BEVERLY HILLS (CA)
Jewish Journal
BY JARED SICHEL
Menachem Mendel Tewel, who goes by the name Mendel Tevel, remains in a Los Angeles jail awaiting extradition to Brooklyn. The rabbi and youth worker arrested Tuesday afternoon at the JEM Center in Beverly Hills is expected to be charged in New York with three counts of sexual abuse, according to officials in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office and the New York Police Department.
Although Tevel’s indictment is sealed, Lt. Lincoln Hoshino, a spokesman for the Beverly Hills Police Department, told the Journal that the arrest warrant his department received from New York charges Tevel with three counts of criminal sexual acts in the first degree, five counts of criminal sexual acts in the third degree and three counts of sexual abuse in the first degree.
Tevel, 30, is currently being held without bail at Los Angeles County’s inmate reception center in downtown L.A.. He is scheduled for an extradition hearing as early as the morning of Thursday, Oct. 31, during which he can either fight the Brooklyn DA’s extradition request, or waive opposition to it, giving New York law enforcement officials 30 days to transport him to Brooklyn to be arraigned..
In an article in the Journal in August, four men 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.
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