Domestic abuse reports to hotline spike by 95% amid pandemic Sexual abuse reports rose by 33% during COVID- 19,
Amid the coronavirus crisis, the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel ( ARCCI) saw a 95% increase in reporting activity to its national WhatsApp hotline, the organization reported ahead of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women taking place today.
These staggering numbers surface on the backdrop of 20 women who have been murdered in acts of domestic violence this year across the country. Despite the staggering numbers, two- thirds of sexual assault cases were closed by the judiciary wing due to lack of evidence.
The Committee for the Advancement of Women and Gender Equality in the Knesset announced on Monday that sexual abuse cases rose by 33% throughout the country amid the coronavirus, with 62% of cases being against minors.
In honor of the internationallyrecognized day dedicated to eliminating domestic abuse, Joint List MK Aida Touma- Sliman, in partnership with the Women’s International Zionist Organization ( WIZO), will submit a bill which deems that men who have a restraining order
against them due to domestic violence will be required to seek treatment. Until now, a judge may only consider a violence evaluation that would assess if they require treatment, an option that was seldom used.
The law would require the judge to order the defendant to have a violence evaluation done. In the case of Wafa Abahara, who was murdered last week by her ex- husband – who has still not been caught by police – if the judge had considered the option of giving him treatment prior, he may not have murdered her as he has allegedly done.
“We want an initiative in the Knesset to send men to therapy,” Anita Friedman, chairwoman of World WIZO, told The Jerusalem Post. “This is a societal problem – it’s not a women’s issue. Unless we change the way that we see this and take care of it the way it should be taken care of, we cannot see it changing.”
Emotional treatment for violent men has proven to be a successful tactic for combating violent tendencies, according to a study published in 2018 by WIZO and Bar- Ilan University. A number of women’s organizations in Israel have offered treatment for men with such tendencies, but such things may only be accessed voluntarily – that is, unless Touma- Sliman’s proposed bill passes into law.
In light of the growing number of domestic and sexual abuse cases, 45 MKs signed a letter to Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu calling on him to establish a national authority for combating domestic violence. The letter was signed by politicians from across the political spectrum, including coalition chairman Miki Zohar, opposition leader Yair Lapid and Meretz leader Nitzan Horowitz.
“The treatment of the issue of violence is distributed between the different governmental ministries without any strategy, leadership, inclusion, cooperation or coordination,” stated the letter, formulated by WIZO. “This is the time for the establishment of an authority that will establish, plan and conduct a comprehensive policy of treatment, rehabilitation and prevention, and outline and implement the national policy on the phenomenon of domestic violence in Israel.”
Netanyahu approved of the call for such a national authority on Tuesday during a Knesset conference marking early the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
The Finance Committee on Tuesday remarked that NIS 100 million must be transferred immediately to combat violence against women.
“There was a plan of NIS 250 million that was not implemented, and we are requesting a budget for it to be implemented,” said the committee’s chairman MK Moshe Gafni. “We demand that you transfer NIS 100m. immediately.”
The budget Gafni was referring to is one for a domestic violence prevention program, which was announced in the Knesset in 2017. It dictated that throughout the five years following the launch, the government would allocate a total of NIS 250m. to programs aimed at tackling abuse. Now, three years later, only NIS 50m. has been allocated to the project.
And yet, at eye- level, domestic abuse cases are being overlooked to the extreme. “I was always between life and death,” Dalal Daoud told the Post. She is the now- famous Israeli woman who murdered her husband in self- defense after he savagely beat and raped her for years. Daoud explained that she could not think of anything, not consequences or anything; all she could think of was being free of the torment when she killed her husband.
She explained that everyone – family, neighbors, friends, police, and even hospital workers – could see that she was being terribly abused, but did nothing. “If there was one person who would have listened to me, I would not have reached that point,” she said. “My social worker ran away from me [ while I was] bleeding in my own home with my two- year- old daughter. The hospital knew. Who didn’t know?”
The number of calls to the ARCCI hotline in 2020 so far has risen by 24% in contrast to the number of calls made in 2019 – most of which were seen during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, when 37% more people called the hotline.
The Negev Crisis Center saw more than a doubling of cases ( a 103% increase) – the largest spike in the country.
Reported sexual assault is most commonly done against people that the victims already knew, with 88% of victims saying that they knew the person who attacked them beforehand. Almost two- thirds ( 64%) of sexual assaults in which the victims are 12 years old or younger are done by family members.
The country is filled with activities dedicated to the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, with the Tel Aviv Municipality building being lit up in red with the word, “Enough!” lit up on it, as well as a handful of monuments and art installations being presented in honor of the 20 women murdered so far this year due to domestic abuse. •