An organization at the head of an ultra-rigorous Orthodox Jewish school based in Buissières (Seine-et-Marne) was dismantled on Monday by the gendarmes. The students were totally isolated, entrenched in unsanitary conditions and victims of ill-treatment.
More than a hundred gendarmes and prefectural services carried out this large-scale operation within the Yeshiva Beth Yossef school on January 31. Suspected of ill-treatment of students, sixteen officials of the establishment were placed in police custody, announced the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, declaring that he wanted to fight “against all sectarian aberrations”.
We fight against all sectarian aberrations.
16 officials of an ultra-rigorous Jewish school in Seine-et-Marne have been taken into custody. They are suspected of mistreating students. An investigation is open and we will draw all the consequences. https://t.co/HjEHY2biJN
— Gérald DARMANIN (@GDarmanin) January 31, 2022
An investigation has been opened for “organized kidnapping”, “aggravated violence”, “deprivation of care and food” and “aggravated abuse of weakness”, said the public prosecutor of Meaux.
According to the first information from the investigation, the school founded in 1948 operated with the help of very strict regulations: compulsory uniform, compulsory prayers, courses in ethics, study of the sacred texts and teaching of the Talmud and the Torah, with a doctrine that is rigorous to say the least. One of the children at the establishment, which mainly hosts Americans and Israelis on an undeclared basis, sounded the alarm after running away in July 2021.
Inhuman living conditions
According to the words of the young man, relayed by Le Parisien, the establishment would be totally dilapidated, the officials would be violent with the students, the personal effects confiscated, the food served would be expired, and the deprivation of food commonplace. Some students would even live in a vacuum, reclusive in the school for several years. Living conditions relating to mistreatment and justifying the opening of an investigation and the arrest of suspects.
The Miviludes, the interministerial mission of vigilance and fight against sectarian influence, evokes in its report to justice “a speech of manipulation which can be akin to a sectarian drift”. According to Le Parisien, 40 children were placed in homes during the investigations.