Social media influencer arrested on suspicion of raping women, including minors

Police said Monday that they had arrested a man on suspicion of raping several young women, some of them who were minors at the time. Hebrew media reports identified the suspect as a well-known social media influencer.

Police, in a statement, identified the suspect as a 35-year-old resident of the West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim. He was not named.

Tel Aviv police arrested the man “on suspicion of committing sex crimes in recent years against several young women, some of them minors at the time,” police said.

Police said that after accusations of rape surfaced online, they conducted a wide-ranging undercover investigation and collected testimonies.

The suspect was arrested at his home and taken for questioning in Tel Aviv.

Police urged other victims of the suspect to contact law enforcement.

The Ynet news site reported that one of the alleged victims was a model who testified that the influencer had raped her in his car some seven years ago, when she was 16 years old.

Another woman testified that the suspect had raped her in a hotel room in 2021 when she was 16, Ynet reported.

A third woman, whom the influencer was said to have sexually assaulted in 2017, was quoted by Ynet as saying: “I was treated in a room for sexual assault victims in a hospital in the south of a country right after the incident so that I have all the evidence — I’ve just been afraid of filing a complaint.”