Girl, 10, allegedly molested by home intruders in south; father slams ‘anarchy’
Criminals moved from bed to bed, were scared away by sibling’s scream; dad says it was ‘nightmare,’ argues that had he shot them, he would have been prosecuted
A ten-year-old girl was allegedly molested or raped in her bedroom as the rest of the family slept, and her father accused the government of abandoning residents of the south of the country to the mercy of criminal gangs.
“Something is completely screwed up in the war on crime. Utter anarchy,” the father told Channel 13 News on Sunday, some two weeks after the incident. He was not named in the report, nor was the community where the incident took place.
At the time, two masked men entered the family home overnight after the family had gone to bed. They entered a bedroom where the girl was sleeping with three of her siblings and, according to the father, went from bed to bed until they found his daughter.
One of the suspects then allegedly molested or raped the girl, according to the report. As his accomplice shone a flashlight around the room, the light woke the girl’s sister who began to scream, scaring them off.
The father, armed with a gun, saw the men leaving but told the news network that he had been too afraid to open fire as he was worried that it would land him in prison.
Describing the incident as a “horror of horrors, a nightmare,” he charged that had he opened fire, he would have been “the guilty one.”
The father said there was no rule of law in the south, where there are widespread accusations that authorities systematically fail to adequately rein in crime gangs, mostly from the Bedouin community.
“There can’t be chaos here, going into people’s homes, raping girls in their beds, and if I had fired I would now be in prison,” he said.
Describing the situation as a “world war,” the father said there needed to be a change in open-fire orders for those protecting their private property.
“As far as I am concerned, anyone who enters private property deserves to die,” he said. He cited the case of Aryeh Schiff, who was indicted last month for shooting dead an individual he said was trying to steal his car in the southern city of Arad.
“I don’t blame the police, rather the government policy,” the father said. “If we cannot govern on the ground, then we are governed, and those who rule over us are very large criminal forces that do what they want, and I have no way of defending myself.”
Since the incident, the family home has been kept under 24-hour protection, the report said.
According to the report, the suspects, from the Bedouin town of Bir Hadaj, were later apprehended, but the father blasted what he said were attempts to minimize the liability of the main suspect through claims that he had mental disabilities and was a minor.
“He went from bed to bed,” the father said, saying that shows that the suspect knew what he was doing.
Roni Aloni Sadovnik, an attorney representing the family, said gangs were trying to drive out Jewish residents by destroying their sense of security. He called on the government to deploy the army in the area, rather than relying solely on police.
There have been numerous incidents of lawless behavior and violent crime in the southern region of the country, including the use of guns.
Recent weeks have seen thieves steal military tents and other equipment from the IDF’s Tzeelim training base in broad daylight, as well as some 20,000 bullets from the Sdeh Teiman military base north of Beersheba.
Last year two residents of Bir Hadaj were arrested in connection with the assault of IDF soldiers who were trying to prevent weapons theft from a military base.
