35-Year-Old Acquitted of Rape After 14-Year Case Hinges on Contradictory Evidence
A 35-year-old man was recently acquitted by unanimous decision of the Haifa District Court on rape and sodomy charges involving his former girlfriend, after a case that had been under strict gag orders and heard behind closed doors. The alleged incident was said to have occurred on Saturday night, August 18, 2012, around 2:30 a.m., when he was 21 and she was 19 and serving as a soldier. The indictment was filed only in February 2022, six years after the complaint and about 10 years after the alleged event.
According to the complaint, the pair had known each other since high school, dated for about three years, and were on and off again. She said he was drunk or under the influence of drugs, shouted in a nightclub, “I want to fuck you,” and later raped her and committed sodomy by force in his parents’ home, leaving bruises on her hands, legs, and neck. He said the sex was consensual, continued their ordinary relationship, and the two later went to her home, to the beach, and then separated only days afterward.
The judges, Yechiel Lipshitz, Galit Zigler, and Shmuel Mandelbaum, said the prosecution failed to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. A major reason was the complainant’s credibility, especially the photos she gave police in 2018 that she claimed showed injuries from the assault. The court found those images were unrelated to the alleged incident, with one taken about a year and a half later, another about two months before, and a third also two months before. Her explanations about the source of the photos and the devices used, first an iPhone and later a BlackBerry, which was never found, changed over time and raised, in the judges’ words, “significant warning signs.”
The court also found discrepancies between the complainant and her mother’s claims about her post-incident mental state and her actual WhatsApp messages, which showed she went out with friends and started a new relationship within days. The judges said her doctor visit two days later was partly to obtain military sick leave, and that her claimed phone counseling from the Ma’hut center was not documented.
The ruling was sharply critical of police, describing the investigation as superficial and incomplete, with many failures, including not questioning key witnesses and not properly examining digital evidence. The judges said witnesses were questioned by phone, calling it an “unusual, ‘innovative’ and strange practice,” and wrote that the case was “filled with investigation failures.” They nevertheless described the complainant as a talented young woman and said there were no winners, only two people whose lives were derailed. Publication of the ruling was delayed for about a month at the complainant’s lawyer’s request while an appeal to the Supreme Court was considered, but no appeal was filed.
