Former Students Speak Out About the Atrocities and Abuse at French Yeshiva (VIDEO)

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ISRAEL (VINnews) — A student from Beth Yossef in France has spoken on Israeli television, describing the horrific conditions and abuse that students endured while attending the yeshiva.

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In a telephone interview on i24 News, the young man who remained anonymous, described the “physical abuse” and “horrible” experience of attending the yeshiva.

The bochur said, “I was there for a year and three-quarters, and the experience was horrible.”

He continued, “Most of the guys I know they are interviewing, it’s true. It was a horrible place. The place is rundown, broken, the dorms are in horrible condition, I was on the third floor, and there were holes in the floor so you could see the floor below.

“There was plenty of physical abuse, I was physically abused a few times…never by the heads, it’s very important, the heads did not physically abuse us, they would send others to punish us.”

An Israeli father of another student who went to the yeshiva six years ago, at age 14, spoke with Charedim 10 about his son’s horrifying experience. He said that before sending his son, he had been assured by others that it was a great yeshiva, and his son went skiing within two weeks of arrival.

However one Shabbos early on, a boy saw his son on the side of a building and suspected him of smoking. He ran into the yeshiva, and someone soon came out wearing a mask and “beat his son, blasted him with blows.”

After Shabbos, the father got a call that the yeshiva was sending his son home. The father said, “They left him in a field all alone in France, and he had to find his way home. He had been beaten all over his body, he did not know the language, he was only 14, this was the trauma of a lifetime. All because of a suspicion that he was smoking.”

After the boy managed to get home, the family filed a complaint with an Israeli police department, who said they would send it to France. (They did not know the status of the complaint.)

After reading about the raid this past week, the father and son called it a “miracle” that the boy was expelled so quickly, and did not continue to suffer.

An incident this past July prompted an investigation when a student ran away from the yeshiva to the US embassy in Paris asking for help.

According to an i24 journalist, Israel’s ambassador to France, Aliza Bin-Noun, visited the boys at one point and said they were in good shape, “being fed kosher food.”

As reported on VIN News, last week dozens of students from the Yeshiva were taken into state custody after the faculty of 16 teachers and administrators were arrested.

The raid Monday on the prestigious boarding school-style yeshiva near Paris attended by many students from Israel and the United States, was the largest-scale operation in recent history against a Jewish school in France, and the first time that the entire faculty of such an institution was arrested.

At least 42 underage students from the yeshiva in the Paris suburb of Bussières (Seine-et-Marne) were placed at an undisclosed child welfare facility, Le Figaro reported. The state has assumed custody of the children provisionally for five days, during which attempts will be made to reunite them with their families abroad, the report said.


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39 Comments
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Sara
Sara
2 years ago

It’s irrelevant whether or not he was smoking
Even if they caught him red handed they were forbidden from touching him
I guess we will all find out soon enough if it’s true that the school was abusive

Circle
Circle
2 years ago

Don’t parents have a responsibility to check out a yeshiva before sending their kids there?

Ina
Ina
2 years ago

American boys do not belong in France unless they agree to it. It’s another planet. Our at risk children are becoming more difficult. Yeshiva likely got in over their heads. Wake up. We have children not cut out for what yeshiva life has become today. Time to cater to their needs. If not in your back yard today it will be tomorrow.

Momo18
Momo18
2 years ago

For anyone who justifies a teen to get a beating for smoking
A. Educate your kids why not to smoke and to stand up to peer pressure….and not what everyone is going to think of the teen and the “family” your kid comes first! Don’t forget we ourselves were teens and did dumb and foolish things it’s part of growing up
B. Next time you do something not right halacicly or lawful….and get punished or beating don’t cry about it and I hope know one will say it was justified and you deserved it!

Anonymous
Anonymous
2 years ago

Sounds like 2 of the Yeshivas in the ’70’s close to home .

Moshe Klein
Moshe Klein
2 years ago

Something sounds fishy to me about this whole story.
I wonder what other details will come out after a more thorough investigation.

I also wonder why these people felt it was important to speak on television about it at this point.

grumpy
grumpy
2 years ago

about 65-70 years ago in chicago, I attended a “chader” that had socialist melamdim from Europe teaching us. There was alot of hitting and there was no choice.

Most kids dropped out after bar mitzvah. Lousy environment!

But today, things have changed, melamdim are instructed NOT to hit the kids, it does not help.

chaim
chaim
2 years ago

commentators here seem to have missed the point that the alleged smoking happened on shabbos. The beating was still wrong (no hasrah, and we dont have a real beis din today) but gives insight into the schools warped thinking.

Rats Rats DemocRATs
Rats Rats DemocRATs
2 years ago

This must be a Yeshiva for OTD kids. I think I heard of it years ago. It’s hidden in France. Dealing with such kids is not easy. Parents are probably happy to keep them out of sight. It’s a sad situation. Lumping 46 such boys together is tough. I’m sure in juvenile detentions there is plenty of violence. These kids need to be divided and separated. By putting them all together they become worse.

Golda
Golda
2 years ago

How can there be rampant abuse and the boys continued staying there and going there? This is a real mystery to me.

Shmuel
Shmuel
2 years ago

I wonder about this headline. Abuse, Maybe, maybe not. Atrocities? Not only it’s a ridiculous exaggeration, but it also puts the whole article in doubt.

Choqué
Choqué
2 years ago

Wow i know the yeshiva well. It has nothing to do with this video! Completely different scenes! Israeli television and those moser are destroying the yeshiva and they’re living in fairly nice setting.

Normal
Normal
2 years ago

Cult

Lbk
Lbk
2 years ago

Was the issue the smoking itself or the fact that it was on shabbos?

Jonathan Berger
Jonathan Berger
2 years ago

Typical … to bash yidden doing so much good by interviewing people that love to lie on the ones that tried to help them.

There are so many boys and their parents that can’t stop thanking this yeshiva for saving their life

Q: Why interview mechaleley Shabbos when you can interview so many students and parents which love the place that saved them??
A: Because that’s what … is all about

Nochum
Nochum
2 years ago

Lol ‘just because of a suspicion of smoking’s of course that’s what the kid would tell his father