Police on Thursday asked the Beersheba Magistrate’s Court to release under restrictive conditions prominent Netivot Rabbi Netanel Shriki, accused of groping three women, along with his assistant Ariel Moshe.
Shriki was arrested Monday night after two women filed police complaints claiming he had groped them during counseling sessions. A third woman came forward to file a complaint on Tuesday, after his name was publicized.
Moshe was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of obstruction of justice.
Shriki’s arrest was extended by the court until Thursday. When remanding him, the court had said there was reasonable suspicion Shriki could be a “danger” to the complainants and might attempt to obstruct the investigation.
Shriki is a well-known figure in Netivot and among Likud leaders.
The first complaint against Shriki was filed with Beersheba police last Thursday by a woman who had gone to seek his counsel after she and her husband could not conceive a child.
According to her police complaint, during the meeting he asked her to lift her shirt and bra so he could examine her. The woman, a physician, said she didn’t understand why he needed to examine her. He then touched her breast and stomach. She said he told her he understood why her husband loved her and said her breasts were perfect.
She told officers she felt nausea and “unbearable humiliation” from the incident.
After seeing the complaint reported on the news — with the rabbi’s name still withheld — a second woman came forward and filed a complaint against him. The second woman’s complaint told a similar story of the rabbi asking her to remove her shirt during a consultation.
The woman told officers she knew of at least two others who had been subjected to inappropriate behavior by the rabbi.
After his name was made public on Tuesday, the third woman came forward.
Shriki’s attorney Zion Amir said Tuesday that the rabbi “completely, absolutely denies these claims… We have full confidence in his claim that he’s innocent.”
An attorney for the first complainant, Suzie Arania, praised the police for “treating the complaint with utmost seriousness and investigating the case fully. The women are cooperating fully with the investigators in order to enable the truth to come out about [Shriki’s] behavior. From their testimony, it appears we’re seeing similar acts, a pattern,” she told Channel 12.
In asking for the court’s permission to publicize the rabbi’s name earlier this week, a police representative said that “at this point in the case it appears that there were still more incidents, and publicity could prompt additional women to complain who had feared to do so beforehand.”
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