Conviction Jewish institutions and contexts Other Jewish institution or hearing Jerusalem, Israel · 2010

Israel: 'rabbi' Elior Chen — 24 years for torturing a follower's children, upheld by the Supreme Court

Request a correction or reply

Disposition and response

Material that narrows or disputes the record

Appellate history

2014-05-01

Appeal rejected; conviction and 24-year sentence stand.

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

self-styled rabbi with total spiritual direction over a follower family

Organization

No organization assigned

Archive classification

This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.

The children were delivered to the abuse solely because their mother was under his spiritual direction — his word reorganised an entire household into an instrument of torture.

Guru or spiritual-teacher authority
Prophecy or divine command
Threatened spiritual consequence

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2010-11-01 · conviction; appeal rejected

Jerusalem District Court; Supreme Court of Israel. Elior Chen, a self-styled rabbi, was convicted in November 2010 of abusing and ordering his followers to abuse eight children of a follower-mother — beatings with hammers and clubs, burning, confinement in a suitcase — leaving one child in a permanent vegetative state. Extradited back from Brazil, he was sentenced in February 2011 to 24 years plus damages; the Supreme Court rejected his appeal in May 2014. The mother received five years and four followers up to twenty years each.

Documented coercion mechanisms

'purification' doctrine ordering beatings of the children
mother's absolute obedience to his direction
followers deployed as instruments of the abuse

Cited record

Sources

national news agency sentencing report JTA, 28 Feb. 2011.: Wire report of the sentence.
national newspaper court reporting final appellate disposition The Jerusalem Post: 'Supreme Court rejects appeal of child abuser rabbi'.: Reports the final appellate disposition.

Source provenance

Source access and integrity log

This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.

Source and tier basis: https://www.jta.org/2011/02/28/israel/abusive-rabbi-sentenced-to-24-years-in-prison Corpus classification: national-news-agency; evidentiary role: sentencing-report. SHA-256 323f87606f1433c8f8fdd32f8038791e24e87a7835e40f44736b37326347d77a
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
Source and tier basis: https://www.jpost.com/National-News/Supreme-Court-rejects-appeal-of-child-abuser-rabbi-351646 Corpus classification: national-newspaper-court-reporting; evidentiary role: final-appellate-disposition. SHA-256 c035af7b8a1a91a4ef08e817641c3343b85193095b6746766815ac7b58ab9305
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

Named in this record? Request a correction, report a changed disposition, or submit a response.

Related record

Related cases · Jewish institutions and contexts

Browse all 36 Jewish institutions and contexts records

← Explore all cases