-based sect that was obsessed with converting
the boy to its ultra-Orthodox ways. The parents said that they had sent the
boy to the sect's yeshiva, Lev Tahor, to prepare for his bar mitzvah, but
that while he was there he was brainwashed by the sect's leader, Rabbi Shlomo
But the boy's lawyer said today that he had willingly left his family's home
in Ramsey, N.J., to find religious fulfillment and to escape abuse by his
mother and stepfather.
And after an emotional 45-minute reunion with her son at the Rockland County
sheriff's office, (Name Removed) told reporters that (Boy's Name Removed),
who appeared dressed in the traditional black coat, yarmulke and payes, or
side curls, worn by Orthodox Jews, said that he loved her but that he had
left home because she was "not religious."
Until a court date on Thursday, (Boy's Name Removed) has been moved to the
Airmont home of Dr. Michael Alony, an Orthodox Jew and child psychologist
who serves as a chaplain for the sheriff's department.
The boy's meeting with his parents came just as jury selection began in State
Supreme Court in Brooklyn in the trial of Rabbi Helbrans and his wife, Malka,
on kidnapping and conspiracy charges.
Law-enforcement officials had made a deal with Rabbi Helbrans, the leader
of a small offshoot of the Satmar Hasidic sect, in which (Boy's Name Removed)
would be turned over to the Brooklyn District Attorney and then to his mother
in return for reduced criminal charges against the Helbranses and Mordechai
Weisz, 20, a rabbinical student also charged in the case.
But on Friday, the date specified in the agreement, the deal apparently collapsed
and the boy never appeared in Brooklyn. Instead, he turned up today at the
Rockland County Family Court with his lawyer, asking to be placed in the
custody of another rabbi.
The boy's disappearance has sparked investigations by several law enforcement
officials, including Israeli police, who said the (Name Removed) case was
just one of a series of reported abductions of young non-religious Jews linked
to Rabbi Helbrans and his yeshiva, which was based in Jerusalem until the
Gulf War.
In the months since (Boy's Name Removed)'s disappearance, the Helbranses
and (Name Removed)s, also Israeli emigres, have traded accusations not only
of kidnapping, but of bribery, extortion and attempted murder. Mother's Account
According to Mrs. (Name Removed), (Boy's Name Removed) first met Rabbi Helbrans
when she took him to his Borough Park yeshiva for bar mitzvah training in
February 1992. The rabbi, she said, became obsessed with converting her son
and demanded that she leave him at the yeshiva. She resisted, but agreed
to let him visit Mr. Weisz, a follower of the rabbi, on April 4, in Brooklyn.
The next day, when she went to pick him up, (Boy's Name Removed) was gone.
Mr. Weisz and Rabbi Helbrans have said that they know nothing about the boy's
disappearance, but suggest that he ran away partly to escape beatings by
his mother and stepfather, Jacky (Name Removed).
Tobias Freund, an associate of the rabbi, was convicted last month in Federal
court on charges that he perjured himself before a grand jury when he denied
participating in (Boy's Name Removed)'s disappearance. Mr. Freund was also
convicted of obstructing justice by withholding and altering phone records
that linked him to the case.
Mrs. (Name Removed), who is separated from her second husband, has lived
in a shelter for battered women and now lives in a home that she rents from
the shelter. But she insists that her son was never hit or abused.
While the details of (Boy's Name Removed)'s disappearance remains a mystery,
the first accounts of his whereabouts since then emerged today. The Rabbi's
As he waited at the Rockland County sheriff's office to speak with (Boy's
Name Removed), Rabbi Aryeh Zaks, whom (Boy's Name Removed) has requested
as his guardian, said today that the boy left Brooklyn shortly after April
4, 1992 on a bus headed for Monsey, N.Y., which is home to a tightly-knit
community of more than 6,500 Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jewish families.
"He ran away because his home was impossible to live in," Rabbi Zaks said.
Mrs. (Name Removed), he said, had hit him with the flat side of a knife,
and his stepfather had hit him with a bat.
Rabbi Zaks said that (Boy's Name Removed) spent the past two years living
with different Orthodox families in the Monsey area, where he attended yeshivas,
or schools, under the name "Avraham," hoping to avoid discovery. Hasidic
families are known to take in Jewish children who appear needy without delving
into their pasts.
Another Orthodox man, who accompanied Rabbi Zaks but who would not identify
himself, said that (Boy's Name Removed) had chosen to leave Rabbi Helbrans's
yeshiva because he found the rabbi "too strict," but that the youth had come
to Monsey because he wanted to live as an Orthodox Jew.
Rabbi Zaks said that (Boy's Name Removed) had come to talk with him eight
weeks ago, saying that he heard Rabbi Helbrans was about to go on trial and
that "he wanted people to know that he was not abducted in any way."
By turning up in the Family Court, where he filed an application for
guardianship, (Boy's Name Removed) avoided being returned to his mother.
Separate Visits
Earlier today, Rockland County Family Court Judge Bernard Stanger gave (Boy's
Name Removed)'s parents separate 45-minute visits with their son and gave
Rabbi Zaks one hour. A further hearing is scheduled for Thursday.
Rabbi Zaks, who arrived at and left the office of County Sheriff James Kralik
in a black stretch limousine, said that he did not know Rabbi Helbrans.
Those seeking custody of the boy are Mrs. (Name Removed); (Boy's Name Removed)'s
natural father, (Father's Name Removed), who lives in Israel; and Rabbi Zaks,
who runs a yeshiva in Monsey.
After Mrs. (Name Removed)'s meeting with (Boy's Name Removed), Mr. (Father's
Name Removed) also met with his son, whom he had not seen in more than four
years. "It was great," he said. "My son told me how much he loved me and
I told him how much I love him and miss him."
Alan M. Vinegrad, the Assistant United States Attorney, said he was "extremely
pleased that (Boy's Name Removed) has surfaced," but declined to say what
impact it might have on the prosecution of the Helbranses and Mr. Weisz.
Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, Rabbi Helbrans sat quietly in a fourth-floor courtroom
as Judge Thaddeus Owens heard pretrial motions and prepared for jury selection.
Malka Helbrans rocked in her chair, her eyes closed, praying silently.
Earlier, outside the courtroom, Rabbi Helbrans had smiled when reporters
asked him about where the boy had been. "I don't know," he said. "I can't
talk about it." He then went back to reading religious scriptures.
Father Requests Return to Israel For Boy
in Religious Tug-of-War
By ROBERT HANLEY,
New York TImes - March 4, 1994
The tangled struggle over a 15-year-old yeshiva student, (Boy's Name Removed),
grew more complex today when his father filed a petition asking that the
youth be ordered to return to Israel with him.
The father, (Father's Name Removed), stepped into the case as a Family Court
judge in Rockland County started a hearing on the youth's request that an
Orthodox rabbi, Aryeh Zaks, be appointed his guardian and that he be allowed
to continue living with Rabbi Zaks and his family in Rockland County.
But Mr. (Father's Name Removed)'s lawyer, Neil R. Cahn, argued in the petition
that American courts had no jurisidiction in the case and that only rabbinical
courts in Israel had the authority to decide a custody dispute between Mr.
(Father's Name Removed) and (Boy's Name Removed)'s mother, (Name Removed),
and the boy's wishes to remain with Rabbi Zaks. Hearing to Resume March 17
The judge, Bernard E. Stanger, recessed today's hearing until March 17 and
ordered that (Boy's Name Removed) continue living in Rockland County until
then. Family Court proceedings are closed to the public, and Judge Stanger
ordered the lawyers and their clients not to reveal details of the hearing.
Mr. (Father's Name Removed) emerged from court with a broad smile and his
right arm draped over his son's shoulder and said later that he wanted to
return to Israel with him. "I have to get to know him again," Mr. (Father's
Name Removed) said. "He disappeared at the end of 1989." Mr. (Father's Name
Removed)'s lawyer, Mr. Cahn, contended after the hearing that Ms. (Name Removed)
wrongfully abducted (Boy's Name Removed) in December 1989 when she emigrated
with him from Israel to the United States. Her lawyer, Steven R. Rubenstein,
denied that contention.
(Boy's Name Removed) made no comment as he left the courthouse with his father.
After they parted in the parking lot, Rabbi Zaks drove the youth from the
His mother declined to comment after the hearing.
Mr. (Father's Name Removed)'s petition was filed after the hearing ended
and was not subject to the order not to discuss the case, Mr. Cahn said.
Mr. (Father's Name Removed)'s intervention opens a new chapter in a tangled
saga that was thought to have started two years ago when Ms. (Name Removed)
took her son to an ultra-Orthodox rabbi in Brooklyn for religious training.
(Boy's Name Removed) disappeared shortly afterward, and his mother contended
that he had been brainwashed and abducted. The rabbi, Shlomo Helbrans, and
his wife, Malka, are to go on trial in Brooklyn soon on kidnapping charges.
But Rabbi Zaks says the youth left Rabbi Helbrans's yeshiva because it was
too strict and then spent the last two years living under an alias and attending
yeshivas in and around Monsey, a Rockland County community of about 6,500
Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox families, because his mother and his stepfather,
Jacky (Name Removed), had abused him. Visitation Rulings
Mr. Cahn said his motion today to transfer the case to Israel was based on
a series of custody and visitation rulings issued by rabbinical courts there
and by Israel's Department of Social Services after (Boy's Name Removed)'s
parents were divorced in 1981.
Mr. Cahn said that officials in Israel granted the parents joint custody
of (Boy's Name Removed) and that American courts had no authority to disturb
those rulings.
Despite the joint custody finding, Mr. Cahn said, Israeli officials ordered
the boy, then a toddler, to live with his maternal grandparents after his
mother married Mr. (Name Removed) in Israel, Mr. Cahn said.
He said the rulings in Israel gave Mr. (Father's Name Removed) various visitation
rights, including some religious holidays and alternate weekends. Those visits
ended after Ms. (Name Removed) brought the boy to the United States in late
1989. Mr. (Father's Name Removed) was reunited with his son here on Monday.
Mr. Rubenstein, Ms. (Name Removed)'s lawyer, disagreed with Mr. Cahn's contention
of joint custody. He said the couple's divorce agreement in 1981 provided
her sole custody of the boy, and gave Mr. (Father's Name Removed) two hours
of visitation a week.
Rabbi Agrees to Guilty Plea in Boy's
By CRAIG WOLFF
New York Times - March 8, 1994
A rabbi pleaded guilty yesterday in the Brooklyn kidnapping of a 15-year-old
boy who has been at the center of a bitter dispute between his family and
the rabbi, who sought to convert him to his ultra-Orthodox brand of Judaism.
But with a complex custody battle swirling around him, the fate of the boy,
(Boy's Name Removed), remained as uncertain yesterday as it was two years
ago when he first disappeared. And even the facts surrounding his disappearance
remained murky, as (Boy's Name Removed) and the rabbi, Shlomo Helbrans, continued
to insist that Rabbi Helbrans had done nothing wrong, despite the guilty
plea. Deal With District Attorney
Rabbi Helbrans offered the plea of guilty to a charge of conspiracy to kidnap
in the fourth degree in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn. The plea was part
of an intricate arrangement with the Brooklyn District Attorney that will
give the rabbi a sentence of five years' probation and 250 hours of community
service. But under the terms of the agreement, the rabbi and another man,
Mordechai Weisz, who will also receive five years' probation for the kidnapping
conspiracy, did not admit that they had committed any of the specific acts
with which they were charged.
In addition, charges against the rabbi's wife, Malka, were dismissed.
But the arrangement provoked more charges and countercharges between Rabbi
Helbrans, who insisted that the boy had run away to escape beatings at home,
and (Boy's Name Removed)'s mother, (Name Removed), who insisted that her
rights had been ignored.
"You brainwashed him! You brainwashed him!" she screamed at the rabbi and
his wife from her seat in the courtroom's gallery.
Mrs. (Name Removed) and (Boy's Name Removed)'s biological father, (Father's
Name Removed), have contended that (Boy's Name Removed) was kidnapped in
April 1992 by the rabbi and some of his followers who were bent on converting
him away from a non-religious upbringing to their strict ultra-Orthodox ways.
But even after entering his plea before Justice Thaddeus Owens yesterday,
the 31-year-old rabbi clutched a prayer book to his chest and said that he
had nothing to do with the boy's disappearance and in fact had tried to find
The boy resurfaced eight days ago at the Rockland County sheriff's office
and is now in the temporary custody of a child psychologist who serves as
a chaplain for the sheriff's department. Three different parties are now
vying for custody of the youth: Mrs. (Name Removed); Mr. (Father's Name Removed),
who is divorced from Mrs. (Name Removed); and Aryeh Zaks, an Orthodox rabbi
from Suffern, N.Y., who began caring for (Boy's Name Removed) at least three
weeks ago at the request of members of Rockland County's Orthodox Jewish
Rabbi Zaks's brother, Isadore Zaks, also a rabbi, said (Boy's Name Removed)
had decided to come forward because he thought Rabbi Helbrans was being unfairly
prosecuted and to let people know that he had run away many times before
ever meeting Rabbi Helbrans. Points of Agreement
By telephone, Rabbi Zaks read a statement that he said had been prepared
by (Boy's Name Removed), saying: "I told Rabbi Helbrans about the abuse in
the house and simply ran away. But I never wanted to go to the yeshiva of
Rabbi Helbrans. I went somewhere else."
Asked where (Boy's Name Removed) had been for most of the last two years,
Rabbi Zaks said (Boy's Name Removed) had not divulged his whereabouts even
to him and his brother, out of fear that it would bring repercussions to
those who had sheltered him.
Rabbi Helbrans and Mrs. (Name Removed) have agreed on a few points -- that
she brought her son to the rabbi's Williamsburg yeshiva, Lev Tahor, in February
1992 to help prepare him for his bar mitzvah, and that (Boy's Name Removed)
soon became deeply interested in religious studies and initially wanted to
stay at the yeshiva. The rabbi has described the yeshiva as loosely affiliated
with the Satmar Hasidim.
But from there, the two sides' versions of events diverge sharply, and over
the last two years the mystery of what happened to (Boy's Name Removed) has
placed an unwelcome focus on the insular Satmar community.
Mrs. (Name Removed) said that (Boy's Name Removed) began running away from
her home, which was in New Jersey at the time, and that on April 4, 1992,
she let Mr. Weisz, a 20-year-old man who befriended (Boy's Name Removed),
take the boy to Brooklyn for a night provided he did not take him to the
yeshiva. She did not see the boy again until last week, when she was permitted
to see him at the Rockland County sheriff's office. She has charged that
it was the intention of Rabbi Helbrans to kidnap (Boy's Name Removed) from
the beginning. 'Beating of a Lifetime'
While Rabbi Helbrans, who now lives in Monsey, N.Y., has steadfastly professed
his ignorance about what happened to (Boy's Name Removed), he has repeatedly
charged that the boy had shared "horror stories" with him about physical
abuse he had suffered at the hands of his mother and his stepfather.
Rabbi Isadore Zaks said yesterday that (Boy's Name Removed) had expressed
fear that if he had returned to Brooklyn, he would have "wound up back with
his mother and he'd get the beating of a lifetime."
Yesterday, Mrs. (Name Removed) accused District Attorney Charles J. Hynes
of dealing leniently with Rabbi Helbrans out of political concern over the
Hasidic community.
Correction: March 12, 1994, Saturday
An article on Tuesday about a guilty plea in the kidnapping of a teen-ager,
(Boy's Name Removed), misspelled the name of the hometown of the accused
man, Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans, in some editions. It is Monsey, N.Y., in Rockland
County, not Muncie.
Correction: March 12, 1994, Saturday
An article on Tuesday about a guilty plea in the kidnapping of a teen-ager,
(Boy's Name Removed), misspelled the name of the hometown of the accused
man, Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans, in some editions. It is Monsey, N.Y., in Rockland
County, not Muncie.
New York Times - March 12, 1994
An article on Tuesday about a guilty plea in the kidnapping of a teen-ager,
(Boy's Name Removed), misspelled the name of the hometown of the accused
man, Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans, in some editions. It is Monsey, N.Y., in Rockland
County, not Muncie
Custody Settled in Case of Boy Who
By ROBERT HANLEY
New York Times - March 18, 1994
The tangled and bitter custody feud over 15-year-old (Boy's Name Removed)
appeared to be resolved yesterday when his divorced parents reached an agreement
to share custody of him and to begin seeking ways for the teen-ager to observe
the Orthodox practices of Judaism that he prefers.
Under the main provisions of the agreement, the teen-ager will be reunited
with his parents after two years of a secret life with Orthodox families
that began in April 1992 when he vanished from his mother's New Jersey home,
and she charged that he had been abducted and brainwashed by an ultra-Orthodox
rabbi in Brooklyn.
Lawyers for his father, (Father's Name Removed), and mother, (Name Removed),
negotiated the settlement in recent days and presented it to Judge Bernard
E. Stanger of Family Court at a closed hearing in Rockland County, N.Y.
Afterward, the parents, smiling broadly, left in a county van with (Boy's
Name Removed) for a temporary home in Bergen County, N.J.
The parents, their lawyers said, were very happy. Mr. (Father's Name Removed),
one of his lawyers, Neil R. Cahn, said: "He was thrilled. It's the greatest
thing in his life to be reunited with his son after four and a half years."
'A Chance to Build Her Life Again'
One of Mrs. (Name Removed)'s lawyers, Lawrence Meyerson, said: "She has her
son back. This is her happiest day in the last two years. She has a chance
to build her life again with her son."
Under terms of the agreement, both parents and son are to begin psychological
counseling to help them readjust to each other and to help (Boy's Name Removed)
resume a more normal life after two years of hiding, using aliases, with
various Orthodox families around Monsey, in Rockland County. For the next
few weeks, Mr. Cahn said, (Boy's Name Removed) will be staying with his father
in the home of an Orthodox family in Bergen County near his mother's home
in Ramsey. Mrs. (Name Removed) is to have unrestricted visiting rights, said
her other lawyer, Steven R. Rubenstein.
In early summer, lawyers for each side said, the parents plan to go to Israel.
Mr. (Father's Name Removed), a paralegal assistant, lives in the small community
of Arad in southern Israel with his second wife and two children. He came
to Rockland County in mid-February in the latest of several trips he made
to the metropolitan area, looking for his son after Mrs. (Name Removed) emigrated
from Israel with him in 1989. They were divorced in Israel in 1981.
Mrs. (Name Removed) plans to return to Israel in June after her three children
by her second husband, Jackie (Name Removed), finish the school year, Mr.
Rubenstein said. He said that the agreement stipulated that (Boy's Name Removed)
live with her when she resettles in Israel and that she and Mr. (Father's
Name Removed) will share in all decisions, in New Jersey until summer and
in Israel afterward, on accommodating (Boy's Name Removed)'s religious wishes.
Lawyers said the youth is more devout than either parent.
The court hearing that ended yesterday was set in motion in late February,
after (Boy's Name Removed) emerged from his two-year secret life among the
Orthodox, and filed a petition asking that an Orthodox rabbi in Rockland,
Aryeh Zaks, be appointed his guardian.
He contended that his mother and stepfather, Jackie (Name Removed), had abused
him before he disappeared in April 1992. At the start of the hearing two
weeks ago the youth amended his petition, asking that his father, instead
of Rabbi Zaks, be named his guardian. Judge Stanger granted that request
yesterday. But the judge did nothing to limit (Boy's Name Removed)'s visiting
Rabbi Zaks.
"(Boy's Name Removed) has been through am extremely traumatic past two years,"
said Mr. Cahn, his father's lawyer. "He has come out of this thing confused
and torn. He still feels close with Rabbi Zaks."
In another phase of yesterday's hearing, Judge Stanger rejected the youth's
contention that his mother had abused him. An official of the Rockland County
Office of Child Protective Services told the judge that an investigation
had determined that the charge was groundless.
Mr. (Father's Name Removed)'s co-counsel, Abraham Abramovsky, a professor
of international law at Fordham University Law School, said yesterday that
he had started searching, both in New Jersey and in Israel, for yeshivas
that (Boy's Name Removed) could attend.
"The boy's wish is to be put into a very Orthodox yeshiva," Mr. Abramovsky
said. "Appropriate provisions will be made for (Boy's Name Removed)'s religious
education and practices from this day forward."
The youth's mother and father, he said, will share in the decision on what
yeshiva and synagogue (Boy's Name Removed) will attend.
Under yesterday's settlement, any disagreements between the parents are to
be heard only in rabbinical courts in Israel, Mr. Cahn said. He contended
that since these courts handled the 1981 divorce between Mr. (Father's Name
Removed) and Mrs. (Name Removed) they had jurisdiction.
On March 8 Shlomo Helbrans, the ultra-Orthodox rabbi whom Mrs. (Name Removed)
had accused of kidnapping her son, pleaded guilty in State Supreme Court
in Brooklyn to conspiring to kidnap the youth. Under an arrangement with
the Brooklyn District Attorney, Charles J. Hynes, Rabbi Helbrans is to be
sentenced to five years' probation and 250 hours of community service.
Jewish Youth And Parents To Split
New York Times - March 25, 1994
A Jewish teen-ager reunited with his parents after he disappeared for two
years in a struggle over his religious training will be separated from them
again, a judge ruled here today.
Judge Bernard Stanger of Rockland County Family Court nullified the father's
custody of (Boy's Name Removed), who ran away from his parents earlier this
week, and said the boy will live with an unidentified Orthodox family in
Rockland County for now.
The 15-year-old's parents and his religious teacher, Rabbi Aryeh Zaks of
Monsey, will have restricted visiting privileges, the parents' lawyers said.
Judge Stanger is to decide on April 4 whether the case ultimately should
be settled in New York, or New Jersey -- where the boy lived before he
disappeared for two years -- or in Israel.
The youth and his parents, (Father's Name Removed) and (Name Removed), are
all Israeli citizens.
The struggle over (Boy's Name Removed)'s upbringing began in April 1992,
when he disappeared while studying with Shlomo Helbrans, a Hasidic rabbi
in Brooklyn. The boy said his mother was not religious enough.
He reappeared on Feb. 25 in Monsey, days before Rabbi Helbrans was to go
on trial on kidnapping charges. The rabbi pleaded guilty to a lesser charge.
Last week Judge Stanger awarded custody of the boy to Mr. (Father's Name
Removed) and granted Mrs. (Name Removed) unlimited visitation.
On Monday, however, the boy ran away from Mrs. (Name Removed)'s home in Ramsey,
N.J., and was detained by the police as he headed for Rabbi Zaks's house.
He contended again that his parents were not Orthodox enough.
Judge Orders Abduction Trial In Dispute Over Jewish
By JOSEPH P. FRIED
New York Times - April 14, 1994
Saying that only 12 impartial people on a jury could disentangle the emotionally
and politically charged saga, a Brooklyn judge yesterday ordered an
ultra-Orthodox rabbi, his wife and a third defendant to stand trial on charges
that they kidnapped a Jewish teen-ager from his parents.
In the latest twist in a passionate battle over the boy's body and soul,
Justice Thaddeus E. Owens rejected a plea deal granting probation to the
accused rabbi -- a deal the judge had already accepted last month -- after
hearing yesterday from the boy, his divorced parents, the rabbi and some
of the lawyers in the case in an hourlong session in a packed courtroom.
The 15-year-old boy, (Boy's Name Removed) (Father's Name Removed), formerly
known as (Boy's Name Removed), told the judge that he had not been kidnapped
but "ran away" from his mother two years ago because she had been abusive
to him.
(Boy's Name Removed) disappeared in April 1992 after his mother, who had
emigrated from Israel, sent the boy for pre-bar mitzvah religious training
to a Brooklyn yeshiva then run by the accused rabbi, Shlomo Helbrans, 31.
The boy resurfaced publicly in Rockland County in late February.
"If I am returned to either of my parents again, I will run away as many
times as I am returned to them," (Boy's Name Removed) vowed, sitting on the
witness stand in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, one of four courts in which
various aspects of the case are currently being contested. The youth, wearing
a yarmulke, charged that his parents, who are not orthodox Jews, "have a
hatred of my religious beliefs and of all people who are orthodox." Custody
in Dispute.
(Boy's Name Removed) is now staying at the home of a Rockland County rabbi
under a Family Court order as his custody is contested in that court; issues
related to the custody are being argued in Federal District Court in White
Minutes before the boy denounced his mother and father yesterday in Justice
Owens's courtroom, the parents, (Name Removed) and (Father's Name Removed),
insisted that their son had been abducted and brainwashed by religious zealots
who, after hiding him for nearly all of the last two years, had gained a
plea bargain that avoided prison time because of political influence.
"In the last two years, me and my kids and my parents and all the rest of
the family lived without knowing if (Boy's Name Removed) is still alive,"
said Ms. (Name Removed), 32, who lives in Ramsey, N.J. "I remember nights
without sleeping, and crying and a lot of pain and missing my son."
Her former husband, a 34-year-old Israeli, said of the defendants: "They
know they have the power to control the District Attorney's office." The
rejected plea agreement would have allowed Rabbi Helbrans to receive five
years' probation and 250 hours of community service in return for pleading
guilty last month to fourth-degree criminal conspiracy. Criticism of Parents
A co-defendant, Mordechai Weisz, 21, would have been sentenced to only five
years' probation for his plea to the same charge. Kidnapping charges punishable
by up to 25 years in prison would have been dropped against the two men,
and all charges were to have been dismissed against the rabbi's wife, Malka,
Rabbi Helbrans, a Monsey, N.Y., resident who heads a small Hasidic sect,
silently read from a prayer book during most of yesterday's proceedings.
He denounced Ms. (Name Removed) and Mr. (Father's Name Removed) when the
judge asked if he had anything to say.
"I have never met such strange and terrible persons as these two," he said.
"They told so much lies, and terrible lies that my English language is too
poor to answer."
The prosecutor from the Brooklyn district attorney's office, Richard Faughnan,
said nothing during the entire session, but later a spokesman for District
Attorney Charles J. Hynes denied that the plea deal had resulted from any
political influence wielded by the defendants or their supporters. Doubts
About Hynes's Motives
"All of the decisions in the case were based on the facts, the law and the
best interests of the child," said the spokesman, Patrick Clark. He said
his office is ready to proceed to trial on June 20, the date ordered by the
In rejecting the plea deal he had previously approved, Justice Owens, who
is known for his blunt, no-nonsense manner, said, "I do what I think is the
correct thing to do and then I look for the law to support it."
He gave several reasons for changing his mind, including the statements he
had just heard from (Boy's Name Removed)'s parents. They "create a perception
here that this is a political ploy, because Joe Hynes is running for Attorney
General," he said, using the District Attorney's popular name and referring
to his current campaign for the state's highest legal post. He added that
the statements also suggested "that Rabbi Helbrans can get away with this
because he's a religious person."
The judge also cited a pre-sentencing report in which he said Rabbi Helbrans
had said he "took the plea on the advice of his counsel" but believed he
had not committed a crime. "Why should Rabbi Helbrans walk around with a
cloud over his head?" the judge said.
Ms. (Name Removed) and Mr. (Father's Name Removed) later expressed appreciation
for the judge's action, while lawyers for the defendants and (Boy's Name
Removed) expressed disappointment. The rabbi's lawyer, George Meissner, said
he would seek an appellate order to reinstate the plea deal.
Jewish Teen-Ager Fights Return to His
By ROBERT HANLEY,
New York Times - April 21, 1994
The 15-year-old Jewish boy at the heart of a custody fight testified today
he was dissatisfied with the religious life style his parents provided during
a four-day stay with them in March.
The complaints by the youth, (Boy's Name Removed) (Father's Name Removed),
that his surroundings from March 17 to 21 did not allow him to be as strictly
observant of his faith as he wished came at a hearing that opened in New
York Family Court here amid an intriguing flurry of legal cross-currents
and a high-stakes, high-pressure atmosphere.
Highlighting the tensions surrounding the case, tempers flared during a noontime
court recess between (Boy's Name Removed)'s mother, (Name Removed), and the
father-in-law of Rabbi Aryeh Zaks, whom (Boy's Name Removed) wants appointed
as his guardian.
As the father-in-law, Leib Waldman, walked past Ms. (Name Removed) in the
courthouse lobby, she struck him on the back with a folded newspaper. Afterward,
she said he had called her a "hooker." Tough Words Outside Court
Mr. Waldman denied the charge. "In my life, I've never used that word," he
"He's lucky I don't punch him in his face," Ms. (Name Removed) said after
court guards escorted her outside.
Both filed complaints. Ms. (Name Removed) charged Mr. Waldman with a disorderly
persons violation and Mr. Waldman countered by charging her with harassment,
lawyers said.
Their cross-complaints today are relatively minor elements in the legal dueling
at work in the fight for custody of the youth between Ms. (Name Removed)
and (Boy's Name Removed)'s father, (Father's Name Removed), on one side and
Rabbi Zaks on the other.
On Tuesday, a New Jersey Family Court judge, Birger M. Sween, held that his
court had jurisdiction over (Boy's Name Removed)'s case because Ms. (Name
Removed) lives in that state now. Today, the New York Family Court judge
who has been handling the case, Bernard E. Stanger, declined, as is his right,
to honor Judge Sween's order. He also refused to adjourn today's hearing
to allow the parents to appeal immediately. And, late today, he said he would
sign an order barring removal of (Boy's Name Removed) from Rockland County.
One legal issue casting a shadow over the custody fight here is the pending
trial in Brooklyn of another rabbi, Shlomo Helbrans, on a charge he kidnapped
(Boy's Name Removed) after his mother took him to Rabbi Helbrans in early
1992 for instruction for his bar mitzvah. The youth has said he willingly
chose to live a secret life from early 1992 until late this February with
various Orthodox families in Rockland County. His parents and lawyers contend
now that he has been brainwashed and needs psychiatric care. Complains About
Life Style
Today's hearing focused on whether (Boy's Name Removed)'s parents kept an
agreement with Judge Stanger on March 17 to provide religious training and
an Orthodox atmosphere, in exchange for the judge's returning (Boy's Name
Removed) to them.
After four days with his parents, (Boy's Name Removed) ran away from his
mother's home in Ramsey, N.J., on March 21 and later renewed his request
that Rabbi Zaks be his guardian.
Today's hearing was closed to reporters. Lawyers said out of court that (Boy's
Name Removed) complained about an Orthodox family in Bergen County, N.J.,
who had agreed to house him.
He disapproved of a TV and a VCR set in the home and complained that the
yarmulke that the cantor wore there was too small, the lawyers said. He left
the house after a day and moved into a motel with his father.
Rabbi Withdraws Plea
New York Times - July 12, 1994
A Hasidic rabbi yesterday withdrew his guilty plea to a lesser charge and
will stand trial on charges of kidnapping a Jewish teen-ager from his parents.
The rabbi, Shlomo Helbrans, is accused of kidnapping (Boy's Name Removed)
(Father's Name Removed), 15, who disappeared in April 1992 while attending
a Brooklyn yeshiva that was run by the rabbi. The boy resurfaced publicly
early this year, saying he had not been kidnapped but had run away from his
mother because she was abusive.
In March, the rabbi pleaded guilty to criminal conspiracy in a deal in which
he was to get probation. But Justice Thaddeus Owens of State Supreme Court
in Brooklyn rejected the deal. The kidnapping charge is punishable on conviction
by up to 25 years in prison.
Custody-Rift Youth Is Reported Missing
New York Times - September 18, 1994
(Boy's Name Removed), who has been at the center of a long custody battle
after he disappeared with a Hasidic rabbi in Brooklyn, has disappeared again,
his mother says.
This time, a lawyer for (Name Removed) said on Friday that (Boy's Name Removed),
15, had run away from a youth residence in Paris.
Authorities detained him on Sept. 10 for traveling on someone else's passport.
It is not clear what he was doing in France.
The lawyer, Rosalind Jacobson, said that as far as she knew, the boy had
not returned to the United States, and his mother was still in France searching
for him.
Mrs. (Name Removed) shares custody of (Boy's Name Removed) with Rabbi Aryeh
Zaks, who was named his legal guardian in May. Rabbi Zaks is not the rabbi
accused of kidnapping (Boy's Name Removed).
(Boy's Name Removed)'s lawyer, Eric Thorsen, said he had filed a motion to
end the mother's visitation rights, while Ms. Jacobson is seeking to end
Rabbi Zaks's guardianship.
Both sides fighting for custody of the youth are to appear in Rockland County
Family Court on Friday.
Rabbi Zaks's spokesman and brother, Isidore, said earlier this week that
the boy was "safe and sound and where he should be." He refused to elaborate.
Judge Bernard Stanger of Rockland County has forbidden the parties to reveal
where (Boy's Name Removed) is or when he will return to New York.
(Boy's Name Removed) first disappeared from his mother's home in New Jersey
in April 1992 while studying for his bar mitzvah in Brooklyn with Rabbi Shlomo
Helbrans, a Hasidic rabbi.
Trial Is Set for 3 on Charges of Kidnapping
Hasidic Youth
By JOSEPH P. FRIED
New York Times - October 2, 1994
In April 1992, a 13-year-old Jewish boy from Ramsey, N.J., disappeared after
receiving bar mitzvah instruction at a Brooklyn yeshiva run by an ultra-Orthodox
rabbi. He resurfaced publicly last February in Rockland County.
For nearly two years, the agonized parents of the boy, (Boy's Name Removed)
(Father's Name Removed), now 15, did not know where he was and said that
he had been abducted and brainwashed by religious zealots bent on converting
him to a devout brand of Judaism.
But the rabbi, Shlomo Helbrans, responded that (Boy's Name Removed) had
voluntarily run away from a home in which he had been physically abused,
and (Boy's Name Removed) made the same contention after he reappeared. The
teen-ager also vowed that if forced to return to his parents, he would flee
-- a promise on which he has since made good.
Tomorrow, in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, the emotionally charged and
legally twisted tale will be back in court as Rabbi Helbrans, the rabbi's
wife and another man are scheduled to go on trial on kidnapping charges.
The trial is to begin as the bitter dispute over (Boy's Name Removed)'s custody
continues -- and as his parents once more do not know his whereabouts.
The youth's lawyer said on Friday that the teen-ager (whose name is pronounced
Shy FEE-ma ROO-vin) was not missing. But the lawyer, Eric Ole Thorsen, said
he could not divulge (Boy's Name Removed)'s whereabouts because of an order
imposed by the Rockland County Family Court, where a custody battle is being
waged between (Boy's Name Removed)'s mother, (Name Removed) of Ramsey, N.J.,
and Rabbi Aryeh Zaks of Suffern, N.Y. The two agreed in May to shared custody
of the teen-ager.
Last month, (Boy's Name Removed) turned up in Paris with the passport of
another person, after running off to a yeshiva camp in the French Alps. But
he is no longer in Paris, Mr. Thorsen said.
The lawyer said that (Boy's Name Removed) would testify for the defense at
the trial of Rabbi Helbrans, 31, a resident of Monsey, N.Y., who heads a
small Hasidic sect -- and his co-defendants, his wife, Malka, 32, and Mordechai
Weisz, 21, of Brooklyn.
"These people did not kidnap me and did nothing wrong, and I will testify
to that if their case goes to trial," (Boy's Name Removed) recently wrote
in a letter to Justice Thaddeus E. Owens, who is presiding at the trial.
The rabbi's lawyer, Paul K. Rooney, said on Friday, "Rabbi Helbrans never
had any intent to kidnap and did not kidnap this young man."
Joyce David, Mrs. Helbrans's lawyer, said: "(Boy's Name Removed) was a troubled
child and ran away from home before he ever met the Helbranses. There never
was a kidnapping."
Mr. Weisz's lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, said his client was one of many young
Hasidic men who "had nothing to do" with Rabbi Helbrans's sect, but who "became
involved in an effort to help" (Boy's Name Removed)'s family and found themselves
"unwittingly involved in what turns out to have been an alleged kidnapping."
The major prosecution witnesses are expected to be (Boy's Name Removed)'s
parents, who are divorced: his father, (Father's Name Removed), 34, who lives
in Israel, and Ms. (Name Removed), 33, who immigrated to the United States
from Israel in 1989 with her second husband and her four children. (Boy's
Name Removed)'s parents are not Orthodox Jews.
Patrick Clark, a spokesman for District Attorney Charles J. Hynes of Brooklyn,
declined to discuss the prosecution's evidence. But it is known that Mr.
(Father's Name Removed), wearing a hidden tape recorder provided by the police,
taped a conversation with Rabbi Helbrans not long after (Boy's Name Removed)
disappeared. Mr. (Father's Name Removed) has said that the rabbi is heard
on the tape offering him $10,000 in exchange for custody of (Boy's Name Removed)
and that an aide to the rabbi is heard threatening to kill Mr. (Father's
Name Removed).
Ms. (Name Removed) has testified in court that she once took refuge in a
shelter for battered women because her second husband abused her, but she
has insisted that (Boy's Name Removed) was not abused.
The trial almost did not happen. Last March, Rabbi Helbrans and Mr. Weisz
pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of criminal conspiracy in a plea deal under
which they were to be sentenced to five years' probation, while all charges
against Mrs. Helbrans were to be dismissed.
But a month later, Justice Thaddeus Owens rejected the deal after (Boy's
Name Removed)'s parents argued that the arrangement was too lenient. The
defendants again face the original state kidnapping charge, punishable on
conviction by up to 25 years in prison.
Mother Tells Of Pressures On Jewish Son
By a Rabbi
By JOSEPH P. FRIED
New York Times - October 12, 1994
Crying on the witness stand, the mother of a Jewish teen-ager who prosecutors
say was kidnapped by an ultra-Orthodox rabbi and his wife testified yesterday
that shortly before her son disappeared for nearly two years the defendants
intensely pressured her to leave the boy with them.
The mother, (Name Removed), said that at one point before her son, (Boy's
Name Removed), vanished in April 1992 she had to call the police for help
in getting her son away from the rabbi's yeshiva in Brooklyn where she had
allowed the boy to stay for nearly a month.
She testified that she called the police after the rabbi, Shlomo Helbrans,
said " 'If you don't want your son to be religious I have the right to take
him away from you' " and after one of the rabbi's followers "held my arm
and twisted my arm."
She acknowledged that her son, who is now 15, wanted to stay at the Borough
Park yeshiva rather than go home with her to Ramsey, N.J., but she suggested
that he had been brainwashed. "He had a strange look in his eyes, like someone
who's here and not here," the 33-year-old Ms. (Name Removed) told the jury
in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn.
Mrs. (Name Removed) was the first witness in the emotionally charged case
that stems from the bitter tug-of-war over the boy's care and religious
upbringing. She took the stand after prosecutors and defense lawyers, in
their opening statements, painted sharply contrasting pictures of the dispute
involving the worlds of secular and ultra-Orthodox Jewry.
Assistant District Attorney Alan M. Vinegrad said that Rabbi Helbrans and
his wife, Malka, 32, and other conspirators "took (Boy's Name Removed) from
his parents and hid (Boy's Name Removed) from his parents" for nearly two
But the rabbi's lawyer, Paul K. Rooney, said there was no kidnapping because
the youth ran away from a troubled and dysfunctional family in which his
stepfather "beat him up, pushed him around, snorted cocaine and beat the
mother" so that she and her children "ended up in a shelter" for battered
"The rabbi and his wife gave ths boy sanctuary, as anybody would, with no
criminal intent whatsoever, much less kidnapping him or trying to steal him
from his mother," Mr. Rooney declared.
Rabbi Helbrans heads a small Hasidic sect.
Mrs. Helbrans's lawyer, Joyce David, questioned Mrs. (Name Removed)'s character
and credibility, charging that she "does not do well meeting her
responsibilities" as a parent and suggesting to the jury that her testimony
would be influenced by the hope of making money on a movie or book about
the case.
With the jury out of the room, Ms. David told the judge, Justice Thaddeus
E. Owens, that she would question Mrs. (Name Removed) about information that
Mrs. (Name Removed) is infatuated with Mr. Vinegrad, which could further
color her testimony. Mr. Vinegrad told the judge that "the source of the
information is unreliable."
Mr. Vinegrad, a Federal prosecutor, has been designated a special Brooklyn
assitant district attorney so that he can take part in the state trial. He
led a Federal investigation of (Boy's Name Removed)'s disappearance while
the Brooklyn district attorney's office also investigated the case.
(Boy's Name Removed) disappeared after receiving bar mitzvah instruction
at Rabbi Helbrans's yeshiva. Mrs. (Name Removed) said yesterday she had sent
him there at the recommendation of her aunt. (Boy's Name Removed) resurfaced
publicly last February in Rockland County, and is now the subject of a custody
dispute between his mother and another rabbi, Aryeh Zaks, of Suffern, N.Y.
Since reappearing, he has said he was not kidnapped but voluntarily ran away
from home.
Mrs. (Name Removed), who said she does not consider herself religious, said
that at one point Rabbi Helbrans said to her, " 'Why are you sending your
kids to public school?' He told me it's not good for Jewish kids to go to
school with black kids, Italians and other Christians."
This testimony brought angry objections from the defense lawyers, who called
Metro Digest
New York Times - October 25, 2006
Prosecutors in the trial of Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans maintain he criminally
abetted the disappearance of a 15-year-old.
Boy's Father Testifies in Kidnap Trial of
By JOSEPH P. FRIED
New York Times - October 25, 1994
The father of a Jewish teen-ager testified yesterday that an ultra-Orthodox
rabbi who is charged with kidnapping the youth asked the father to write
a phony letter after the boy disappeared, authorizing the rabbi to hide the
boy from his mother.
The prosecution is arguing in the Brooklyn trial of the rabbi, Shlomo Helbrans,
that the rabbi criminally abetted the April 1992 disappearance of the teen-ager,
(Boy's Name Removed), who was then 13.
The youth vanished after his mother, (Name Removed) of Ramsey, N.J., had
sent him for bar mitzvah instruction to a Brooklyn yeshiva then run by the
rabbi, who heads a small Hasidic sect. (Boy's Name Removed)'s family did
not see him again until he resurfaced early this year in Rockland County,
where the youth, now 15, reportedly lived under another name with Orthodox
Jewish families.
Lawyers for Rabbi Helbrans, 31, and his wife, Malka, 33, who is also charged
with kidnapping in the case, say that (Boy's Name Removed) was not abducted
but ran away from a troubled family in which his stepfather beat his mother
and him, sending them to a shelter for battered women.
Testifying for the prosecution in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, Mr. (Father's
Name Removed), a 35-year-old Israeli citizen who has long been divorced from
Mrs. (Name Removed), said he learned from an Israeli newspaper article in
late April 1992 that his son had allegedly been kidnapped on April 5, 1992.
He said he then had a series of conversations with Rabbi Helbrans by telephone
from Israel, while preparing to travel to New York to find his son.
"He said the police are looking for (Boy's Name Removed) and they already
asked him questions about the case," Mr. (Father's Name Removed), who works
as an aide to lawyers in Israel, quoted Rabbi Helbrans as telling him in
an April 29 phone conversation. He said the rabbi then "asked me to write
a letter" that said, "I'm asking him to keep (Boy's Name Removed) for me
and not let have him until I come to the United States."
He said the rabbi had instructed him to date the letter April 1 -- four days
before (Boy's Name Removed) vanished.
Transcript at Rabbi's Trial Is Interpreted
in Two Ways
By JOSEPH P. FRIED
New York Times- October 26, 1994
An ultra-Orthodox rabbi accused of having kidnapped a Jewish teen-ager said
he would pay $10,000 for the youth's mother to give up custody of the boy,
according to a secretly recorded conversation presented as evidence at his
The prosecution in the Brooklyn trial holds that the transcript of the
conversation shows that the rabbi, Shlomo Helbrans, and his wife, Malka,
criminally assisted in the disappearance of the teen-ager. The boy, (Boy's
Name Removed) (Father's Name Removed), vanished in April 1992 after his mother
sent him for bar mitzvah instruction to a Brooklyn yeshiva that the rabbi
ran. He was 13 when he disappeared and is now 15; he did not resurface until
last February.
But the defense at the trial maintains that the transcript shows that the
rabbi was willing to pay the $10,000 to help (Boy's Name Removed)'s father
obtain custody of the youth from his mother -- the parents had long been
divorced -- as part of an overall effort by the rabbi to help the troubled
teen-ager. The defense insists that the boy ran away from a home in which
his stepfather had beaten him and his mother, sending them to seek refuge
in aa shelter for battered women.
Each side chose excerpts from the transcript of the two-hour conversation
to back its argument as the jurors in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn rustled
pages of the transcript. The jurors did not hear the conversation itself,
which was conducted in Hebrew between Rabbi Helbrans and (Boy's Name Removed)'s
father, (Father's Name Removed), on May 3, 1992, nearly a month after (Boy's
Name Removed) disappeared. Instead, they were given an English translation.
The conversation occurred when Mr. (Father's Name Removed) went to the rabbi's
yeshiva wearing a hidden microphone given him by the police. The police had
been searching for (Boy's Name Removed) since his mother, (Name Removed)
of Ramsey, N.J., had gone to them saying that the rabbi -- who heads a small
Hasidic sect -- and his wife and associates had kidnapped the boy.
With Mr. (Father's Name Removed) on the witness stand, a prosecutor, Michael
Vecchione, read an excerpt from the transcript in which Rabbi Helbrans is
quoted as having said to Mr. (Father's Name Removed), "The amount that I
committing (sic) myself to is in the neighborhood of $10,000. More than that
I would not be able to."
Mr. Vecchione also read excerpts meant to show that Rabbi Helbrans intensely
wanted custody of the boy, like one excerpt quoting the rabbi as saying,
"I love him with all my soul," and and another quoting him as saying, "Should
he not receive an orthodox education it will hurt me a great deal."
But the rabbi's lawyer, Paul Rooney, read excerpts in which the rabbi was
also quoted in the long conversation as telling Mr. (Father's Name Removed)
such things as, "I personally do not have an interest in his staying specifically
with me," and -- regarding where (Boy's Name Removed) was at that time, weeks
after he had vanished -- "I do not now know where he is."
Orthodox Rabbi Found Guilty Of Kidnapping
a Jewish Youth
By JOSEPH P. FRIED
New York Times - November 10, 1994
Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans, the leader of a small Hasidic sect in Brooklyn, was
convicted yesterday of kidnapping a Jewish teenager who disappeared from
his family for two years and became the center of an emotionally charged
battle between the worlds of secular and ultra-Orthodox Jewry.
The rabbi's wife, who collapsed sobbing in the courtroom after her husband
was taken away to jail, was acquitted of the kidnapping charge but convicted
of criminal conspiracy in the case.
A Brooklyn jury deliberated for less than five hours before it returned its
verdicts against Rabbi Helbrans his wife, Malka, in the disappearance of
(Boy's Name Removed) (Father's Name Removed), who vanished in April 1992,
when he was 13. The rabbi faces a maximum sentence of eight and a third to
25 years in prison when he is sentenced Nov. 22. Although Mrs. Helbrans could
be sentenced to up to four years in prison, the judge has said he would overturn
any guilty verdict against her.
The teen-ager, now 15, disappeared after he met the rabbi when his mother
brought him for bar mitzvah instruction to the Brooklyn yeshiva the rabbi
then ran.
The prosecution charged that the Helbranses had kidnapped (Boy's Name Removed)
-- who resurfaced last February in Rockland County -- by influencing him
to convert from a typical teen-ager who liked sports and video games into
a young adherent of the devoutly orthodox Hasidic ways, and by then conspiring
with others to encourage and help him to run away and hide.
But the rabbi's lawyers held that (Boy's Name Removed) was a troubled youth
who voluntarily fled from a dysfunctional family in which his stepfather
had beaten him and his mother, (Name Removed) of Ramsey, N.J., driving her
and her children into a shelter for battered women. The lawyers also charged
that the boy was beaten by his mother.
The defense said Rabbi Helbrans, 32, and his wife, 33, immigrants from Israel,
like (Boy's Name Removed) and his family, had not done anything to help the
youth disappear but had simply given him sanctuary in the weeks before he
ran away on his own.
As the verdict was delivered, Rabbi Helbrans stared grimly at the defense
table. In the courtroom gallery were some of the 25 Orthodox Jews who had
prayed while waiting for the jury to return a verdict.
Mrs. (Name Removed), also sitting in the gallery, bit her lip and appeared
to be fighting back tears. Later she told reporters: "I lost my son because
of Rabbi Helbrans and finally I see justice. He got what he deserves and
he has to pay for his crime."
Saying "we're bitterly disappointed," Rabbi Helbrans's lawyer, Paul Rooney,
promised an appeal.
Despite yesterday's verdict, the long and complex saga of (Boy's Name Removed)
and his family remains unresolved. Last week the youth, who has recently
been living with another rabbi in Suffern, N.Y., filed a petition in Rockland
County Family Court seeking emancipation from his parents.
Since he re-emerged in February, his visits with his mother and father have
been marked by rancor and recrimination. His father, (Father's Name Removed),
has long been divorced from Mrs. (Name Removed).
The judge in the trial in State Supreme Court, Justice Thaddeus E. Owens,
told the prosecution and defense lawyers earlier in the trial that if Mrs.
Helbrans was convicted he would reject that verdict because he did not find
sufficient evidence to warrant a conviction. The jury was not in the courtroom
when he said this.
Yesterday, the judge postponed making a final determination on her case until
Dec. 15, and he allowed her to remain free without bail.
One of the prosecutors in the case, Assistant District Attorney Michael
Vecchione, told reporters, "The jury saw there was a kidnapping, as unusual
as it was."
A juror, Condell White, said the jury believed that Rabbi Helbrans "was making
the decisions behind closed doors" that led to the help that (Boy's Name
Removed) had in disappearing.
Although (Boy's Name Removed) testified for the defense and said he ran away
voluntarily, Justice Owens had instructed the jurors that the youth's decision
did not by itself absolve the defendants of the charges, given (Boy's Name
Removed)'s age.
The judge said that under state law, a person can still be guilty of kidnapping
if he helps somebody under 16 disappear from his parents or legal guardians
without their consent.
The five-week trial was the climax of a highly publicized case that offered
a rare look at the religious and social tensions between Orthodox and
nonreligious Jews. On most days, as the trial progressed, there was a heavy
turnout of Hasidic and other Orthodox Jews who packed the benches in the
downtown Brooklyn courthouse, the men and women sitting on separate sides
as if in an Orthodox synagogue.
Although not religious herself, Mrs. (Name Removed) testified at the trial
that she had sent her son to the rabbi's yeshiva at the recommendation of
her aunt. After (Boy's Name Removed) vanished, his family did not see him
again -- or even know where he was -- until last February. In her testimony,
Mrs. (Name Removed) said she was consumed with agony during that period.
Joyce David, the lawyer for Mrs. Helbrans, termed the defendants "people
who enjoy doing mitzvahs, and one of the mitzvahs -- or good deeds -- is
helping people who are in trouble."
In his testimony, (Boy's Name Removed) said he decided to run away because
his mother regularly beat him and added that the Helbranses had not helped
him flee. But in a vigorous cross-examination, one of the prosecutors, Alan
Vinegrad, sought to show that (Boy's Name Removed) was inventing stories
of abuse by his mother in an effort to help the defendants.
The prosecution evidence included statements that (Boy's Name Removed)'s
parents testified the defendants had made, including the rabbi's purported
remark: "If you don't want your son to be religious, I have the right to
take him away from you."
Rabbi Given Prison Term In Kidnapping Of
By JOSEPH P. FRIED
New York Times - November 23, 1994
In a courtroom rife with rancorous passion, an ultra-Orthodox rabbi was sentenced
yesterday to 4 to 12 years in prison for kidnapping a Jewish teen-ager who
disappeared from his family for two years.
Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans, the leader of a small Hasidic sect, was given the
prison term after he declared fervently that he was the victim of the kind
of "blood libel" that had "cost the lives of millions," and after the youth's
mother spoke with equal intensity about losing her son to "people who control
his mind."
"This kidnap is not over for me," the mother, (Name Removed), said in a packed
Brooklyn courtroom, referring to a battle she has been waging with another
rabbi for custody of her son, (Boy's Name Removed) (Father's Name Removed),
since he resurfaced last February in Rockland County. The youth, now 15,
was 13 when he vanished in 1992 after Mrs. (Name Removed) sent him for bar
mitzvah instruction to a yeshiva Rabbi Helbrans then ran in Brooklyn.
(Boy's Name Removed) has said he was not kidnapped but ran away from a mother
who beat him, an accusation Mrs. (Name Removed) has called a lie put into
his mind by the rabbi and his followers in "brainwashing" him.
"It was very hard and painful for me to sit in this courtroom and hear my
son accuse me of beating him," the 33-year-old woman from Ramsey, N.J., said
yesterday as she recalled (Boy's Name Removed)'s testimony as a defense witness
in the five-week State Supreme Court trial that led to Rabbi Helbrans's
conviction on Nov. 9 on second-degree kidnapping charges.
But addressing Justice Thaddeus E. Owens, the 32-year-old rabbi, most recently
a resident of Monsey, N.Y., insisted the pain was on his side. "I and my
family and my community have passed through the seven partitions of hell,"
he exclaimed during a half-hour statement in which he switched back and forth
from broken English to Hebrew and Yiddish, with translations by an interpreter
standing next to him.
In a courtroom where uniformed court officers filled the aisles to assure
order and where most of the spectator benches were occupied by Hasidic and
other Orthodox Jews -- men on one side, women on the other, as if in an Orthodox
synagogue -- the bitter feelings that have been part of the case from the
start poured over as the rabbi was led back to jail after he had insisted
on his innocence and Justice Owens had sentenced him.
The rabbi's wife, Malka, 33, cried out in the gallery: "I want to talk to
the judge! I want to say the truth!"
"You kidnapped my son!" Mrs. (Name Removed) shouted back from another row
as court officers ordered the spectators to remain seated while she and her
small party left and many of the Hasidic and other Orthodox people expressed
dismay at the sentence but left the courthouse without any disorder. The
rabbi could have been sentenced to as much as 8 1/3 to 25 years in prison.
Mrs. Helbrans, who was tried along with her husband, was acquitted of the
kidnapping charge but convicted of criminal conspiracy. But Justice Owens
has said he planned to dismiss her conviction, and while he ordered the rabbi
jailed upon his conviction, he permitted her to remain free pending her next
court appearance on Dec. 15.
After the sentencing, lawyers for the rabbi hurried to the Appellate Division
of State Supreme Court in an effort to have him released pending the outcome
of his planned appeal. But the appellate bench put off action on the release
request until it receives briefs next week.
The rabbi and his wife, like (Boy's Name Removed) and his family, are emigrants
from Israel.
Prosecutors had argued at the trial that the Helbranses kidnapped (Boy's
Name Removed) by influencing him to convert from a nonreligous teen-ager
to an intensely religious one, and by then conspiring with others to encourage
and help him run away and hide.
The rabbi's lawyers held that (Boy's Name Removed) was a troubled youth who
voluntarily fled from a dysfunctional family in which his stepfather had
beaten him and his mother, driving her and her children into a shelter for
battered women.
Justice Owens instructed the jury, however, that under state law a person
could be found guilty of kidnapping if it was determined the person had helped
someone under 16 get away from his parents without their consent.
New York Times - November 23, 1994
An ultra-Orthodox rabbi was sentenced to 4 to 12 years in prison for kidnapping
a Jewish teen-ager who disappeared from his family for two years. Rabbi Shlomo
Helbrans was given the prison term after he declared that he was the victim
of a "blood libel," and after the youth's mother spoke with equal intensity
about losing her son to "people who control his mind."
Man Pleads Guilty in Plot to Kidnap Jewish
New York Times - December 11, 1994
A 21-year-old Hasidic Jew pleaded guilty yesterday to conspiring to kidnap (Boy's Name Removed) (Father's Name Removed), a Jewish teen-ager who disappeared for two years before resurfacing in Rockland County, N.Y.
Mordechai Weisz, a Brooklyn resident, entered the plea in State Supreme Court
in Brooklyn under an arrangement in which he is expected to be sentenced
to five years' probation and fined $10,000. The money is to be given to charities
selected by the Brooklyn District Attorney's office.
A Hasidic rabbi, Shlomo Helbrans, was recently convicted of kidnapping in
the case, and the rabbi's wife, Malka, was convicted of conspiracy. (Boy's
Name Removed), now 15, was a 13-year-old Ramsey, N.J., resident when he
disappeared in April 1992, after his mother sent him for bar mitzvah instruction
to a yeshiva that Rabbi Helbrans then ran in Brooklyn.
(Boy's Name Removed) was missing until February 1994, when he reappeared
in the custody of Rabbi Aryeh Zaks of Rockland County, with whom he still
A battle for custody of the youth continues between Rabbi Zaks and (Boy's
Name Removed)'s mother, (Name Removed), who is allowed to see him once a
(Boy's Name Removed) has said he was not kidnapped, but ran away from a mother
who beat him, an accusation Mrs. (Name Removed) has called a lie put into
his mind by the rabbi and his followers in "brainwashing" him.
Mr. Weisz was originally charged with kidnapping, but the case was severed
from the charges against Rabbi Helbrans.
Malka Helbrans, 33, who was tried along with her husband, was acquitted of
the kidnapping charge but convicted of criminal conspiracy.
Judge Upsets Conviction of Rabbi's Wife
By JOSEPH P. FRIED
New York Times - December 16, 1994
A Brooklyn judge yesterday threw out the conviction of a Hasidic rabbi's
wife on charges that she conspired with her husband and others to help a
Jewish teen-ager hide from his family for two years. Her husband has been
convicted of kidnapping in the case.
"I feel the evidence was legally insufficient," Justice Thaddeus E. Owens
of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn said in dismissing the wife's conviction.
On Nov. 9, a jury had convicted the woman, Malka Helbrans, of conspiring
to kidnap the teen-ager, (Boy's Name Removed) (Father's Name Removed).
While Mrs. Helbrans appeared in a state courtroom in Brooklyn, her husband,
Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans, was in Federal court in Manhattan fighting a battle
of his own. The rabbi, citing religious grounds, is trying to prevent the
state prison system from shaving off his beard.
The rabbi is soon to be transferred into the state system, which has a policy
of shaving off a new prisoner's beard so it can take a picture of him
clean-shaven as well as bearded. The purpose is to aid a hunt should the
prisoner escape and shave off the beard, state officials say. The prisoner
may regrow a beard, though not in excess of one inch, or shorter than the
rabbi's beard is now, his lawyer said.
Since his conviction, the 32-year-old rabbi has been held in a city jail.
The New York City jail system has no requirement for shaving a beard, said
his lawyer, Gerald L. Shargel. He said yesterday that he expected that the
rabbi would be temporarily transferred to a Federal jail in Manhattan, pending
the outcome of the litigation over his beard, where he also would not face
a shaving requirement. The hearing in that litigation will continue on Dec.
In arguing that Rabbi Helbrans's beard not be shaved, Mr. Shargel said his
client, as an ultra-Orthodox Jew, "believes his beard should not be touched"
because of the biblical command in Leviticus 19:27, which the lawyer quoted
as saying: "You shall not round off the corners of the hair of your head.
Neither shalt thou shave the corners of thy beard."
Mr. Shargel said 22 states plus the New York City and Federal penal systems
"have no requirement for prisoners to be clean-shaven, even for an initial
Jeff Maclin, a spokesman for the New York State Attorney General's office,
said the shaving requirement for new prisoners had been supported by a 1984
Federal court ruling in the case of a Rastafarian prisoner.
The long-running case involving (Boy's Name Removed) (Father's Name Removed)
has been charged with emotion. (Boy's Name Removed) vanished in April 1992,
when he was 13, after his mother, (Name Removed), sent him for bar mitzvah
instruction to the Brooklyn yeshiva that Rabbi Helbrans then ran. The youth,
now 15, resurfaced last February in Rockland County, saying he had run away
voluntarily from a mother who beat him, an accusation Mrs. (Name Removed)
has called a lie put into his mind by the rabbi and his followers. She held
that they had brainwashed him while influencing him to become an Orthodox
Jew and helping him disappear.
Mordechai Weisz, 21, a Hasidic Jew, pleaded guilty to criminally conspiring
in (Boy's Name Removed)'s disappearance.
In lifting Mrs. Helbrans's conviction, the judge said he did so even though
he believed she was part of the conspiracy. He said he became convinced of
her guilt on Nov. 22 as he sentenced the rabbi to 4 to 12 years in prison
for his kidnapping conviction by the same jury that found his wife guilty
of conspiracy.
At the sentencing, Mrs. Helbrans, 33, screamed, cried and demanded to talk
to the judge. "I want to say the truth," she said before she collapsed and
was helped from the courtroom. Yesterday, the judge termed her outburst
"disruptive and disgraceful" and said that the action and the "anger on her
face" as she looked at (Boy's Name Removed)'s mother had convinced him that
she was guilty -- though he also said he believed the prosecution had not
presented sufficient evidence to sustain the conviction.
Mrs. Helbrans made no comment after the judge dismissed her conviction, but
her lawyer, Joyce David, said she was pleased. Had the conspiracy conviction
been upheld, she would have faced up to four years in prison. The Helbranses
have five young children, Ms. David said.
Computer Replaces Razor For Rabbi's Prison
By GEORGE JAMES
New York Times - December 29, 1994
A conflict between a New York State prison regulation requiring that inmates be photographed clean-shaven and a religious belief that a man's beard must not be touched was resolved in Federal court yesterday through the latest computer technology.
For the first time, New York State accepted a computer-generated image of
what an inmate, in this case, Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans, would look like without
a beard instead of making him shave for a conventional photograph. The state
requires that a bearded inmate be photographedshaven so that he can be more
easily identified if he escapes and shaves off his beard.
The image was produced by Engineering Animation of Ames, Iowa, a company
specializing in scientific computer animation, which was hired by Gerald
L. Shargel, the lawyer for Rabbi Helbrans. "Through the use of
state-of-the-art-computer technology," Mr. Shargel said, "we were able to
enforce a biblical command."
The ruling was seen by Mr. Shargel and others involved in technology and
religious-freedom issues as establishing a precedent, but the State Attorney
General's office held that the decision applied only to this case.
Rabbi Helbrans, the leader of a small Hasidic sect, was sentenced to 4 to
12 years in prison last month for kidnapping (Boy's Name Removed) (Father's
Name Removed), a Jewish teen-ager who had been sent by his mother for bar
mitzvah instruction at the rabbi's yeshiva.
Rabbi Helbrans fought on religious grounds in United States District Court
in Manhattan to keep the prison system from shaving his beard. His lawyer,
Mr. Shargel, cited Leviticus 19:27: "Ye shall not round the corners of your
heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard."
The state held that the shaving requirement for new prisoners was upheld
by a 1984 Federal court ruling in the case of a Rastafarian prisoner. Mr.
Shargel, however, felt that under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act passed
by Congress in 1993, there was no compelling security reason for the government
to shave his client's beard if a computer-generated likeness could be used.
He said he started with his neighborhood computer store and "just kept making
calls" until a law professor at George Washington Law School recommended
Engineering Animation.
Last week, the company sent its "visualization expert" and medical illustrator,
Katherine Lattie, to Rikers Island, where the rabbi was in jail. She photographed
and sketched front and profile views of his face.
But as a woman, under the rabbi's religious strictures, Ms. Lattie could
not touch him. So she had Mr. Shargel use calipers and a ruler to measure
the rabbi's face, then scanned photographs into the computer and, using
visualization software, replicated his facial structure as it would look
without beard and side curls.
In court yesterday, before- and after-beard images were shown on a monitor.
After an expert studied them, the state accepted the computer likeness.
Mikki Seligman, a spokeswoman for the Attorney General, said no precedent
had been set but that in the future computer-generated photos would be reviewed
"on a case-to-case basis."
Mark Stern, a lawyer for the American Jewish Congress, said the "creative"
resolution of the conflict was "a road map for every lawyer in the country
who has one of these cases."
U.S. Asks Whether Leniency for Rabbi Had Link
to a Pataki Backer
By CLIFFORD J. LEVY
New York Times - April 26, 1998
Federal prosecutors are examining whether state officials gave lenient treatment
to a Hasidic rabbi imprisoned in a widely publicized kidnapping case after
appeals were made on his behalf by a fund-raiser for the campaign of Gov.
George E. Pataki, officials and others involved in the inquiry say.
State records show that prison officials moved the rabbi, Shlomo Helbrans,
from prison into a work-release program even though he was ineligible for
the transfer because Federal immigration officials wanted to deport him.
The transfer in June 1996 was rescinded after a Federal prosecutor who had
brought charges against Rabbi Helbrans protested to state prison officials.
The inquiry into the case of Rabbi Helbrans, who was convicted of kidnapping
a teen-ager, (Boy's Name Removed) (Father's Name Removed), in 1994, represents
a broadening of the investigation by the United States Attorney's office
into fund-raising by Mr. Pataki's campaign.
The prosecutor who successfully intervened after Rabbi Helbrans was moved
to work release, Alan Vinegrad, said in an interview that prison officials
told him the transfer had been ordered by senior state officials.
''When I spoke to the state correction officials about this, it was made
clear to me that the decision to place him in the work-release program had
been made at high levels,'' said Mr. Vinegrad, who is now a lawyer in private
practice. ''The way this information was conveyed to me left me with the
distinct impression that his treatment in the prison system was not considered
The State Parole Board later released Rabbi Helbrans, who was convicted of
what is considered to be a violent crime under state law, in his first appearance
before the panel. The decision to parole Rabbi Helbrans, made over the objections
of Federal and state prosecutors, came in November 1996. At about the same
time, the board released two other inmates in cases that are also being
scrutinized by prosecutors, according to interviews with officials and others
in Albany and New York City who are involved in the inquiry.
The fund-raiser, Leon Perlmutter, is a prominent member of the Satmar Hasidic
sect, a group that has long been courted by both Democratic and Republican
officials. Mr. Perlmutter lobbied state officials on behalf of all three
inmates, according to the interviews.
Pataki administration officials strenuously denied that anyone received favorable
treatment because of lobbying by fund-raisers or campaign contributors. They
said that after an extensive review of the file of Rabbi Helbrans, they were
certain his case was handled appropriately.
''The decision on his work release was no different than that for any other
inmate,'' said Jim Flateau, a spokesman for the Department of Correctional
Mr. Flateau suggested that Mr. Vinegrad misunderstood the prison officials
when they referred to high-ranking officials. Mr. Flateau said senior officials
closely monitor the work-release program because, when used correctly, it
helps reduce prison overcrowding.
Besides the case involving Rabbi Helbrans, Federal prosecutors are looking
at those of two convicted Israeli drug dealers who were paroled and deported
in November 1996, as well as the cases of two Korean immigrants still in
prison. Parents of the Koreans sought leniency from the Parole Board, though
it was not granted.
But prosecutors do not appear to believe that there was a widespread effort
to grant favors in the state's criminal justice system, officials involved
in the case say.
William J. Muller, a spokesman for the United States Attorney's office in
Brooklyn, has refused to respond to questions about the case, but others
involved in the inquiry, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the office
was examining how Rabbi Helbrans was treated.
The case of Rabbi Helbrans and (Boy's Name Removed) (Father's Name Removed)
attracted widespread attention.
The kidnapping occurred after (Boy's Name Removed)'s mother, who is not an
Orthodox Jew, entrusted him to the rabbi for bar mitzvah instruction. The
authorities charged Rabbi Helbrans with keeping (Boy's Name Removed) away
from his family for two years in order to educate him as a Hasidic Jew.
In an interview, Rabbi Helbrans, a leader of an offshoot of the Satmar sect,
acknowledged that Mr. Perlmutter had visited him several times in prison.
He said Mr. Perlmutter had advised him on legal and prison matters and had
acted as an advocate for him before prison and other state officials, seeking
to insure, for example, that he received kosher food.
Rabbi Helbrans, who is now running a yeshiva in upstate New York while he
fights deportation, said he did not know if Mr. Perlmutter had influenced
the decisions to put him in the work-release program or grant him parole.
But he added, ''I didn't receive any kind of special treatment.''
Zenia Mucha, a spokeswoman for Mr. Pataki, declined to comment on Rabbi Helbrans
or Mr. Perlmutter.
Mr. Perlmutter did not respond to three messages left for him with family
members at his home in Brooklyn. He is well known in the Satmar community
for raising money for both political and charitable causes.
One contributor who gave to the Pataki campaign in response to Mr. Perlmutter's
appeals was a Satmar businessman named Abraham Lefkowitz, who donated a total
of $45,000 individually and through his company in 1994, according to records
and an aide to Mr. Lefkowitz.
Rabbi Helbrans was originally sentenced to 4 to 12 years in prison, after
a joint Federal-state prosecution, but on June 17, 1996, an appeals court
reduced the sentence to 2 to 6 years. Three days later he was put in the
work-release program, which is for prisoners who are less than two years
away from the possibility of parole. Under the program, inmates are freed
from prison as long as they have a job, and they are required to report regularly
to correctional officials.
A day later, Mr. Vinegrad, the Federal prosecutor, demanded that the transfer
be rescinded. Mr. Vinegrad said last week that he could not understand how
Rabbi Helbrans, an Israeli citizen, was allowed into the program because
he had been convicted of a violent felony and because Federal immigration
officials wanted to deport him. On June 24, 1996, prison officials relented.
Mr. Flateau, the corrections department spokesman, at first blamed the department
for what he termed a low-level ''administrative error'' in granting Rabbi
Helbrans work release.
He said the department had discovered the mistake on its own and rectified
it, denying that Mr. Vinegrad had anything to do with it.
In a subsequent conversation, Mr. Flateau conceded that Mr. Vinegrad had
intervened, but he added that the department now believed that Federal
immigration officials were at fault. He said the Federal officials had not
properly notified the department that they wanted to deport Rabbi Helbrans.
Mr. Flateau also said that while Rabbi Helbrans had been convicted of
second-degree kidnapping, which is a violent crime under state law, the
department had determined that the crime the rabbi had committed was not
violent in nature, so he was eligible for work release.
Mark Thorn, a spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, declined
to comment, saying that the agency does not discuss pending cases. An immigration
judge has ordered that Rabbi Helbrans be deported. He is appealing the decision.
Robert Gangi, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York,
a nonprofit group that monitors conditions in the state's prisons, said he
was surprised to learn that a person convicted of second-degree kidnapping
was allowed into the work-release program.
''Our understanding is that anyone convicted of a violent offense is, flat
out, not considered for work release,'' Mr. Gangi said.
Widening Inquiry On Pataki Donors And
Parole Board
By CLIFFORD J. LEVY AND KEVIN FLYNN
August 19, 1999 - New York Times
The scribbled note from a political fund-raiser for Gov. George E. Pataki
to a Pataki administration official carried a terse directive: ''These are
three names that need to be followed up with.''
What came next were details on three men in New York prisons -- violent young
felons whose relatives had made sizable donations to the Pataki campaign
in the belief, prosecutors say, that the money would get the inmates paroled.
The note was among a series of documents unearthed by the United States
Attorney's office in its investigation into the campaign's fund-raising,
a trove that provides a rare view of Pataki officials assisting a handful
of major campaign contributors.
The documents, and courtroom testimony, recount how the campaign sent inquiries
about the prisoners directly to the Governor's office, which passed them
on to the Parole Board. In fact, this week, a parole official pleaded guilty
to lying to Federal officials in the case and insisted in court that he had
been told that the Governor's office had expressed strong concern about one
of the prisoners, who was released on parole. The other two were not.
While strenuously denying any wrongdoing, even some of the Governor's closest
associates privately acknowledge that the investigation has at times offered
an unflattering portrait of the administration.
And now it seems to be expanding. The parole officer who pleaded guilty this
week, Ronald Hotaling, strongly suggested in court that the chairman of the
Parole Board, Brion D. Travis, who was appointed by Mr. Pataki, told him
of ''the interest of the Governor's office in the release'' of one of the
Several state officials say that in recent months, the administration has
revamped the Parole Board, which is controlled by the Governor's appointees,
and greatly reduced Mr. Travis's day-to-day role. Thomas Grant, a spokesman
for Mr. Travis, would not comment.
Prosecutors are also said to be focusing on a separate case involving possible
lenient treatment given by parole officials to Shlomo Helbrans, a Hasidic
rabbi imprisoned in a widely publicized kidnapping case.
In a letter recently entered into the court record, the prosecutors say that
a parole official ''took steps to facilitate the release of'' Rabbi Helbrans
because the official felt ''improper political pressure'' being brought on
the rabbi's behalf. Rabbi Helbrans was convicted of kidnapping a teen-ager,
(Boy's Name Removed) (Father's Name Removed), in 1994, after (Boy's Name
Removed)'s mother entrusted him to the rabbi for bar mitzvah instruction.
Pataki aides dismiss the 20-month-old inquiry as a politically motivated
attempt to embarrass the Governor. They say that no one received special
favors, noting that of the three young prisoners, only the one with an exemplary
prison record was paroled. They say that the two parole officials found guilty
this month were hired during the tenure of Mr. Pataki's predecessors and
that they were indicted for lying when questioned in the case, not for
Michael McKeon, the Governor's press secretary, declined to comment on specific
documents or testimony. ''The prosecutors know that those members of this
administration involved in these cases handled themselves appropriately and
properly,'' Mr. McKeon said. ''At some point, they are going to have to
acknowledge that fact. In fairness, it should be sooner, rather than later.''
In the Rabbi Helbrans case, prosecutors are examining whether the board released
him at the urging of an influential rabbi, Leon Perlmutter, who has assisted
the Pataki campaign in raising money from Orthodox Jews. In one document,
the prosecutors assert that a parole staff employee was told by a superior
that Rabbi Perlmutter was someone who could deliver votes and therefore should
be listened to on inmate releases. The employee, who was not identified,
was contacted directly by Rabbi Perlmutter about several cases, including
Rabbi Helbrans, according to the record.
Both Rabbi Helbrans and Rabbi Perlmutter have denied any wrongdoing.
The inquiry by the United States Attorney's office in Brooklyn began in January
1998 after the parents of one of the three young inmates complained to the
police that a volunteer Republican fund-raiser, Yung Soo Yoo, had offered
to help win parole in exchange for contributions but had reneged. Mr. Yoo
is a prominent Korean businessman in the New York region, and all three inmates
were sons of Koreans.
The family of one inmate, James Jhang, who was convicted of robbery, gave
at least $12,000 to the campaign in 1994 and 1995, while the family of another,
Boyoung Chung, who was convicted of murder, gave $9,500. Neither man was
released. The family and friends of the third inmate, John Kim, who was convicted
of armed robbery, gave several thousand dollars, prosecutors say. The campaign
eventually returned most of the donations from supporters of the three inmates.
Mr. Kim was released after Korean immigrants in Queens lobbied the Parole
Board. His family has close ties to Grace Koh, the Governor's liaison to
Asian-Americans, who also lobbied for his release.
Several officials of the Pataki administration and campaign later testified
before the grand jury. Besides the guilty plea from Mr. Hotaling, the prosecutors
won the conviction of Sean McSherry, a parole commissioner, on perjury charges
this month. Prosecutors have contended that Mr. McSherry caved in to political
pressure and spearheaded the undeserved release of Mr. Kim in 1996. Mr. McSherry
had been known as one of the most cautious commissioners in making release
The documents portray a domino effect of inquiries that began with Mr. Yoo,
who sent the names of the prisoners to Patrick Donohue, a Pataki fund-raiser.
Mr. Donohue then sent the handwritten note to Jeff Wiesenfeld, director of
community affairs for the Governor. Mr. Wiesenfeld in turn contacted Mr.
Travis, asking for information about the three young inmates.
In Mr. Kim's case, the documents show that Mr. Wiesenfeld, who supervised
Ms. Koh in the community affairs office, tried to get Mr. Kim into a work
release program. ''John Kim appears to have made a stunning turn from a life
that was previously influenced and dominated by gang interactions,'' Mr.
Wiesenfeld wrote to Mr. Travis on Dec. 7, 1995.
Mr. Travis replied days later that Mr. Kim was not eligible for work release
because of his conviction for a violent felony. But Mr. Travis wrote that
Mr. Wiesenfeld's recommendation would be considered when Mr. Kim was up for
The Governor himself is not mentioned in the campaign and administration
records, and there is no evidence that he had any involvement in the parole
decisions. But according to court testimony, he did cross paths with one
of the contributors.
Detective George Slater, an investigator, told the court that Mr. Chung's
mother, Incha Chung, recounted how she had met the Governor at a fund-raiser
and whispered that she was ''waiting for news.''
The Governor, Mr. Slater said, replied that he did not know what she was
talking about and walked away.
Rabbi Is Deported 5 Years After Conviction,
Lawyer Says
New York Times - May 12, 2000
A Hasidic rabbi on parole in Rockland County after serving a prison term
for kidnapping a teenager under his tutelage was deported to Israel yesterday,
even as his conviction was being appealed, his lawyer said.
The case of the rabbi, Shlomo Helbrans, has drawn widespread attention not
only for the nature of the kidnapping charge, but also because of a federal
investigation into whether his parole after two years in prison was the result
of improper political influence on the Pataki administration.
Immigration officials have sought to deport the rabbi since 1992, at first
saying he had entered the country illegally in 1990, and later citing federal
law that allows the deportation of convicted felons. On March 7, the Board
of Immigration Appeal dismissed his final appeal of a deportation order.
Rabbi Helbrans, 38, an Israeli citizen, was arrested Wednesday night by agents
of the Immigration and Naturalization Service at the police station in Spring
Valley, N.Y., where he had gone expecting a regular meeting with his parole
officer, said Mark Thorn, an I.N.S. spokesman. Yesterday, Rabbi Helbrans
was put on a plane for Israel at 5:25 p.m., his lawyer, Ronald G. Russo,
About an hour earlier, the rabbi's wife, Malka, was arrested and charged
with obstructing governmental affairs and striking a federal agent at the
Manhattan detention center where the rabbi had been held, Mr. Russo said.
Mike Gilhooly, regional spokesman for the immigration agency, said he could
not confirm that the rabbi was deported or that Mrs. Helbrans was arrested.
The rabbi was convicted in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn in 1994 in the
kidnapping of (Boy's Name Removed) (Father's Name Removed), who disappeared
in April 1992, when he was 13, after his mother sent him to a Brooklyn yeshiva
run by the rabbi. When the boy resurfaced two years later, he said he had
run away from his mother, who he said had beaten him. The mother called the
allegation a lie, and accused Rabbi Helbrans of brainwashing her son.
After a November 1996 decision by the State Parole Board to release Rabbi
Helbrans after two years in prison, the United States attorney's office began
investigating whether the board had been influenced by a personal appeal
from Leon Perlmutter, a fund-raiser for Gov. George E. Pataki in the Hasidic
community. The Pataki administration has denied there was any improper influence.
Federal officials said yesterday that the investigation was continuing.
Mr. Russo, the rabbi's lawyer, said he was disturbed by his client's deportation
because he thought he had an agreement with the immigration service to wait
for the result of an appeal of the kidnapping conviction in the United States
Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
If the court overturns the conviction, Mr. Russo said, there would be no
reason to deport Rabbi Helbrans, who had lived with his wife and their six
children in Monsey, N.Y. Mrs. Helbrans is six months pregnant, Mr. Russo
A jury convicted Mrs. Helbrans of conspiring with her husband to hide the
teenager, but the conviction was thrown out by the trial judge for lack of
Mr. Thorn of the immigration service declined to comment on Mr. Russo's
assertions. Amy Otten, a spokeswoman for the agency in Washington, said there
is no blanket policy on whether to withhold deportations pending criminal
Rick Kenney, a spokesman for the Executive Office of Immigration Review,
a sister agency to the immigration service, said that even if the kidnapping
charge was overturned, the deportation order still included an earlier charge
that Rabbi Helbrans entered the country illegally on Sept. 14, 1990.
''That charge still stands,'' Mr. Kenney said. But, he added, ''Because it
was a less serious ground for deportation, he might be eligible for more
forms of relief. So, yeah, if he's trying to get his kidnapping conviction
overturned, that might make a difference.''
Josef Goldman, a fellow Hasid in Monsey, where Rabbi Helbrans was affiliated
with the Lev Tahor yeshiva, said the community was ''very, very upset'' about
the rabbi's arrest. ''The I.N.S. is showing a very ugly face here, a very
ugly face,'' he said.
Former Parole Official Is Indicted in
Influence-Peddling Inquiry
By ALAN FEUER
New York Times - June 13, 2000
A former member of the New York State Parole Board was charged yesterday with repeatedly lying before a federal grand jury when questioned about whether the board had given preferential treatment to an inmate whose friends and family contributed to Gov. George E. Pataki's 1994 election campaign.
In an indictment unsealed in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, the former
board member, Leo S. Levy, was accused of misleading investigators looking
into the early release of John Kim, a gang member who was serving time for
violent felonies and was freed by the board in April 1996.
Mr. Levy is the fourth person -- and the third state official -- to be charged
in the two-and-a-half-year grand jury investigation into accusations that
Pataki campaign officials used the promise of early parole to drum up campaign
contributions. The accusations have been embarrassing for Mr. Pataki, who
has sought to eliminate parole entirely and has made it tougher for violent
felons to win release on parole.
In November, Sean McSherry, a former Parole Board member who led the three-member
panel that heard the case of Mr. Kim, was sentenced to two years in federal
prison for perjury and obstruction of justice. Ronald Hotaling, the former
executive secretary to the Parole Board, pleaded guilty in August to lying
to federal officials and said he had been informed that the governor's office
had expressed a strong interest in the Kim case.
In December, Yung Soo Yoo, a New Jersey businessman and a volunteer Republican
Party fund-raiser, was accused of promising favorable state parole rulings
to the families of three convicted violent felons, including Mr. Kim's, in
exchange for more than $36,000 in donations to Mr. Pataki's campaign. Mr.
Yoo is scheduled to go on trial in Federal District Court in Brooklyn next
The investigation by the United States attorney's office into the
influence-peddling allegations began in January 1998 after the parents of
a man convicted with Mr. Kim said Mr. Yoo and Patrick Donohue, a top Pataki
campaign aide, had guaranteed that their son would gain an early parole if
they contributed to the governor's 1994 campaign. Investigators later found
letters and memos from the governor's office to the Parole Board concerning
Mr. Kim and two other Korean-American inmates whose families had contributed
to the Pataki campaign. Mr. Donohue has not been charged.
Mr. Kim, who was released after serving the minimum of a 4-to-12-year sentence
for committing three armed robberies in Queens, is the son of the Rev. Nam
Soo Kim, a prominent Korean-American minister in Queens who contributed $1,000
to the Pataki election campaign. Others linked to the minister gave several
thousand dollars more to the campaign, officials involved in the case said.
The federal prosecutors who are overseeing the investigation have repeatedly
said no evidence suggests that Mr. Pataki participated in or had knowledge
of the various crimes alleged. Michael F. McKeon, a spokesman for the governor,
has strenuously denied in the past that officials engaged in any wrongdoing,
but did not return telephone calls last night seeking comment.
The federal government is also focusing on a similar but separate case involving
possible lenient treatment given by parole officials to Shlomo Helbrans,
a Hasidic rabbi imprisoned in a widely publicized kidnapping case. Rabbi
Helbrans was deported to Israel in May, his lawyer has said, but federal
officials say their investigation is continuing.
The indictment released yesterday against Mr. Levy charges him with perjury
and obstruction of justice in connection with his testimony before the grand
jury. For example, it accuses him of testifying that a parole officer named
Thomas Burke was present at Mr. Kim's hearing; the government maintains that
Mr. Burke was on vacation in another state at the time. Mr. Levy was also
accused of lying about conversations he had had with other parole officials
about incidents before, during and after Mr. Kim's hearing before the parole
Mr. Levy was appointed to the Parole Board by Gov. Mario M. Cuomo in 1992
and stepped down in 1998. His lawyer, Brian Mumford, was away from his office
yesterday and unavailable for comment.
Mr. Levy was expected to turn himself in to the authorities later this week.
If found guilty of all charges, he faces a maximum of 10 years in federal
Following Up
Overcoming Tug of War Of His Family and
By JOSEPH P. FRIED
New York Times - April 1, 2001
The emotions were explosive, the words rancorous, the plot a tormenting tale
of legal twists and melodramatic turns.
Headlines highlighted a battle between a teenager's nonreligious Jewish parents
and ultra-Orthodox Jews for the boy's heart and mind -- with bitter episodes
like the youth's disappearance from his family for two years and a rabbi's
conviction and imprisonment for kidnapping.
In 1992, (Boy's Name Removed), 13, vanished after his mother, (Name Removed),
an immigrant from Israel living in Ramsey, N.J., sent him to receive bar
mitzvah instruction at a Brooklyn yeshiva run by Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans, leader
of a small Hasidic sect.
Ms. (Name Removed) and the boy's father, (Father's Name Removed), who lived
in Israel and was divorced from Ms. (Name Removed), charged that the rabbi
and his followers had abducted and brainwashed a secular (Boy's Name Removed)
to convert him to their zealous brand of Judaism.
Rabbi Helbrans's lawyers said at his 1994 trial that he had not aided in
(Boy's Name Removed)'s disappearance but had given sanctuary to a boy fleeing
a deeply troubled family in which his stepfather had beaten him and his mother.
The rabbi was found guilty of kidnapping, jailed for two years and deported
to Israel -- despite testimony from (Boy's Name Removed), who had resurfaced
after two years in places like a yeshiva in France, that he had voluntarily
run away after the Helbrans family showed him ''what a normal family was.''
Now 22 and living in heavily Orthodox Monsey, N.Y., Mr. (Father's Name Removed)
repeated last week that he had been neither been abducted nor brainwashed.
''I was following the religion, not Helbrans,'' he said.
''I'm religious, but not the way I was'' when living among Hasidic people
until he was nearly 17, he said. ''I follow the Sabbath, but don't have side
curls and don't dress in black.''
Mr. (Father's Name Removed) said he reconciled with his parents five years
ago and had good relations with them. He lived much of the five years in
Israel, he said, working in a hotel and serving in the army.
At times during that period he stayed with his father, he said, and at times
with his mother, who divorced his stepfather and returned to Israel.
Mr. (Father's Name Removed), who hopes to attend computer school, said he
and his parents did not talk about the past rupture. ''They feel I was
brainwashed. I don't,'' he said, ''so we let it alone.''
Mass Transit Makeover Resurrects a Ghost Train
It was known as the ''ghost train,'' but it carried live riders.
By the 1990's, the Franklin Avenue shuttle in Brooklyn, a 1.25-mile subway
spur from Bedford-Stuyvesant to Prospect Park, had hit rock bottom. ''Decrepit,''
''crumbling,'' ''ramshackle,'' ''unsafe,'' ''filthy'' and ''neglected'' were
the polite descriptions.
In 1998, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority began a $74 million
rehabilitation, replacing tracks, eliminating one of the five stations and
rebuilding others with elevators, security cameras and ornamentation from
stained glass to wrought iron. The line reopened 18 months ago to accolades.
The praise continues.
''The only things we've heard are positive,'' said Jacob Goldstein, chairman
of the area's Community Board 9. ''It's clean and runs well.'' Similar praise
came from Gene Russianoff of the pro-passenger Straphangers Campaign. Citing
what they consider the best endorsement, transit officials estimate that
the number of riders on the line has increased to about 15,000 a day from
about 10,000 before the makeover.
The Brooklyn D.A.'s Office Is Having a Terrible Day
By Joe Coscarelli
The New Yorker - June 6, 2012
By Joe Coscarelli
The New Yorker - June 6, 2012
Kings County District Attorney Charles Hynes has taken a shellacking in the press
lately for his handling of sex abuse in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish
community, with critics arguing that he's going easy on offenders for
political reasons, proliferating a culture of cover-ups, and inflating
prosecution figures. Hynes has responded by announcing his support for
legislation that would require rabbis to report sexual abuse allegations, but that doesn't erase past mistakes. Today, the New York Times digs one up with a galling story about Hynes attempting to go easy on a kidnapping rabbi.
And as icing on the bad-press cake, one of Hynes's employees allegedly punched a cop.
And as icing on the bad-press cake, one of Hynes's employees allegedly punched a cop.
The Times reports that in 1994, ultra-Orthodox rabbi
Shlomo Helbrans took a 13-year-old boy from his family and tried to
brainwash him, only to have Hynes's office encourage police to drop the case.
Michael Powell reports that the NYPD division commander and the boy's
mother "drove down to the district attorney's office, seeking a meeting.
They sat there for hours but never got past reception."
When the FBI pushed for prosecution, Hynes's office attempted to
let the rabbi off with just community service, only to a have a judge
reject the plea, noting that the family convinced him "that this is a
political ploy," because Hynes was running for state attorney general.
Flash-forward to the present day: As if the dredging up of this incident in the Times
isn't enough of a headache for the D.A., assistant D.A. Yaser Othman
was arrested over the weekend for taking "a wild swing" at a cop who
pulled him over, according to the Post.
He was charged with attempted assault, resisting arrest, reckless
driving, and marijuana possession, because cops say they found a joint
in his car. Othman, who has been suspended without pay, denies the
charges and told the Post, "I don't know anything about a
marijuana cigarette. I can't say if they planted it." He insisted, "The
truth is going to come out."
But he should probably hope his boss just skipped the local papers today.
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