Parents indicted for raping their daughter for 13 years

 

Demonstrators gather in Tel Aviv on Sunday in support of a 16-year-old victim of a gang rape in Eilat

An indictment was filed to the District Court in Haifa against a 61-and-62-year-old couple from the north for serious sexual offenses of rape, indecent acts and acts of sodomy that they committed against their daughter for over six years. The defendants have five children, including the 36-year-old complainant, according to Israeli media.

According to the indictment, her father ruled over the family with "a continuous atmosphere of terror" and was physically and verbally violent towards his children, while he and his wife even used to use drugs at home.

The indictment also revealed that starting from the day the complainant celebrated her 17th birthday in 2003 until 2016, her father raped her, and performed sodomy and indecent acts.

It was also reported that in some of the cases, which occurred when the complainant was already an adult, her mother also committed similar offenses against her.

The father impregnated the woman twice, the first pregnancy ended in the birth of a baby girl who suffered from many medical problems and died at the age of only nine months.

According to the indictment, the defendants conspired to commit sexual offenses on their daughter both when she was taking care of the sick baby and after her death when the complainant was in a deep mental crisis.

Though the daughter complained to the police, the case was closed. She insisted and got it reopened, and in the end, a "smoking gun" was discovered when it was found that the hospital kept the DNA of the dead baby, and this finding showed that the grandfather was also the father.

The brave daughter speaks up

"I do this first of all in order to get my justice," the young woman told Walla! "Very difficult things were done both in harming me and in bringing the girl into the world, which for them was perfectly fine. They are my parents who were supposed to protect me.

"It was a house of poverty," she added, "with substandard conditions and subsistence, there are periods when the food there amounts to bread and margarine." She added that she grew up in an environment of drugs, alcohol and a criminal father who has absolute control over the family members.

"For drugs, there was always money," she testified, adding that even when there wasn't enough money, he had horrible solutions even beyond what was refined into formal charges.

Charges of sexual exploitation 

"At one point he would also send me to men to sleep with them so that I would bring him money so that he could buy drugs," she recalls.

"He would also send my mother, I remember it from childhood. He controlled the house and did not let my mother move, we all understood where she suddenly goes in the evenings when she is so well-groomed and with makeup," she said.

"For six and a half years I have been fighting for my justice to come to light. I am after a war and I am standing on my feet and know that this is only the beginning of the road.

"My message to other girls is don't give up and don't despair, even if it's difficult in the investigations and if you're afraid of whoever did this to you, take courage and initiative. Things like this shouldn't happen, both when it's inside the family and when it's outside the family," she stated.

Attorney Reli Gutman will accompany her during the trial on behalf of the legal aid of the Ministry of Justice.

"This is one of the worst indictments I've seen in my career, and I have a long career behind me," Gutman told 104.5FM. According to her, the indictment contains unfathomable details, "and accordingly, the condition of the complainant is not good. She is broken and crushed, her life has been destroyed."

"The police delayed a lot, maybe the reality here exceeds all imagination," she emphasized, "maybe the police didn't know how to deal with these horrors, the case was prolonged and she defiantly said that if they don't handle it properly, then they should just close it. There were also multiple investigations, and finally to fill in various gaps in the case, eventually, it matured into the filing of an indictment."

Why did the police delay the investigation?

The police chose not to answer the difficult questions surrounding the case, leaving no explanation as to why it took more than six years to investigate it.

"The police conduct investigative cases professionally and subject to the law and procedures, this was also the case in this investigation," the police said in a statement.

"Upon receiving the complaint, the police opened an investigation accompanied by the attorney's office. It was an investigation that was conducted with sensitivity, professionalism and thoroughness due to the characteristics of the offenses within which many complex investigative actions were carried out, including the collection of evidence from family members, welfare workers and others, forensic tests and more when from time to time and in accordance with the development of the investigation investigative actions were required more."