The most popular Israeli news website reported that the sudden trip to the United States that the leader of a large Hasidic group took a few weeks ago, was to escape possible charges of sexually abusing women and girls who came to him for advice.
The rabbi, is believed to be 75-year-old Rabbi Eliezer Berland, the chief of the Shuvu Bonim Breslov sect. He is a member of the Vaad Olami D'Chasedai Breslov or World Committee of Breslov Chassidim and is credited with helping thousands of secular Jews to convert to Hasidic Judaism.
Berland is currently in Miami, Florida, according to press reports in the United States.
The father of a 15-year-old girl who was allegedly raped by the rabbi told Army Radio that when his 15-year-old daughter told him about the abuse his older daughter also came forward and admitted that the rabbi had sexually abused her, too.
It is rumored that up to 20 women and girls were sexually abused by the rabbi. Several of his followers recently caught the rabbi naked with a naked underage girl, according to press reports in Israel.
