Terrorist ‘sexually assaulted hostage at gunpoint’: Freed captive recounts testimony
Fresh account by Agam Goldstein-Almog excerpted from forthcoming documentary by former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg on sexual violence perpetrated by terror group
Released hostage Agam Goldstein-Almog described a harrowing case of sexual violence suffered by another hostage in Hamas captivity in a clip released Tuesday from an in-production documentary fronted by former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg.
Goldstein-Almog, 17, said she was sitting with the hostage one evening while they were still in Gaza and had asked her what she had been through.
“She started crying, and I cried with her,” she said.
Goldstein-Almog recounted the girl’s story of her last night with a guard before she was moved to another location. Even though the hostages had been told that none were being held alone, the girl said it was just her and the guard for a time.
The night before she was moved, the guard told the girl to get herself cleaned up and while she was washing herself in the sink, he came up behind her and held a gun to her head.
“He started kissing her, and she started crying,” Goldstein-Almog described. “Then he took off all her clothes and touched her all over her body.”
For the first time and in a difficult testimony, Agam Goldstein, 17 , who was a hostage in Gaza and came back talks to @sherylsandberg in a new documentary called “ Screams before Silence’ . Agam tells Sandberg about an Israeli women hostage she met in Hamas captivity and… pic.twitter.com/TJqQuWwO8y
— Iris (@streetwize) February 13, 2024
She continued, describing how the guard assaulted the girl for half an hour while continuing to hold the gun to her head and she did not stop crying the whole time.
“I asked her, ‘Did you do what he told you?’ and she said, ‘Of course. I didn’t have the option not to,'” Goldstein-Almog recounted.
“The next day they moved her to a different location and she never saw him again and he told her never to tell anyone.”
Goldstein-Almog told Sandberg that most of the hostages she had spoken to recounted similar stories of sexual or physical abuse at the hands of Hamas.
The former hostage’s testimony was released as a preview for the documentary, titled “Screams Before Silence,” which will be released in April and include testimonies from survivors, released hostages and first responders.
The aim of the film is to highlight the sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas terrorists during the organization’s devastating attack on southern Israel, in which it killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped 253, triggering an ongoing war.
In a conversation with CNN, Sandberg said she had decided to make the documentary because “when this happened on October 7 and evidence started coming out about the sexual violence, rape and genital mutilation, the silence was really deafening.”
“People are denying it particularly because of the polarization around the October 7 attack,” she added. “So this documentary is giving people the opportunity to bear witness, to hear it firsthand from people who were there, saw things, heard things, and first responders who saw the bodies.”
Sandberg said she hoped the documentary would help spread “the story of how these women, and some men, spent the last moments of their lives” and hold the perpetrators accountable.
She thought some people were denying the atrocities because of the polarization surrounding the subject, but that “no matter what you think should happen in Israel, what matters is that sexual violence is never tolerated.”
“There is not a girl in the world who should have her world destroyed that way, who should be held hostage, who should be held to that type of sexual assault. It’s unacceptable,” she said.
Since October 7, Sandberg has been consistently vocal in her mission to ensure that the sexual violence inflicted by Hamas was not ignored by the rest of the world.
The former Meta COO has taken part in multiple videos alongside other notable women spreading awareness of Hamas’s use of sexual violence as a method of terrorism.
She has also collaborated with the Civil Commission on October 7 Crimes Committed by Hamas Against Women and Children to collect evidence and call for Hamas to be held accountable for its actions.
The Israel Police is investigating the sexual violence inflicted by Hamas. Testimony from October 7 survivors from the targeted towns and the Supernova music festival, as well as footage made by the terrorists during the attack, attest to the severe abuse that was inflicted on victims.
The horrors included many terrorists raping victims before, during and after they had killed them, as well as subjecting them to sexual mutilation.
Hostages who were released as part of a deal in November also testified that they had witnessed or experienced sexual violence at the hands of their captors.
