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Nachman Helbrans, age 39, and Mayer Rosner, age 45, US citizens from Guatemala, were convicted following a four-week jury trial of child sexual exploitation offenses and kidnapping in Sullivan County.
US Attorney Damian Williams said that the two were found complicit in scheming to kidnap a 14-year-old girl and 12-year-old boy from their mother in Woodridge, then smuggling them across the border to reunite the girl with her adult “husband” to allow them to continue their illegal relationship.
Williams noted that the two men are the leaders of an extremist Jewish sect called “Lev Tahor,” with Helbrans becoming the leader of the group in 2017 and Rosner acting as a top lieutenant.
After Helbrans took over, Williams said that he and Rosner seized tight control over the group and embraced several extreme practices, including child marriages and underage sex.
In 2017, Helbrans arranged for his then-12-year-old niece to be “married” to an 18-year-old man, and they were religiously “married” the following year, beginning a sexual relationship with the goal of conceiving a child.
The marriage was never legal.
Williams said that Lev Tahor leadership, including those two, required young brides to have sex with their husbands, to tell people outside Lev Tahor that they were not married, to pretend to be older, and to deliver babies inside their homes instead of at a hospital, to conceal the mothers’ young ages from the public.
In October 2018, the girl’s mother determined that it was no longer safe for her children to remain in the Lev Tahor community in Guatemala, and she escaped to the United States the following year, eventually settling in Sullivan County.
Williams said that after the mother fled, Helbrans and Rosner devised a plan to return the now-14-year-old girl to Guatemala to be with her 20-year-old “husband” to resume their relationship and procreate.
The pair kidnapped the girl and her brother in December 2018 from their Woodridge home in Sullivan County, transporting the minors to several states before landing in Mexico.
Both men used disguises, aliases, drop phones, fake travel documents, an encrypted application, and a secret pact to execute their kidnapping plan, according to Williams, who noted that at the time of the kidnapping, Lev Tahor leadership was seeking asylum for the entire Lev Tahor community in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
A three-week search was launched involving hundreds of local, federal, and international law enforcement agencies before they were recovered in Mexico and returned to New York.
At least two other kidnapping attempts were made by members of Lev Tahor in 2019 and 2021 as they sought to take the children back below the border.
Helbrans and Rosner were convicted on Wednesday, Nov. 10 of:
- Conspiring to transport a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity;
- Conspiring to travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct;
- Two counts of international parental kidnapping;
- Conspiring to commit international parental kidnapping.
Henbrans was also convicted of an additional count of international parental kidnapping.
When they are sentenced, both men could face life in prison. No return court date has been announced.
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