Rape by deception; the expose
The case of the Israeli rapist who pretended to be Jewish in order to seduce a Jewish young woman who later cried rape made headlines around the world when the man plead guilty to rape by deceit. Everyone had an opinion of Israeli justice but few possessed enough knowledge to know the rape by deception turned out to be a rape of an abused young woman. Ha’aretz ran a follow-up to the story which made headlines around the world. I checked this morning and so far there is no English translation available. Gee, I wonder why. Elizabeth at Mideast Youth blog carried the heavy lifting and has translated the Ha’aretz expose in full.
“I wasn’t wearing pants, stayed this way, because I was in shock. The floor was dirty with blood and I was really afraid of touching myself to see if I’m alright”
By Lital Grossman
Haaretz, September 3, 2010This is, according to B., was the result of her meeting with Sabbar Kashur – the Arab who became famous for posing as a Jewish bachelor in order to sleep with her. In her testimony, revealed here for the first time, she claimed that on that day, Kashur forcibly stripped and raped her in the staircase of a Jerusalem building. So why did the Prosecution go for a plea bargain with a reduced charge of consensual sex that was obtained by deceit? Why did the media portray a completely different picture from what becomes clear from the testimony? And what does all of this have to do with B.’s past as a prostitute?
The story of “Dudu”, Sabbar Kashur, the Arab family man who posed as a Jewish bachelor and based on this elicited the consent of a young Jewish woman to have sex with him and received 18 months in prison for it – seems weird from second one. Rogel Alper wrote about this in this paper: “Not just Kafkaesque, this is completely mad: before us is a totally banal story, a daily occurrence really, of consensual sex, after which the woman discovered that the man lied to her, and therefore the court decided it was right to send him to prison for 18 months! The essence of this crazy story is: sex obtained by prevaricating details equals rape.” The feeling that the court wouldn’t have been as harsh with a Jewish defendant added a racist undertone to the affair, which only increased the suspicion that this affair is too crazy to be true, even in the current climate. Alper expressed this in the closing of his article, saying “I wouldn’t be surprised if behind this absurd and truly unbelievable plea bargain, there is a more complex truth than what has been published in the media.”
Based on the incomplete facts published thus far in the case, Kashur’s role as a victim became established over the past month and a half, and rightfully so. However, according to the testimony of the complainant, the full story appears to be much more complex, and the victim is the one Kashur left naked in the staircase of the building on 13 Ben Hillel Street (publishing her name is forbidden and she will be called here B.). The new details shed completely new light on this case, and haven’t been published until today because they were first revealed in B.’s testimony in court, which was classified as it was said in a trial behind closed doors. Following the request of “HaIr” [local Haaretz-affiliated newspaper in Tel Aviv – E], the court recently declassified the testimony and paved the way for its publication. The testimony details in 100 pages B.’s tragic life story and her version of the events that happened on that afternoon two years ago, and is exposed here for the first time.
The event: “He behaved like some psychopath.
The basis for understanding the affair is B.’s life story, a woman in her late 20s from a town in central Israel, who was sexually abused by her father since she was six-years-old, and eventually forced into prostitution by him. She spent parts of her childhood in and out of boarding schools, and as an adult worked as a prostitute, used drugs and for a while even lived on the street, but this didn’t end the abuse from her father. Only a month before the incident with Sabbar Kashur she was once again abused by him and as a result ran away to a women’s shelter. This cruel irony is that this placed her only a few blocks away from where she would eventually be raped.On that morning, September 3, 2008, B. left with the director of the shelter, a social worker and another friend who stayed at the shelter to a meeting in Galgal, a crisis center for homeless youth. After the meeting the three left to another location. B. recounts: “I walked toward Zion Square and then sat by a Cellcom store at 13 Ben Hillel street… I sat on the rocks under a tree and listened to (music; LG) on my MP4.” Then, B. says, a guy she didn’t know appeared, riding a moped. In the interviews conducted with him later, Kashur said that he arrived there to shop at a near-by store. “He drove behind my back toward me”, continued B. in a broken language that characterized her whole testimony (here it should be pointed out that all the mistakes are in the original; LG), “and he stopped few meters from me, like only a little far from me. He called me, like, to come to him, and I told him that he should come to me (Kashur later claimed in interviews that she was the first to approach him; LG)… we talked for about seven, ten minutes before the incident happened”.
At this point occurred the dialogue that was later used as the basis for the charge of deception against Kashur. “At first he told me his name was Daniel (and not Dudu, the nickname his friends use, as Kashur claimed in interviews; LG)… he didn’t want to tell me his last name… after a few minutes he like said ‘Cohen’”. B. also said that “he asked me if I have a boyfriend and I said no, and then he asked me if I want to be his girlfriend. I asked him if he’s married, and he said no, and then I asked him if he has children and he told me he doesn’t have children.” Later in that conversation, according to the testimony, Kashur asked B. for a kiss. “He wanted me to give him a kiss on the cheek and then he gave one back”. According to B., they also exchanged phone number.At this point, according to the testimony, Kashur invited B. to see where he works, supposedly in the building at 13 Ben Hillel Street, outside of which they were standing. “He said he wanted to invite me for coffee and show me his workplace there”, said B. The reason she gave for agreeing to leave with an almost complete stranger was “I looked for someone to put my trust in… I know that strangers, you even don’t contact them… but because I was like, as you know, when I told you that I came from a place where there’s no, I lived on the streets for a while too… I thought that if I am with him, I’ll feel safe, and I’ll have, I’ll be financially secured. I really like trusted him.”
Right after they entered the building, B. claims, Kashur began forcing himself on her. “We were in the staircase, like in the first stairs of the building, where we entered and then he asked for a hug… so I hugged him because he said that he wants a hug for warmth and love because he didn’t have a relationship in a while, like a girlfriend… and when I felt that he was too clingy, I tried pushing him away, so he used force a little like, got a little aggressive.” According to B., Kashur wouldn’t let go. “He lifted my shirt and the bra and kissed my chest”, she said. But then, a blond woman entered the stairwell, and Kashur stopped. He decided to move from the stairs to the elevator. “When I was with him in the elevator he also touched me and started acting like some psychopath. I was so scared of him… I started sensing that something strange was happening, because I noticed that I wasn’t going to any workplace and I don’t see any coffee cups, and I don’t, then I began to panic and started like, I also screamed when it started happening.”
When they left the elevator on the top floor of the building, according to B., Kashur took her to the stairwell that led to the attic. There, according to her, he raped her. “We took off my pants and underwear”, described B., “and all of this was done with force, I didn’t agree to anything… I was left in just my shirt. Then he took off his clothes… then he put saliva on his penis and then, it was like full penetration, like, it wasn’t with consent as he claims. He laid me on the floor… and asked to kiss my chest too and then like when I asked that he stops and tried to push him away, he started pressuring me with his arms forcefully on me… when I tried to push him with my hand in his stomach, this happened in a more advanced stage, when he was already inside of me, then he said that if I don’t stay silent and I don’t resist, then it would like end faster and it wouldn’t be like, he wouldn’t use force. I still resisted him and it was forced.”
The detention: the confrontation at the police station
According to the testimony, after Kashur climaxed, he stayed lying on top of B. for a while. After that, he got up and left, leaving her half naked. “Then (Kashur; LG) just disappeared and took my MP4…”, she claimed, “and I ask that he return it to me because it is in his house.” Left alone in the stairwell, B. began to weep. “I was really hysterical”, she said. At this point she also noticed that she was bleeding out of her vagina and panicked even more. After a few minutes her brother happened to call and she asked him to call her caregiver. The caregiver quickly contacted B. who told her about what happened. “She told me not to freak out and call MADA [an ambulance – E]”, B. recounted the conversation following which Yasam [Special Patrol Unit – E] policemen arrived at the scene and found B. up the stairwell. “The Yasam (arrived; LG) before MADA”, says B., “when they arrived I was… I wasn’t wearing pants, like stayed this way, because I was in shock. The floor was dirty with blood and I was really afraid of touching myself to see if I’m alright, I was really frightened.” After this the MADA crews arrived as well. According to her testimony, in the examination in the Shaarei Tzedek Hospital scratch marks were found on her body, which were documented in the Prosecution’s file.
Following the incident, the testimony shows that B. was hospitalized in “Kfar Shaul”, a government run psychiatric hospital in the Har Nof neighborhood in Jerusalem. “I am not crazy or have a mental illness”, she wanted to clarify in her testimony, “I was there because they have a women’s ward… for women who were sexually abused.” That night, Kashur called B.’s cell phone. She testified that she had given him the number earlier in their meeting. “I didn’t recognize the number”, she says, “I didn’t know it was him so I answered.” Kashur asked to see her again. “I said everything out of fear… I don’t actually remember what I said because it was late at night”, recounted B., “I just know that when I got up in the morning I had about 20 unanswered messages (probably means calls; LG) and I had two messages that he left me that I showed them to the interrogator Sharon and she saw, ‘what’s with you? What happened? Don’t you want to answer?’”(…)The testimony: Outbursts toward the defense attorney
A few months after this, on March 19, 2009, during the trial, B. was put on the stand and recounted her version of the events, which was summarized here. The occasion, understandably, was traumatic for her: her facial expressions showed that she was under immense pressure, sometimes on the verge of hysteria; her speech was broken and at times unclear; on several occasions the judged offered her a glass of water, and at another time suggested she should sit down to help her relax. The person who elicited most of her feelings of rage was the public defense attorney Adnan A’ladin.
Go read the whole sorry mess but let us be clear about one thing. The woman’s testimony was considered unreliable no doubt owing to her background as an all-around traumatized, sexually abused young woman even though she is found bruised, battered and bleeding. The real shame lies with those who cannot see beyond their innate bias and the court for only giving the scumbag only 18 months.




