Panel Advises Israel Set Up Child Protection Authority After Sexual Abuse Testimonies
Victims of child abuse refrained from seeking help from Israel's health care system, education system or courts, due to negative experiences with the authorities, hundreds of testimonies reveal
A public committee tasked with examining Israeli policy on dealing with child sexual assault has recommended establishing an inter-ministerial authority for the protection of children, after a report showed that current Israeli policy often fails victims of child sex abuse, sometimes even compounding the victims' trauma.
In a report submitted to Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Monday, the committee also recommended setting clear policy for the Israeli health system when it comes to treating victims of trauma, as well as providing special training to all government ministry staff who deal with such services. The panel also advised that children who are victims of sexual assault receive government financial compensation, including possible regular restitution payments.
These recommendations were based on testimony from more than 500 child victims of sexual assault – all of whom are now adults – which highlighted the problematic nature of Israel's current policy, the committee members said. The committee was jointly established in 2020 by Tel Aviv University and the Jerusalem-based Haruv Institute, which deals with child abuse and neglect, with the goal of completely overhauling Israel’s policies in dealing with child victims of sexual assault.
The report included evidence that the system has compounded the trauma that the victims suffered from their attackers. According to testimonies, some victims refrained from seeking help from the health care system, the education system or the courts due to past negative experiences with the authorities, or due to experiences that they had heard about from other victims.
When victims refrain from getting help from the authorities, it has serious consequences for both the victim and the prosecution of the assailant, committee members said. The report showed that in only 41 percent of cases was abuse uncovered while the victims were still children—and, within those cases, only half of the children who spoke up about the abuse were referred to the government for assistance.
About 80 percent of the victims said they had not received any assistance from social welfare or law enforcement authorities. “The process of giving testimony and being confronted by my attacker was a harmful process,” one victim told the panel. “They didn’t take me into account and didn’t see me, the victim. Instead, they used me as a witness in the case.”
Roughly a third said they experienced financial difficulties as adults as a result of their childhood experiences, either due to the challenges of functioning on the job, or because of the heavy cost of psychological treatment. Eleven percent said that they subsist on government disability payments alone.
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“Israeli society needs to change the discourse. [It’s not] the child who needs to be ashamed. The one who needs to be ashamed is the one who harmed them,” the committee’s chairwoman, retired Judge Nava Ben-Or said. The panel was established at the initiative of Prof. Carmit Katz of Tel Aviv University’s Shapell School of Social Work.
Among those who gave testimony, more than 70 percent had suffered ongoing abuse. In a quarter of the cases, the sexual abuse began when the victim was younger than 5, while the average age was 8. And in a clear majority of cases, the perpetrator was someone whom the child knew: In half the cases, the abuser was a close relative or a member of the child’s extended family.
Regarding the alleged inadequacies in Israel's health care system, adults who suffered abuse while children said that health workers treated them insensitively, labelling them as psychiatric patients while ignoring their traumatic pasts. Much of their treatment involved prescribing tranquilizers, which were not appropriate for their condition, they said.
The panel highlighted what it believed was the importance of an inter-ministerial authority to coordinate the entire government’s response to the problem, to bring about improvements and to ensure that victims don’t “fall through the cracks.”