‘Doctors, educators, police officers, and past and present members of the Knesset were involved in these abuses,’ survivor says.
Several women on Tuesday testified in the Knesset about sexual abuse they suffered as minors as part of religious ritual ceremonies.
The testimonies came during a joint meeting of the Knesset’s Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality, chaired by
MK Pnina Tameno-Shete (National Unity), and the Special Committee on Young Israelis, chaired by MK Naama Lazimi (The Democrats).
The joint meeting was organized in the wake of an investigative report published on April 2 by Israel Hayom journalist Noam Barkan.
Yael Ariel, one of the abuse survivors, shared: “I experienced
ritual abuse over many years until my late teens and was forced to harm other children. I chose to speak out and make my voice heard. I received threats after revealing my story. From age five to age 20, I was harmed in these ceremonies.”
According to Ariel, she received testimonies from several women who claimed that doctors, educators, police officers, and past and present members of the Knesset were involved in these abuses.
“I filed a complaint with the police that was closed after a few months, and I know of other cases that were closed. Speaking out today in the Knesset is a historic moment,” she said.
Another survivor, Yael Shitrit, testified: “You have no idea what ritual abuse is. The human brain cannot comprehend it. You can’t imagine what it means to program a three-year-old girl through rape and sadism so they can do whatever they want without anyone knowing.
“Their trafficking of me happened all over the country. They moved me from ceremony to ceremony. Naked men stood in a circle. My therapist, her husband, and her son harmed me, and there were dozens of other girls and boys who harmed me.
“There were ceremonies and rituals meant to make me forget,” Shitrit continued. “The police have known about this for a year, but they don’t have the tools to deal with it.
The people who will fall are very, very senior figures. These people run communities and government agencies. They threaten us. I have children I need to protect. Something needs to be set up that can deal with this.
They tried to make us like them – the people who caused us endless pain,” Shitrit said. “Your role is to make this stop in Safed, Jerusalem, Jaljulya, or anywhere else,” she declared.
DR. NAAMA GOLDBERG, head of an NGO called Lo Omdot MeNegged (Hebrew for “Not Standing Idly By”), which assists prostitution survivors, explained that the depictions are sometimes so gruesome that they are hard to believe, but this incredulity serves the abusers, who convince victims not to complain by arguing that they will not be believed.
“Several years ago, I received descriptions of sadistic abuse of children,” Goldberg said. “The accounts sounded absurd. [But] the testimonies kept coming and would not let up. They described gang rape by men, and sometimes by women. The abuse was filmed, and drugs were used. There were ritual practices and symbolism.
“I presented the police with written testimonies from five women. To this day, no one has contacted me. Since the report, additional testimonies have surfaced,” Goldberg said.
A representative of the
Israel Police, Ch.-Supt. Anat Yakir, said that there was a national unit reviewing all cases and that the complaints were “a top priority in the intelligence division.”
MKs who attended the meeting were visibly shaken by some of the testimonies, with one calling it a “
watershed moment” and another calling the revelations “titanic.”
Tameno-Shete said, “Reality shows us that the police are not strong in handling sexual offenses. No one wants to talk about brutal rape and children being raped. There are unimaginable cases of monstrosity here.”
Lazimi added, “I couldn’t breathe when I heard about a network of ritual abuse against girls and the fact that there is an organized and dangerous mechanism and nothing is being done to stop it. In this place, we will discuss and try to expose it to bring about change.”
Two other survivors spoke at the meeting on condition of anonymity.
One testified that a cousin trafficked her beginning at age 11. “At 14, he took me to sadistic clubs. I endured torture and starvation at the hands of well-known and prominent individuals. I suffered harm in endless ways.
“There were public events, and there were internal ceremonies where I was tied to a tall post with handcuffs. Around me, there were other handcuffed victims with rituals of drinking menstrual blood and the slaughter of cats and other animals. They told me no one would believe me if I spoke out.”
She continued that she filed a complaint with the police five years ago. “The prosecution closed the case due to lack of evidence, so I appealed, and it was accepted. I came to testify while on pregnancy bed rest, but the case was closed again due to lack of evidence.
