WHITE PLAINS – Two leaders of the extremist Jewish sect Lev Tahor, were convicted following a federal jury trial of child sexual exploitation and kidnapping.
The two men, Nachman Helbrans, 39, and Mayer Rosner, 45, are U.S. citizens who in 2017, arranged for Helbrans’ then 12-year-old niece to be “married” to a then 18-year-old man. They were religiously “married” the following year when the girl was 13 and the man was 19, and immediately began a sexual relationship with the goal of having children. They were never legally married.
The mother, her daughter and 12-year-old son were living with the religious sect in Guatemala at the time, and in October 2018 the mother determined it was no longer safe for her children to remain in the compound so she escaped and arrived in the United States one month later where she settled in Woodridge.
After the mother fled, Helbrans and Rosner devised a plan to return the girl, then 14, to Guatemala and to her then 20-year-old “husband” so they could resume having sex to procreate.
In December 2018, they kidnapped the two children in the middle of the night from their Sullivan County home and transported them through various states and eventually to Mexico.
At the time of the kidnapping, the sect’s leadership was seeking asylum for the entire Lev Tahor community in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Following a three-week search, law enforcement recovered the children in Mexico. Then in or about March 2019 and March 2021, members of the extremist group again tried to kidnap the children.
Both Helbrans and Rosner were convicted of conspiring to transport a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, which carries from 10 years to life in prison; conspiring to travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct, which carries up to 30 years in prison; two counts of international parental kidnapping, which carries up to three years in prison on each county; and one count of conspiring to commit international parental kidnapping, which carries five years in prison.
Helbrans was also convicted of an additional count of international parental kidnapping in connection with an attempt to kidnap the girl in March 2019.
