В
ультра-ортодоксальных кварталах Бруклина Мендель Эпштейн прославился среди
женщин мечтающих получить развод. У ортодоксов для развода необходимо
разрешение мужа, и ходит множество историй о женщинах, чьи мужья его не дают.
Распространённым
наказанием является отлучение упрямого мужа от синагоги. Но рабби Эпштейн по
определению властей превысил полномочия.За хорошую плату он организовывал похищение и пытки упрямцев. 10 тысяч шло на отпущение разрешение насилия раббинатом, и 50 тысяч на наём силовиков (хотя называются разные суммы, например, агенту ФБР это стоило всего 20 тысяч).
Рабби Эпштейн и рабби Мартин Волмарк, глава иешивы, а также несколько мужчин из команды похитителей предстали перед судом после провальной операции с агентом ФБР.
Пол Фишман, госюрист в Нью Джерси, сказал в интервью, что имеются улики примерно двух дюжин похищений. Большинство мужчин из Бруклина, которых везли в Нью Джерси во время похищения.
В суде главный обвинитель Р. Джозеф Грибко обрисовал, как всё происходило. Похищенных избивали, связывали, подвергали электрошоку, пока из них не вытягивали "гет".
Мр. Грибко утверждает, что мотивом преступления были деньги а не вера. Хотя для некоторых это сюрприз, слухи о таких случаях возникли много лет назад. В 1996 году, например, каунсил раббината опубликовал неодобрение таких методов.
Рабби Рубин подал в суд на Эпштейна ещё в конце 1990, утверждая, что группа мужчин затолкала его в вэн, когда он вышел из синагоги, завязала глаза, и пропускала электричество через его гениталии, чтобы получить "гет" для его жены. Дело было закрыто.
Тогда же гласными становились такие же случаи.
То, что такое насилие может оставаться безнаказанным так долго, говорит о трудностях расследования преступлений в любых религиозных сообществах.
Эпштейн был уверен, что полиция не будет вмешиваться, если на пострадавших не будет следов насилия.
Эпштейн известен своими выступлениями в бейт дин (совет раввинов) в защиту развода по желанию женщины.
Когда ФБР агенты (женщина и мужчина на роли её брата) попросили рабби помочь с разводом, рабби Волмарк направил их к Эпштейну, который при встрече уверил их в успехе дела. "Я гарантирую, что при всей любви к жене, после вэна муж даст ей развод).
Женщина сказала, что её муж бизнесмен в южной америке, отказывает ей в разводе. эпштейн ответил, что она должна заманить его в Нью Джерси, что она пообещала сделать.
После чего эти два раввина созвали свой собственный совет, на котором дали разрешение на экстремальные меры для получения развода. там же присутствовали другие религиозные фигуры.
Когда агент сказала, что муж должен скоро прибыть, 8 сообщников встретились на складе, доработать план. В этот момент их взяли. У них конфисковали маски, верёвки, скальпели и гусиные перья с чернилами для записи развода.
В четверг 10 подсудимым было отказано в освобождении под залог.
Юда Эпштейн - адвокат рабби Эпштейна никак не прокомментировала происходящее.
Соседка Роза Дэйвис отозвалась о нём как уважаемом человеке, на которого возводят напраслину неудачливые мужья. "В разводе всегда есть лузер." сказала она.
U.S. Accuses 2 Rabbis of Kidnapping Husbands for a Fee
By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN and MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ
Published: October 10, 2013
In
Brooklyn’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods, Mendel Epstein made a name for
himself as the rabbi to see for women struggling to divorce their husbands.
Among the Orthodox, a divorce requires the husband’s permission, known as a
“get,” and tales abound of women whose husbands refuse to consent.
Michael Nagle for The New York Times
Agents
with the F.B.I. served a search warrant at a house in Kensington, Brooklyn, on
Thursday in the investigation of Mendel Epstein.
While it’s common for rabbis to take action against
defiant husbands, such as barring them from synagogue life, Rabbi Epstein, 68,
took matters much further, according to the authorities.
For hefty fees, he orchestrated the kidnapping and
torture of reluctant husbands, charging their wives as much as $10,000 for a
rabbinical decree permitting violence and $50,000 to hire others to carry out
the deed, according to federal charges unsealed on Thursday morning.
Rabbi Epstein, along with another rabbi, Martin Wolmark,
who is the head of a yeshiva, as well as several men in what the authorities
called the “kidnap team,” appeared in Federal District Court in Trenton after a
sting operation in which an undercover federal agent posed as an Orthodox
Jewish woman soliciting Rabbi Epstein’s services.
Paul Fishman, the United States attorney for New Jersey,
said in an interview that investigators have “uncovered evidence” of about a
couple dozen victims. Many are men from Brooklyn who were taken to New Jersey
as part of the kidnappings.
In court, the lead prosecutor in the case, R. Joseph
Gribko, explained how the abductions were carried out. “They beat them up, tied
them up, shocked them with Tasers and stun guns until they got what they want,”
Mr. Gribko, an assistant United States attorney, said.
Mr. Gribko said the defendants had been motivated by
money, not faith. While the case might surprise some New Yorkers, accounts of
such kidnappings have percolated through the Orthodox Jewish community in
Brooklyn for years. In 1996, for instance, a rabbinic council in Williamsburg
issued a statement denouncing the rogue men who subjected husbands to such
beatings, according to a news report.
Rabbi Epstein was sued in the late 1990s by another
Brooklyn rabbi, Abraham Rubin, who claimed that a group of men shoved him into
a van as he left synagogue, hooded him, and applied electric shocks to his
genitals in an effort to force him to provide a get to his wife. The lawsuit
was dismissed.
According to newspaper accounts from the late 90s, other
men, too, have come forward with similar tales of curbside abductions and
mistreatment.
How such violent practices, if proved, would have been
able to persist for so long may be an indicator of the challenges that local
law enforcement agencies face in trying conduct investigations of insular
religious groups including the ultra-Orthodox.
Rabbi Epstein seemed confident that local authorities
wouldn’t investigate too closely. In a recorded meeting with the female
undercover F.B.I. agent, Rabbi Epstein explained that his preferred torture
techniques, like electric shocks, offered little physical evidence of abuse,
according to the complaint. Without obvious visible injuries, Rabbi Epstein
said, the police were unlikely to inquire too deeply if any victims came
forward.
“Basically the reaction of the police is, if the guy does
not have a mark on him then, uh, is there some Jewish crazy affair here, they
don’t want to get involved,” Rabbi Epstein explained, according to the criminal
complaint.
Rabbi Epstein made his living appearing before the
rabbinical courts, known as beit din, where he advocated on behalf of a spouse
seeking an exit, another rabbi said. He took a special interest in the
constraints that wives faced, speaking about the rights of women in terms not
often heard in his deeply conservative community.
When
two undercover F.B.I. agents — one posing as a woman seeking a divorce, the
other as her brother — asked a rabbi for help, the rabbi explained how Rabbi
Epstein might be able to assist them.
“You
need special rabbis who are going to take this thing and see it through to the
end,” Rabbi Martin Wolmark, a respected figure who presides over a yeshiva in
Monsey, N.Y., said in a recorded telephone call on Aug. 7. He described Rabbi
Epstein as “a hired hand” who could help, according to the criminal complaint
in the case.
When the undercover agents met with Rabbi Epstein a week
later, he said that he was confident he could secure a get once his “tough
guys” had made their threats.
“I guarantee you that if you’re in the van, you’d give a
get to your wife,” he said to the male undercover agent posing as the brother.
“You probably love your wife, but you’d give a get when they finish with you.”
The undercover female F.B.I. agent told Rabbi Epstein
that she wanted to divorce her husband, described as a businessman in South
America, who refused to grant her request. Rabbi Epstein urged her to lure the
man to New Jersey, which she pledged to do.
Next Rabbi Epstein and Rabbi Wolmark their own rabbinical court, complete with
legalisms and formalities, to issue a religious edict “authorizing the use of
violence to obtain a forced get,” according to court records. The undercover
agent offered testimony before the two rabbis, who were joined by other
religious figures.
Told that the husband was arriving in New Jersey, eight
of Rabbi Epstein’s associates met at a New Jersey warehouse to finalize the
kidnapping plan, according to court documents. At that point F.B.I. agents
moved in to arrest the group. The agents seized masks, ropes, scalpels and
feather quills and ink bottles used for recording the get they anticipated.
On Thursday, the 10 defendants were denied bail after
appearing in court in Trenton on the kidnapping conspiracy charges.
Juda J. Epstein, the lawyer for Rabbi Epstein, declined
to comment.
A neighbor, Rose Davis, who lives opposite his home in
the Kensington section of Brooklyn described him as a respected figure. Ms.
Davis said she was skeptical of the charges, and suggested they might be the
concoctions of enemies he had made as an expert in divorce work: “There’s
always a loser,” she said, referring to divorce cases.
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