About 60 students at the school are said to have suffered ill-treatment. Several officials of a Talmudic school in Bussières (in Seine-et-Marne) were placed in police custody on Monday, announced the prosecutor of Meaux Laureline Peyrefitte.
“This establishment would undeclaredly accommodate many minors of American and Israeli nationality who do not speak French, in abusive conditions: confinement, confiscation of identity documents, degraded living conditions, acts of mistreatment, lack of access to education and care, and without the possibility of returning to their families, ”detailed the prosecutor.
Sixteen officials were arrested and placed in police custody on Monday morning by the gendarmes of the Paris research section.
Alerts and a complaint from a teenager
Located in an isolated area in the north-east of the department, the establishment welcomes 40 teenagers over 12 years old, as well as 22 young adults. Established for twenty years in the department, the establishment out of contract is not in the circuit of National Education, specified the prefecture of Seine-et-Marne. A few alerts on this “extremely closed environment” were raised via the rector and the complaint of a teenager who had escaped accelerated the investigation.
In July, an American student had run away and found refuge at the American Embassy in Paris. From November to December, other teenagers escaped. The Interministerial Mission for vigilance and the fight against sectarian aberrations (Miviludes) had also issued a report.
The investigation was opened into heads of kidnapping in an organized gang, aggravated violence, deprivation of care and food, aggravated abuse of weakness, said Laureline Peyrefitte in the press release. “The first elements of the investigation, in particular the hearing of runaway minors or former students of the establishment, made it possible to confirm these suspicions of the commission of offenses”.
Students supported
In connection with social assistance for children, the students “were taken care of in a school structure with a boarding school to house them, provide cover and that the inspectors could hear them”, indicated the prefecture. The building housing the minors is also the subject of an order closing it to the public because of its state of disrepair, according to the prosecutor.
On the Facebook page of the Yeshiva Beth Yossef, the establishment published a class photo dating from 2014 on which appear young boys in traditional Jewish dress, supervised by officials and teachers. According to the school’s website, the Ohr Yossef institution, on which Yeshiva Beth Yossef depends, was founded in 1948 by Orthodox rabbi Gershon Liebman. “Today, the yeshiva is proud of its success and brings together more than a hundred students from all over the world (…) The students assiduously deepen their ‘thoracic’ knowledge in order to become Masters themselves. of the Torah”, is it written on the site.