Police on Thursday said that forces detained 16 people in a raid in the northern community of Yavne’el tied to illegal underage marriages, a practice law enforcement officials suspect has been ongoing for years in the town.
In a statement, police said that a raid Thursday morning in the Lower Galilee town resulted in the arrests of 16 adults and minors who are “suspected of having recently married or of having begun making actual preparations for an illegal wedding ceremony.”
It was the second raid on the ultra-Orthodox Breslov sect within months, after police detained several residents of the community in June on suspicion of secretly marrying dozens of minors to one another.
According to Hebrew media outlets, police questioned a 15-year-old girl in her home because she could not leave her two-month-old baby alone.
Members of Yavne’el’s ultra-Orthodox Breslov sect have been reported to systematically marry off girls as young as 12 to husbands, some their age and others much older, pointing to alleged widespread child sexual abuse in the community.
Organizers allegedly go out of their way to conceal these weddings from the public eye, limiting the number of guests and barring those in attendance from bringing their cellphones to ceremonies, usually held early in the morning.
Children raised in the community are taught to marry and conceive young as part of the group’s religious outlook.
Full article https://www.timesofisrael.com/police-say-16-detained-in-northern-town-in-crackdown-on-underage-marriages/