The Haifa District Court on Wednesday imposed actual prison terms on three members of one family who carried out a planned campaign of harassment and witness tampering against a complainant in a serious rape case. The main defendant, Zohara Hymer, was sentenced to four years in prison. The case began with an indictment filed in November 2019 against Or Malul and two other defendants for rape in aggravated circumstances.
According to the amended charges, the family built an elaborate scheme to sway the young woman’s testimony and reduce Malul’s role in the alleged assault. Hymer, Malul’s aunt, rented an apartment in the complainant’s community and posed as a theater professional, offering the complainant and her sister a role in a fake play. She also fabricated personal details about supposed sexual abuse she had suffered, all to gain trust and draw the woman out. Hymer secretly recorded the complainant and passed the material to Malul’s father, Doron Mordechai, who directed her actions and later involved another defendant in the rape case.
In May 2020, the family escalated the effort with a false call in which Hymer’s daughter, Keren Bar Goldstein, claimed she could “read the cards” and see the rape. Using information from the recordings, she told the complainant she had been attacked by only two men, not three, and that her cousin Or had “not touched her or harmed her, only been in the room and washed his hands,” matching his police defense. The goal, the court said, was to push the complainant to change her testimony in court.
Judge Moran Margalit sharply criticized the defendants, saying their conduct caused severe psychological harm and amounted to “a real second rape,” exploiting the complainant’s trust in a cynical way. He rejected probation service recommendations for rehabilitative sentences, saying the defendants had falsely shown responsibility to probation while denying intent in court and attacking the complainant. He also said that even though Or Malul was eventually acquitted of the rape charge because of reasonable doubt, that did not lessen the gravity of the obstruction offenses.
Hymer was convicted of witness tampering in aggravated circumstances, obstruction of justice, aggravated harassment of a witness, and illegal wiretapping, and also received 12 months suspended and 50,000 shekels compensation. Goldstein was convicted of witness tampering, obstruction and aggravated witness harassment, and got 10 months in prison, nine months suspended, and 20,000 shekels compensation. Mordechai was convicted of obstruction and aggravated witness harassment, acquitted of tampering, and sentenced to eight months of community service prison subject to approval, nine months suspended, and 15,000 shekels compensation.
