Four Orthodox Jewish rabbis were charged in New Jersey with abducting Jewish men and forcing them to divorce their unhappy wives, a federal court said Thursday.
Indictment filed by U.S. Attorney Paul Fishmen accuses rabbis Mendel Epstein, Martin Wolmark, Binyamin Stimler and Jay Golstein aka 'Yaakov' of abducting or conspiring to kidnap men and torturously forcing them to divorce their wives. These men were a part of a larger group that was charged in the alleged plot.
If convicted the rabbis could face life imprisonment and a $250, 000 fine for each kidnapping, Fishmen said, states a Reuters report. In Orthodox Judaism, women are given a divorce only through husband's consent in a document called 'get'. According to experts, such kidnapping incidents occur after 'get abuses' in which husbands demand a larger share of the couple's communal property prior to the consent.
The rabbis were accused of charging Jewish women and their families tens of thousands of dollars for the divorces, according to the Associated Press. However, the attorneys of Goldstein, Wolmark and Stimler said their clients refuted the allegations.
Calling the case "overcharged" Aiden O'Connor, attorney of Golstein said the court did not consider the individual circumstances of the women who were seeking divorces. "This is not a kidnapping matter, these women were locked in terrible marriages," O'Connor said.
Nathan Lewin, Stimler's attorney, said his client denied the allegations that he was a member of a 'kidnap team.' He said that Stimler was sought out because of his expertise in religious divorces, which he has always conducted through legal means, he alleged.
According to the undercover FBI agents, who met rabbis Epstein and Wolmark at their home, they were told each kidnapping costs a $10,000 payment to a rabbinical court and up to $60,000 more for the "tough guys" who would torture the husbands, reports Reuters.
"I guarantee you that if you're in the van; you'd give a get to your wife. You probably love your wife, but you'd give a get when they finish with you," Epstein told one of the undercover agents posing as the brother of an unhappy wife, the indictment states.
Wolmark's attorney Benjamin Brafman said in a statement that the charges were false and that Wolmark was a Talmudic scholar and expert in Jewish divorce who has previously settled hundreds of marital disputes through legal means.
The statement further read that Goldstein and Stimler took the undercover agents to a warehouse in New Jersey where a kidnapped victim was to be assaulted. The rabbis wore bandannas and Halloween masks and brought rope, surgical blades, and a screwdriver for the torture. They were arrested last fall.
A New York Daily News article states that four of the others charged, including Jay Goldstein's sons, Avrohom Goldstein, 34, and Moshe Goldstein, 31, pleaded guilty to extortion charges in connection with the case, authorities said.
