Court hearing delayed following report Lev Tahor members detained in Trinidad

CHATHAM, Ont. – A lawyer for the children’s aid society in Chatham, Ont., has brought an emergency motion in the case of the removal of some children from the ultra-orthodox Jewish sect, Lev Tahor.

The motion, from Loree Hodgson-Harris, who is representing the Chatham-Kent Children’s Services, resulted in a closed court hearing, so the subject of the motion is not known.

It comes amid a report from local media outlet BlackBurnNews.com that nine members of the sect are being detained at an airport in Trinidad and Tobago.

A hearing in an appeal from a judge’s order that 13 Lev Tahor children be taken into child welfare custody was set for 10 a.m. today, but it was delayed for two hours and no members of the sect are present in court.

It’s unclear if those reportedly in Trinidad and Tobago are the same families involved in the custody case.

A judge ruled last month that the children must be turned over to child protection authorities in Quebec, where a court had ordered that they be placed in foster care.

Much of the Lev Tahor community of about 200 people left their homes in Ste-Agathe-des-Monts, Que., in the middle of the night days after a child welfare agency started a court case against a couple of the families.

In their absence, the court in Quebec ruled in November that the children be placed in foster care for 30 days, but the insular community had already settled in Chatham.

The community maintains that the move from Quebec had been planned for some time, but the judge concluded that the Lev Tahor members fled the pending court case because of the possibility their children would be removed from their homes.