At least 9 suspects allegedly abused more than 70 children in insular Jerusalem neighborhood.
Jerusalem Police arrested three additional men on Sunday morning in what police are calling Jerusalem’s largest pedophilia case, with at least nine suspects who abused around 70 children in Jerusalem’s Nahlaot neighborhood.
Police believe the suspects were not working in an organized crime ring but knew of each other and sometimes carried out the abuse in pairs. More arrests are expected. Parents in the neighborhood claim there are more than 20 suspects and over 100 victims, some as young as two years old.
One man who was being investigated by police as a possible suspect was found dead in his Nahlaot apartment two weeks ago. Police classified his death as a suicide.
Police first received complaint of abuse in 2010 against a single suspect, who was arrested but later released to house arrest. It wasn’t until July of 2011 that more parents began to come forward with complaints, and police realized that they were dealing with multiple pedophiles and dozens of victims. A special investigation unit was created to look into the children’s claims of abuse. Investigating pedophilia is extremely difficult because children are so impressionable that even hearing about other incidents from their parents can compromise the investigation, explained a police source.
The abuse started as early as 2006 or 2007, but police believe that the haredi community tried to take care of the problem internally for a number of years. They finally turned to the police in July of 2011 because they could no longer deal with it themselves, said a police source. Since the summer, there has been significant cooperation between the haredi community and the police, despite the fact that the haredi community in Nahlaot is one of the more extreme sects and is usually reluctant to cooperate with secular authorities.
Six men were arrested over the course of the summer, but police were only able to gather enough proof to indict three of them, Binyamin Satz, Bentzion Primishelanu, and Zalman Cohen. The three men are currently detained and will remain incarcerated until the end of the legal proceedings against them.
On Sunday morning around 3:00 a.m., police arrested three additional suspects, aged 19, 50, and 60, all religious men from the Nahlaot neighborhood. The Jerusalem Magistrate Court extended their remand for five days.
Last Tuesday, Knesset members from the Committee for the Rights of the Child expressed their outrage that many of the suspects were still at large and coming into daily contact with their victims. A mother of eight, four of whom were abused, gave heartbreaking testimony and said her son still meets his abuser on the way to the school bus despite sitting with investigators for more than 12 hours.
A police source said that police had stepped up patrols of undercover policemen, had installed additional security cameras in the neighborhood, and met with parents to instruct them how not to compromise the investigation.
“I’m just upset, I want to know what’s happening,” said a Nahlaot resident, R. S., on Sunday. “I don’t know if the legal system will convict the guilty, and I feel all the perpetrators haven’t been identified,” he said. R. S. added that he knew one of the suspects personally through a community garden in the neighborhood.
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