Los Angeles, CA – One of the largest Jewish cemeteries in the Los Angeles, California, area has been accused of desecrating the remains of those buried there, according to a lawsuit.
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The suit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleges that employees at Eden Memorial Park, in Mission Hills, California, “intentionally, willfully and secretly desecrated the remains of deceased individuals,” often moving them to make room for new remains.
Attorney Michael Avenatti, who filed the suit, told CNN that his investigation revealed that as many as 500 graves may have been torn up without the families’ permission.
“We allege that Eden Memorial Park and its management for the better part of 15 years were engaging in improper burial practices, including the desecration of graves and the improper disposal of human remains,” he said.
The lawsuit is filed by F. Charles Sands, whose parents are buried at Eden Memorial Park, against the cemetery and its owner, Service Corporation International, based in Houston, Texas. The company is the largest owner of cemeteries and funeral homes in the United States.
This is not the first time Service Corporation International has faced allegations of digging up graves and moving bodies to make room for new remains. It reached a $100 million settlement with families of people whose remains were desecrated at Menorah Gardens in Florida, (as was reported here on Vos Iz Neias). The company also reached a $14 million settlement with the Florida state attorney’s office over issues related to those claims.
Anthony Lampe, the general manager of Eden Memorial Park, said he had not seen the lawsuit and referred inquiries to Service Corporation International. Company spokeswoman Lisa Marshall said the allegations in the lawsuit were not valid. She said SCI had investigated and confirmed burial issues at Eden Memorial Park in 2007, but she could not provide specifics of that investigation.
The lawsuit alleges groundskeepers were secretly instructed to break buried concrete interment vaults that contained caskets that were already buried, using backhoes. It also alleges human remains would often fall out of the broken caskets, and those body parts were either scattered or thrown away.
In one case, Avenatti said, a human skull was discarded.
“We have uncovered evidence that the groundskeepers and others at Eden Memorial Park have been instructed to break off or break apart that concrete vault and, at many times, that exposes human remains,” Avenatti said.
Asked about the seriousness of the allegations, he said, “If the allegations are proven true, this is incredibly horrific.”
The lawsuit said that under Jewish tradition, “the deceased are typically required to be interred within 24 hours, thereby leaving little time to obtain consent to move an encroaching vault in an adjacent plot and giving defendants a motive to desecrate human remains and commit other immoral acts rather than comply with the law.”
The American Way my friends, the american way, money above all.
the goyim do this to us enough through out the entire worrld, from europe to yemen, why are we doing it??
People are dying to get into there
I know for a fact, that the above is not at all true. I work with an outside mortuary and go there from once to five times a week as a funeral director. This particular cemetery which is owned by SCI would not take any risks in doing something like this. Someone out there who is trying to make money and thinks they can pull something like this against this cemetery has already wasted his money on attorney fees.
It sounds like greed! You’re so certain that SCI would not be involved in desecration-for-profit, but they’ve already settled and paid $100 million in lawsuits filed for the same thing at a SCI Florida cemetery. That’s a lot of money. It tells you that SCI feared they would have to payout a whole lot more if the lawsuits went to trial.
Also, we should all be careful to not allow paranoia and an automatic assumption of antisemitism. Don’t forget, the grave desecrations at Burr Oak, the African-American cemetery outside of Chicago, are still being investigated, as reported by the Ethic Soup blog article, ” Where is Emmett Till’s Coffin, Where are the Babyland Graves?” However, the first feelings that it was all due to racism, proved wrong — unless it involved some internalized racism. The perpetrators were all African-Americans themselves, employees involved in a scam to resell burial plots.
What has happened at Eden Memorial Park is horrendous. But similar things have happened at a Jewish cemetery in Queens NY called Bayside Cemetery owned by Congregation Shaare Zedek in Manhattan. Graves have been desecrated and vandalized. Bones have been scattered and likely discarded. Most of the cemetery’s money has been improperly taken by the synagogue owner in violation of NY State trust and cemetery law. The cemetery has collected perpetual care money and used it to fix their roof. And on and on the sorry story of Bayside Cemetery goes. And very strangely the NY State Attorney General has been investigating Bayside Cemetery for 6 years without conclusion. Why so long? What’s the connection between the NY Attorney General and Congregation Shaare Zedek that has been causing such a delayed investigation? For more information about Bayside Cemetery goto http://www.baysidecemeterylitigation.com. I hope that someday justice can be done for this disrespected cemetery in Queens NY.
Oy, Vey!!! They don’t even let a person rest in peace. It makes one shudder. Just picture all the zombies parading down Queens Boulevard.