Father sentenced to 12 years for stabbing man he believed had raped his daughter
Rather than go to police with suspicions, judges find that assailant took law into own hands, deliberately planning murder of innocent man; victim survived, with long-term injuries
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A man was sentenced to 12 years in prison on Wednesday for trying to kill a man he believed had raped his daughter.
Ilan Danino, a taxi driver, was convicted of attempted murder in the Lod District Court. He stabbed the victim 13 times in the torso in September 2021. The victim, who underwent extensive surgery, survived but was left with long-term physical and mental injuries.
The attack came after Danino’s daughter was raped in April 2021 at the age of 16. The prosecution told the court that the girl didn’t tell her parents about the rape until a few weeks after it happened. She did, however, post about it in a private Facebook group through which the police reached the daughter and opened an investigation.
According to Danino’s daughter, the rapist wore a face mask and attacked her in the dark, approaching her from behind, making it difficult for her to identify him. She said he spoke to her in Hebrew with an Arabic accent.
According to the defense, the father came to believe that the rapist was a regular at a kiosk he frequented near his home. He did not go to the police with his suspicions, but instead waited for the man outside the kiosk, forced him into his taxi, and drove him to a parking lot where he accused him of raping his daughter and stabbed him multiple times, the court heard. He then left his victim for dead.
Danino later claimed that he only wanted to confront the victim and ask him why he had raped his daughter. “We had words,” he said. “He provoked me, and I lost control. I didn’t mean to murder him at all.”
The defense asked the court to consider the circumstances and give Danino a lesser sentence, of six to nine years, but the court refused.
The judges ruled that Danino had carefully planned the intended murder of an innocent man he had no basis for suspecting of the attack.
“Unfortunately, the court did not take the special circumstances of the incident, the background that led the father to act, and the failures of law enforcement and social services into consideration,” lawyers Anat Ye’ari and Lilach Maor-Wolf, who represented Danino, told Channel 12. “While the father was convicted and sentenced to prison, the rapist is still free.”
The Times of Israel Community.