Menachem Mendel Tevel
Mendel Tevel, a local rabbi and youth workeraccused by
multiple people in the New York Jewish community of sexual abuse, was arrested
Tuesday, October 29, at the JEM Center in Beverly Hills.
The arrest was reported to the Jewish Journal by Lt. Lincoln
Hoshino, a spokesman for the Beverly Hills Police Department. Calls to Tevel’s
cell phone and to the JEM Center were not answered Tuesday afternoon.
The arrest warrant was issued for a Menachem “Mendel” Tewel
by authorities in Brooklyn, N.Y., and was signed with an order for extradition
by a Kings County judge, according to Hoshino.
The man known as Mendel Tevel
worked at the JEM center, and, according to Hoshino, despite the difference in
spelling of the name is the same as the man arrested.
“He’s in custody,” Hoshino told the Journal Tuesday
afternoon. “We have an outstanding warrant for his arrest charging criminal
sexual acts out of New York.”
In August, the Journal reported on four men who said they
had been victims of Tevel when they were minors (ranging from ages 6 to 14 at
the time of the alleged abuse).
They claimed Tevel performed acts that included
spanking on bare skin, to sexually suggestive rubbing.
The instances described
by those who spoke with the Journal took place as early as around 1995 and as
recently as around 2004.
Two Los Angeles residents interviewed for that article, both
of whom asked that their names not be made public, identified Tevel as recently
working at the JEM Center, a Jewish youth community center in Beverly Hills.
Prior to publication of the August story, Tevel himself did
not respond to multiple phone calls to his personal cell phone, nor to
voicemails, text messages and e-mails from the Journal over several days.
Searches of both civil and criminal public records at the time did not reveal
any convictions, or any closed or pending charges against Tevel in either New
York or California.
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