Israel’s Supreme Court overruled a lower court today and gave a haredi
man who sexually abused his young daughter a harsher prison sentence. He
had originally been sentenced to 24 months in prison by the Haifa
District Court but will now reportedly serve 45 months in prison. The prosecution
had appealed the lower sentence, leading to the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Haredi Pedophile Has Sentence Almost Doubled By Israel’s Supreme Court
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
Israel’s Supreme Court overruled a lower court today and gave a haredi man who sexually abused his young daughter a harsher prison sentence. He had originally been sentenced to 24 months in prison by the Haifa District Court but will now serve 45 months in prison. The prosecution had appealed the lower sentence, leading to the Supreme Court’s ruling, the Jerusalem Post reported.
The man’s identity and his daughter’s are both under a gag order.
“The father who educated his daughters in an exact and careful manner regarding the pillars of religion, changed his skin in the night.…From an overall view, taking into account the length and continuing period of the actions and the significance of their impact on the victim, [but also] that the actions which occurred were not that severe as a lenient consideration, it appears that the punishment which was imposed on the appellant is not commensurate to the severity of his actions. This is on the basis of court decisions and applicable legislative provisions,” Supreme Court Justice Neal Hendel reportedly wrote.
The victim, who is now 14-years-old, testified that her father sexually abused her at night while she was trying to sleep on an ongoing basis, beginning when she was in third grade and ending when she was in fifth grade.
Her testimony was supported by her mother, by a now-17-year-old sister who testified that she had witnessed the last of these incidents of sexual abuse in 2010, and social workers who interviewed all of the parties involved.
The father claimed his daughters’ allegations were false, insisting that his daughter was too young, too tired from sleep and too confused to be trustworthy.
He also reportedly said that his version of events was clear and had no inconsistencies while the victim’s version was inconsistent and uncertain – for example on whether or not he had abused his daughter all year round or only during the summer months.
He also reportedly claimed that even if the allegations were true, his daughter only accused him of touching her with a finger. That made his alleged actions less severe than the charges against him, he claimed.
The Haifa District Court rejected the father’s claims, in part due the corroborating testimony and in part due to the fact that the victim’s allegations against her father did not appear exaggerated and could have easily been much worse based on other recent cases of parental child sexual abuse.
The father was also accused of one incident of sexually abusing the older sister, who was then under 16-years-old.
But the Haifa court exonerated the father of that charge, even though it said that most of the allegation appeared to be true. The court ruled that there was enough doubt for an acquittal because the abuse was just a one-time incident and could have just been misinterpreted by the alleged victim.