Israeli Deputy Minister Yaakov Tessler of the United Torah Judaism Party has allegedly put pressure on child abuse victims to stop them from testifying to the police against his father, Rabbi Ephraim Tessler, Haaretz reported last week.
According to Haaretz, in November 2017 the Israeli police arrested the head of the Damesek Eliezer Yeshiva in Jerusalem, Rabbi Tessler, and charged him with forcing indecent acts on at least four minors aged 14 to 16. However, in 2018, the police closed the case against the rabbi because the victims were allegedly pressured to not to cooperate with the investigation.
The newspaper said that the boys' testimonies indicate that after this pressure was applied, they agreed not to testify against Tessler and, in return, he would be removed from the yeshiva. It was also reported that a silence agreement was signed with at least one of the boys so that he would not resort to criminal proceedings.
Haaretz said that intelligence gathered by the police revealed that the deputy minister was a guarantor that his father would be removed from the yeshiva.
Yaakov Tessler was elected to the Knesset for the first time in 2019. His father is one of the leading Hassidic rabbinical figures in Bnei Brak. For many years, the rabbi was the head of the yeshiva, which is intended for boys between the ages of 13 and 16.
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