Haredi "Starving Mother" Accepts Plea Deal, Won't See Her Children For 5 Years Except In Closely Monitored Visits

Mother's case sparked weeks of haredi rioting that included stoning police, burning a welfare office and extensive mayhem.

Starving mother' accepts plea bargain
After doctors testimony on child's condition, mother accused of starving her son accepts plea bargain she earlier rejected on advice from rabbis
Aviad Glickman • Ynet

Plea bargain reached even after the last moment – in the corridors of the court. A woman accused of starving her son accepted a plea bargain on Thursday after evidence was presented at Jerusalem's Magistrate's Court, including testimony from the doctor who cared for the child.

Dr. Michael Weintraub described the terrible state to which the child had deteriorated, and it seems this may have prompted the renewed efforts to agree to a plea bargain she had previously rejected on advice from her rabbis.

According to the agreement, the mother will be under house arrest for three years, and kept away from the children for five years except under conditions to be determined for visiting. She is also expected to undergo medical treatment. After two years, if she meets the conditions of the plea bargain, she will be able to see her children in their house under observation for a few hours each day.

The senior doctor from Hadassah Mount Scopus Hospital in Jerusalem gave testimony for about an hour regarding the signs he had discovered in the boy H., who was three years old at the time, and the behavior of his mother, which he described as "violent acts."

When he was first brought to hospital, the child had undergone extensive checks to ascertain what was causing him so much suffering, when in fact doctors were seeking a disease that didn't exist.

Each time medical teams tried to feed H., Weintraub said, his mother would say that something was hurting him and that he shouldn't be fed. At this stage they still believed her, because nobody wanted to think that a mother would harm her child.

The doctor even demonstrated, using a doll, how the mother would disconnect the feeding tubes from the child, though only the medical team was authorized to do this. The boys' uncle, the doctor said, related that he had seen the mother's hands under the blanket and the boy screaming in pain. At this point it was decided to take the boy under medical supervision.

"We were concerned that the mother would decide to take him to another hospital, so we reported the incident," the doctor testified. "She strongly opposed and was furious that we moved the boy to a room closer to the nurses' station." 

Weintraub emphasized that on the day the mother was kept away from the ward, the boy's skin condition disappeared, and his skin cleared up completely.

"When the mother wasn't around, the boy slept soundly and no morphine was required," he said. "When we kept her away from him, in less than a week we were able to stop the morphine completely, and the child got completely well and didn’t need any drugs."

Later, upon receiving further evidence, the possibility that he was suffering from his mother's acts was raised. It was also suspected that the mother suffered from Munchausen Syndrome by proxy, in which a parent causes marks of illness on the child.

The mother's legal defense tried to persuade her to accept the plea bargain, according to which she would admit to most of the paragraphs in the indictment and would thus avoid jail.

On Thursday morning, she was still refusing the agreement in accordance with instructions from her rabbis, but after the doctor's testimony the two sides requested a break in the proceedings because they were close to reaching a plea bargain.

It should be noted that the conditions for her detention and what access she should have to her children during the trial have already been extensively discussed. At the same time, the haredi population has held ongoing and sometimes violent protests against her arrest.

District Court Judge Moshe Ravid eventually ruled that the mother should be kept away from Mea Shearim, the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem, together with her children – excluding H., who was the victim of her abuse – and that she would be held under house arrest with 24-hour surveillance.

All appeals by the prosecution against this ruling were rejected. The replacement of the mother's defense team also resulted in delays to the trial.

[Hat Tip: CS.]

Comments

[Robert Wisler]

Israeli justice is too lenient. Her actions warrented the death penalty, just like Eichmann.

[BaltimoreYid]

Lock her in a cell and put her on a starvation diet. It's only fitting.

[R]

Who were these Rabbis who told her not to take the plea deal in the first place?
Did they really believe she was innocent?

[Yerachmiel Lopin]

So now will we see massive public demonstrations of apology to social welfare officials and to Hadassah Hospital who saved the child's life? I think not. Of course those who organized. participated in and rationalized the demonstrations will go right on using Hadassah.

[harold]

I see that is VERY important to add the "Haredi" into the headline of the story. I wonder why Ynet did not do the same.

[Shmarya]

Because they ran a picture of the woman under the headline, and because the case is infamous in Israel, and most people know she's haredi. So they left out haredi and got a one line headline, instead of a two line headline.

[alternative childcare]

I know a great shiduch for her, a rabbi with similar ideas about raising children, he just arrived back in Israel after a little trip to Brazil...

[Adam Neira]

This is a terrible case of child abuse no doubt about it. The woman is obviously mentally ill and needs a lot of assistance and healing. Prayers for the children.

[W.Ford]

What about the 45,000 abortions performed in Israel per year who stands up for those children huh AND YOU WONDER WHY THE ARABS OUTNUMBER US JEWS IN THE HOLY LAND THEY(ARABS) DO NOT ABORT THIER BABIES NEARLY AS MUCH. Stop blowning minor haredi child abuse out of proportions.