Geisha Kow­lessar

A spokesman for the Lev Tahor sect, Lee Bolton, has con­demned the T&T Gov­ern­ment for de­port­ing nine of its mem­bers back to Cana­da.The Toron­to Star re­port­ed that a plane car­ry­ing three Lev Tahor adults and six chil­dren was met by po­lice and chil­dren's aid of­fi­cials on Sat­ur­day night. The chil­dren were tak­en in­to the cus­tody of Chatham-Kent Chil­dren's Ser­vices, about a three-hour dri­ve south­west of Toron­to.They had fled Cana­da be­fore a court date in On­tario at which they were sched­uled to learn the out­come of their ap­peal against an or­der to re­move 13 chil­dren from the ul­tra-Or­tho­dox Jew­ish sect's com­pound in Chatham-Kent, On­tario, near Wind­sor.

The Lev Tahor fam­i­lies are fac­ing al­le­ga­tions of child ne­glect.In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day Bolton said it was re­port­ed that one child was hos­pi­talised and was re­fus­ing to eat af­ter be­ing tak­en away by the child pro­tec­tive ser­vices."They sure aren't cop­ing very well. One child is in the hos­pi­tal as she's re­fus­ing to eat...she wants her par­ents. Your gov­ern­ment had no busi­ness turn­ing all these peo­ple over to Cana­da," Bolton said.She said a 17-year-old moth­er was ar­rest­ed in Cal­gary with her five-month-old ba­by, who was "pulled right off her breast."Ex­press­ing con­cern for the ba­by's wel­fare, Bolton added: "Isn't that a won­der­ful way to treat chil­dren? The ba­by will prob­a­bly not bot­tle feed and will end up in the hos­pi­tal. I don't think your gov­ern­ment has any idea how bad the child wel­fare sys­tem is in Cana­da."

Bolton said the Que­bec Gov­ern­ment has been ask­ing its law en­force­ment of­fi­cials to keep the rest of the group, which had no court or­ders, un­der house ar­rest in Chatham to pre­vent them from leav­ing.Ex­press­ing con­cern about what might hap­pen if the chil­dren were placed in fos­ter care, Bolton said there was a pos­si­bil­i­ty they might be sex­u­al­ly abused.The Toron­to Star al­so re­port­ed that in No­vem­ber, about 250 Lev Tahor ad­her­ents fled to On­tario from Que­bec just ahead of an or­der to seize 14 chil­dren. Of­fi­cials said they had ev­i­dence of phys­i­cal beat­ings, un­der­age mar­riage, forcible con­fine­ment and ne­glect.That or­der was up­held by an On­tario court which ex­empt­ed a 17-year-old girl but not her ba­by.