The body of Yonatan Heilo was found Monday on a Netanya beach. Heilo served a 10-year prison sentence for killing his rapist and was eventually paroled due to the public outcry over his case.
When Heilo was on trial for killing the man who had sexually assaulted him, our sense of justice made us sympathetic to his case. Who among us wouldn't want to see punishment exacted against those who would dare harm our loved ones or us? But we are living in 2020, and the modern justice system is supposed to subject defendants to punishments that will prevent them from harming others while serving as a warning to other potential attackers that they will be made to pay a heavy price if they dare to do the same.
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Sadly, the Israeli public is constantly stunned by the lenient – sometimes outright ridiculous – sentences given to sex offenders.
When Ronen Bity, father of Israeli singer Adi Bity, took advantage of young girls who were fans of his daughter, he was convicted of indecent assault and sexual harassment and only received nine months of community service.
When Alon Aharonov was convicted of rape, sodomy, and other sexual offenses against his teenaged niece, he received a 15-year sentence – five years under the mandatory sentence stipulated by for rape offense alone.
What conclusions will the victims draw from this? Perhaps that there is no point in filing a complaint, and being subjected to a police investigation or a lenghty and intrusive trial? Why bother if all that results in an unjust sentence that won't deter future criminals? Will the victims overcome their trauma and anger to testify, only to realize nobody stands by them? That they are standing up to the attacker alone? That they might need to take the law into their own hands?
Heilo killed a man. He did a terrible thing and paid the price for the rest of his short life. But his 10-year sentence seems extreme compared to light sentences the justice system gives to the attackers, the very people this system was supposed to protect Heilo and his peers from!
One cannot help but think about the number of domestic violence cases that have skyrocketed since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. Last month President Rivlin denied Erica Prishkin's appeal for clemency. She killed her abusive partner after seeing him with another woman and has already served 17 years of her 30-year sentence – more than any sentence imposed on all of the aforementioned offenders combined.
Twenty women had been killed by their partners since the begining of the year. The last murder happened just two weeks ago. Authorities were aware of domestic abouse allegations in at least a third of these cases. Anastasia Klein, for example, was at a hospital when her partner hit her. He had been released on house arrest and went to the hospital to "finish what he had started."
The reality is hard to swallow: the authorities do not prosecute abusive men, and women live in fear of being killed when the short sentence of their offender ends. Victims who decided to take the law into their own hands, a woman who murders instead of being murdered – they are the ones the justice system chooses to prosecute to the strictest letter of the law. Not only have they suffered tremendously from the abuse, not they also need to spend their lives in jail. If our justice system worked properly, it would probably never have come to this.
The government's responsibility to prosecute rapists and other offenders should not be taken lightly. It is a duty. A duty to rehabilitate the victims, to protect those who might be harmed in the future, and to make sure that every Israeli knows that if someone ever hurts them – the justice system will have their back.
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