Outrageous
Telz-Stone Reels: Convicted Child Sex Offender Hired to Teach Haredi Boys
Horror in Israeli Haredi community: Serial child molester who served 5+ years in prison infiltrated Talmud Torah as “Yisrael Spiegel”- exposed and suspended after bombshell investigation.
Malachi Israel Beniyas (also spelled in some contexts as Mela chi Yisrael Beniyas) was convicted several years ago of multiple serious sexual offenses committed against minor students (boys) in a religious educational setting.
He served a prison sentence of over five years.
After his release, he changed his identity to "Yisrael Spiegel" (or "Israel Spiegel") and managed to get hired as a teacher at the Ateret Shlomo Talmud Torah (a Haredi boys' school) in Kiryat Yearim, commonly known as Telz-Stone (a Litvish-Haredi community near Jerusalem).
The school administration claims they were completely unaware of his criminal past or real identity; he was presented to them with clean references.
As soon as Haaretz contacted the institution and his true identity was confirmed, Beniyas was immediately suspended from his teaching position.
Israeli police have opened an investigation into how a registered high-risk sex offender was able to infiltrate an independent Haredi school, bypassing background checks and the national sex offender registry restrictions (which normally bar such individuals from working with children).
No further details about the original conviction (exact year, location of the crimes, or number of victims) have been released in today's reporting, likely due to Israeli publication restrictions on sex-crime victim identities. This case is already causing significant outrage in the Telz-Stone community and renewed calls for stricter oversight of private Haredi educational institutions. I'll keep an eye out if more emerges.