The acts of abuse include violently throwing the children around by their arms and legs, leaving a child in an electric oven until his hair burned, placing a child in a suitcase for three days, feeding a child excrement and other extreme acts of abuse.
The cult leader’s trial is still ongoing.
A disciple of accused cult leader Elior Chen was yesterday sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to shaking, burning and tying up her eight children.
The woman, identified only as M., received a lenient sentence in exchange for testifying against Chen and others.
The leader of a Jerusalem cult facing charges of child abuse, Elior Chen, told a rabbinical court yesterday that he is refusing to grant a get, or Jewish divorce, to the mother of his alleged victims.
Chen and several of his followers allegedly used knives, hammers and other instruments to abuse children as young as 3 and 4 years old in the ultra-Orthodox West Bank settlement of Betar Ilit in February and March 2008.
The Jerusalem District Prosecution issued an indictment against Elior Chen, known as “the abusive rabbi,” for a series of grave abuse charges he allegedly committed against children in his care.
Chen was not charged with attempted murder, but the indictment claims that he abused and assaulted minors in eight separate cases. In addition, he allegedly encouraged members of the group he led to make “corrections” in their children by shaking, beating, binding, and burning them. He also instructed his followers to withhold food and drink from their children and to feed them excrement.
Chen is wanted in Israel for his involvement in a sadistic cult thought to have committed numerous counts of child abuse.
Chen, a self-styled rabbi, allegedly influenced members of his flock to abuse their children in order to “correct their corrupt souls.”
According to an indictment, the rabbi instructed one mother to conduct “tikkunim” on her children — “meaning, jolting, beating, tying, burning organs, feeding them with faeces, and more.
Chen, 29, and his followers are suspected of severely abusing two children, ages three and four, who were beaten with hammers, knives and other implements for months, until the younger child lost consciousness in March.
The mother reportedly belongs to an ultra-Orthodox group led by a charismatic leader, Elior Chen, who preaches “correcting” children by means of torture.
The Jerusalem police on Friday issued an extradition order against Elior Chen, a spiritual leader who is suspected of orchestrating the worst case of systematic child abuse in Israel’s history.
A key suspect in a gruesome Jerusalem child abuse case was arrested Wednesday in a forest on the outskirts of the city, police said. Shimon Gabai was in police custody after the father of the abused children turned him in to police.
Israel Police said Monday they will begin extradition proceedings against Rabbi Elior Chen, who fled to Canada shortly after one of his followers was charged with systematic child abuse including burning her toddlers, making them eat feces, and putting them in a suitcase for days.