THESE ISRAELIS WERE SEXUALLY ABUSED BEFORE OCT. 7. NOW THEY'RE SUFFERING ALL OVER AGAIN

These Israelis Were Sexually Abused Before Oct. 7. Now They're Suffering All Over Again

With all the news about sexual violence suffered in the hands of Hamas, Israelis who were sexually abused in the past find themselves reliving their trauma

March 28th, 14PM March 28th, 14PM

Twelve young women live in the three-story villa at the edge of Be'er Yaakov, a town southeast of Tel Aviv. They take turns with the cooking, smoke together in the garden, and sleep in well-lit and well-kept rooms, two or three to a room. Next to their beds they hang posters, paintings and inspirational quotes.

It's their safe space. They're all survivors of sexual abuse.

But in recent months these women have been shaken. October 7 has triggered emotions they're trying to leave behind. "I unwillingly saw some very harsh video clips," says Libby Shalev Ashwal, 22.

She and the other women weren't in the Gaza border communities that morning. They weren't kidnapped and they didn't hear the incoming missiles or Hamas' gunfire. But they're also victims of October 7.

"There was a time you logged in to Instagram and could see everything," Libby says. "Later, when hostages started to return and people who were there were interviewed about it, it brought me back even more. I experienced it with them. I was sad to know that on one day so many more people became victims."

She says that logging on to take a look isn't smart, "but it's like a self-inflicted wound, this desire to see, even though it makes me feel bad."

In war there's a lot of talk about collateral damage, but for the girls living here at Beit Inbal, Israel's only long-term rehab hostel for treating sexual trauma, news from the outside sometimes worsens the damage. Beit Inbal, which is funded by the Welfare and Social Affairs Ministry, treats female victims of sexual assault who are struggling with complex post-traumatic stress disorder.

"They suffer from very serious nightmares, there are flashbacks ... a great deal of anxiety surrounding darkness and night," says Beit Inbal's director, Dana Kushnir. "And this description is true for the earlier days of relative routine. The past half year has been anything but that."

The reports about the people murdered and abducted, the concerns about relatives fighting in Gaza, penetrate the protective shell that the women have carefully built around themselves. A relapse is always possible. But the war has brought a by-product that triggers trauma: the focus in the media, and on social media, on the sexual abuse on October 7 and in apartments and tunnels in Gaza.

Kushnir says this affects the women the way the sound of an explosion would affect someone with battle-induced PTSD. She says that such a video shown in the media "really harms women who aren't prepared for it."

In such a situation, these women have nothing but the corner they've built for themselves. "I love it," says S., 30, pointing with pride to abstract paintings with generous jabs of bold color. "It came from an attack of anger," she says. "I didn't know that anger could turn into art."

Libby experienced sexual abuse already in early childhood; she doesn't want to say more. That doesn't mean she forgets; it's with her every day all the time. And the air raid sirens during the war have only intensified it.

"It was stressful. It was really strange," she says. "There was more pressure to go outside, and when you're outside, you're thinking all the time about where you'll go when there's a siren." But for her this anxiety, familiar to many Israelis, is accompanied by another fear: At any moment she can experience disassociation and be cut off from reality.

"I've been living with that for four to five years," she says. "There are two types of disassociation – the first looks like fainting; it's falling on the floor. The second looks like staring; after that your eyes close. I simply become speechless. I can't talk. I don't hear what people are saying. And that can happen anywhere – in the street, on the bus.

'I was afraid to say anything because I thought they wouldn't understand me and would tell me that it was my fault that I didn't run away, didn't shout and simply froze.'

"During disassociation there are flashbacks or a feeling that I'm experiencing the same sexual abuse from the past. I experience it physically too; I feel that it hurts me as it hurt me then, as if it's happening now."

In her attempt to attain greater control over her life, Libby decided to take on a service dog that's specially trained for helping with PTSD. But for the dog to be trained and know when to lick her to help her emerge from disassociation, she has to raise money.

The training costs tens of thousands of shekels, and unlike disabled Israeli army veterans, she isn't eligible for a service dog. Maybe the crowdsourcing site that she plans to launch will open hearts.

Another open wound at Beit Inbal can be found in the room of Marie Iyoramishvili, 19. "I always try not to watch television because it simply makes me feel bad," she says. "Sometimes, when my mother shows me the video clips, I fell like I don't have to see that."

Marie immigrated almost five years ago from Georgia. She came to Israel with her mother, sister and brother after the death of their father, who had been violent to them. To help out her mother, she started working in a supermarket.

"After about two months my manager assaulted me, and it wasn't once or twice, it was for a month, every day, except on Shabbat," she says. "I was afraid to say anything because I thought they wouldn't understand me and would tell me that it was my fault that I didn't run away, didn't shout and simply froze."

One day, after her mother asked her several insistent questions, she told her everything. The reaction wasn't support at all but punishment. She fled home and tried to kill herself. Then came a long hospitalization and testimony at a police station, during which she had to watch security-camera tape of the rape.

"I told the investigator: Please don't show me the security cameras. It's hard for me, it hurts me," she recalls. "But she said: 'You have to see it.' I broke down. I couldn't take it anymore."

The next stop was Beit Inbal, and when the war broke out, Marie was exposed to all the details. "It hurts me to see the women, the hostages," she says about their trauma that sometimes revives her own trauma.

Partial protection

Beit Inbal was established in 2021. Another hostel in town, Beit Ela, provides shorter treatment for more acute cases.

Sometimes patients start out in Beit Ela and "settle" in Beit Inbal. Here they meet with a social worker twice a week and take part in therapy groups every day. Not many Israelis know that this place exists, and the number of spots is very limited anyway.

"I'm here to rehabilitate what I experienced," says S., who grew up in an ultra-Orthodox home that she describes as "emotionally unhealthy." For her, Beit Inbal is "like a pause from the attempt to grab onto any lifeline and survive, or to give up. It's a moment to see how to do things right."

But in that safe space, echoes of the war can still be heard – in more than one sense. "The war exposed me to things that I didn't know about," says Efrat, 25, who grew up in an ultra-Orthodox home in Betar Ilit in the West Bank. She was sexually abused from childhood to adolescence.

"I think, 'What if I were outside [the rehab hostel]?'" she says. "There's a good chance I wouldn't survive."

But it's hard inside too. All the news about the sexual violence suffered by victims on October 7 and by hostages in Gaza awakens memories – and triggers the question: Why has our pain never been the focus of attention?

Efrat stresses that she's happy that the victims from the Gaza border communities are now receiving the best possible care, but adds, "I would like it if they didn't forget those who already went through hell and who are invisible."

As S. puts it, "There's a certain anger in us over the fact that something extraordinary happened and suddenly everybody acknowledges the pain of the Nova girls" – the girls and women who were raped by Hamas at the Nova musical festival on October 7. "And we're more invisible, less photogenic, to help, to support."

One of her travails was a long wait before receiving treatment. "I was in a depression for several months, I simply lay in bed," she says. "And when I had the strength, the only thing I did was surf the internet and search for a solution. That's how I got here."

She got to Beit Inbal after being on the edge of an abyss. "I contacted all kinds of places; they told me a two-year wait," she says. "I told them: 'I realize how the waiting list gets shorter: Girls commit suicide, and slowly but surely a place becomes available."

S. says she'd like to live in a world where you don't need a war to understand what a woman goes through.

As Efrat puts it, "They're really forgetting about us in all this October 7. They're forgetting the victims of the before time, the girls who were abused without any connection to [the war]. And that's very hard. I'm lucky to be here. Most of the women aren't here."

No hierarchy of assaults

In a study published in 2021 by the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel, 27 percent of male and female victims waited a year or more for treatment at units of the Welfare Ministry. Asked about Israel's health maintenance organizations, 23 percent said they waited over a year, with longer waits in communities in the country's outskirts.

Israelis have gotten used to this situation in the entire mental health sector, but officials say efforts are being made not to leave anyone out.

"Since the war we've been very busy finding solutions for those who were sexually abused on October 7," says Salit Shahar Hochman, head of the Welfare Ministry's department for treating sexual assault victims. She says this "is not instead of our usual waiting lists, it's in addition. We're bringing in another 32 therapists, and we're expanding our 80 therapy centers all over the country so that the number of patients will total 290."

There have been financial increases as well. The Welfare Ministry budget for treating adult victims of sexual abuse totaled 36 million shekels ($9.8 million) last year, while this year there will be another 10 million shekels. Also, another 2.2 million shekels will pay for a third hostel for victims of sexual abuse, in addition to the ministry-funded Beit Inbal and Beit Ela. The new hostel is due to open next month in the Tel Aviv area.

Still, the therapists only work half-time at the hostels, and the same goes for the 32 new slots. Only five have been filled so far.

Another asterisk concerns everything that has happened since October 7. For example, in the first months of the war, many therapists linked to the welfare and health ministries were busy with voluntary work to help victims of the massacre.

Also, some therapists had to do reserve duty or themselves were evacuated from a community near Gaza or Lebanon. Some psychologists had to provide their therapy remotely.

So this situation certainly didn't help "ordinary victims," say the director of the Lobby to Combat Sexual Violence, Yael Sherer, and the executive director of the Association of Rape Crisis Centers, Orit Sulitzeanu.

"Every assault is catastrophic, but we mustn't create hierarchies among the various assaults," Sulitzeanu says. "That's also why we opposed the bill to impose stricter penalties for sex crimes that are 'nationalistically motivated.' I don't want to create competition, but if somebody was abused by her father for years, that destroys many layers of her soul.

"Clearly there was a disaster, and the government is unequivocally responsible for what happened and must offer everyone treatment immediately. But it's inconceivable that other victims feel that they're not entitled to it, that they're unimportant, that they're worth less."

As Marie puts it, "From childhood I've been carrying this bag that has a lot of rocks inside, and lots of suffering and lots of difficulties.

"Over the years it's getting even fuller: another stone and another stone until I feel that I can't carry it anymore. I once said: 'I want to go to a hostel, and slowly but surely, with the process that I want to undergo, I'll take out one rock every time. The bag will never be empty, but I hope that when I leave here I'll be able to walk with a straight back."

2024-03-28T12:18:33Z dg43tfdfdgfd