Binyamin Satz was the first person to be accused of pedophilia by parents in Nachlaot. In fact he was accused over half a year before other people started to be accused. I am not writing to say whether I think he was guilty or not of said accusations. I really don't know (though the more I read the court document the more I am swayed to say he is probably innocent).
I do think a great injustice was done. Firstly, even according to the way the justice system works in Israel, the judges should have found the evidence to be contaminated. Beyond this, I think that he should never have been tried as an adult. That the courts found him worthy to be tried this way is puzzling. What is even more puzzling is that the court system would find that anyone could actually have sexual gratification (one of the criteria for him to be guilty) from what the accused is accused of. Lastly, even if he is guilty of said accusations, this would only show that he only had the sexual emotional maturity of a seven year old.
Recently, the verdict for the appeal for Binyamin Satz was given. The honorable judges upheld the original verdict for 15 years incarceration. One of the main reasons given to uphold the original verdict was that, although there was clear evidence that the child B.M. later fabricated testimony, (he claimed that his mother reminded him of other details that he did not mention in his original testimony) the original testimony was reliable because at that point, there was no contamination of the children's testimony and therefore whatever the child claimed must be true.
But was there no 'contamination' also early on in the case? As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts in the chronological series of events, two women went door to door looking for other victims to testify against Binyamin. This took place in late 2010 and early 2011 well before there were mass accusations in the summer of 2011. I would say that there was quite a bit of pressure put on various parents whose children were known to have visited Binyamin to testify against him.
Here are one parent's words about that early period of time which the judges considered to be free of contamination:
"Immediately when the initial charge against Binyamin Satz was made, the whole neighborhood was gossiping about it. All the kids and adults knew about it. After the K*** boy incident, C. C. (and some other mothers) were going around the neighborhood trying to get as many parents as possible to get their children to testify against Binyamin Satz. I know that from first hand information, because beginning around November 2010, C.C. came to me and repeatedly told me to ask my son if he had ever been molested by Binyamin Satz. She said that it was very important for my son to testify since he was older than the other children, and his testimony would therefore carry more weight. My son had been in Binyamin Satz's apartment a number of times when he was about 8 or 9 years old, because he enjoyed using Binyamin Satz's lamination machine and was trying to help Binyamin Satz get customers for his lamination business. C.C. was sure my son had been molested because she said everyone in the neighborhood knew that my son had been in Binyamin Satz's apartment many times, and therefore he must have been molested. I asked my son repeatedly if Binyamin Satz had molested him, and he said Binyamin Satz had never molested him. The initial accusations against Binyamin Satz came out (around October - November 2010) At that time, I did not question whether the other accusations against Binyamin Satz were valid or not. C.C. continued to come to ask me to have my son testify against Binyamin Satz, at least until the spring of 2011 and possibly until the early summer 2011. "
What should also be noted here is that the first child to claim that he was molested (the K*** boy incident) was adamant that it was not Binyamin Satz that bit him on the penis, but someone that he did not know who bit him when he was on his way home from Binyamin's apt. It was his mother who was adamant that it was Binyamin Satz who bit here son. As a result, the judges threw out this child's testimony.
Another point to be noted is that there were over 50 children that were interrogated and yet only four of those children's testimony were used by the prosecution. If the honorable judges would have looked at all those cases and seen how much overlap and contamination there really was, perhaps they would have come to a different conclusion, as was reached in the case of Ben Tzion P. in which case the judges did look and as a result Ben Tzion was aquitted.
In conclusion, Binaymin had four children's testimonies used against him. The first and main testimony was thrown out because the child never claimed in the first place that it was Binyamin that bit him but it was clearly the mother who was claiming that it was Binyamin.
The second child had half his testimony thrown out because when he was asked why he didn't make the same claims when he made his first testimony, he said that his mother reminded him and then he 'remembered'.
Clearly, it seems to me that there was quite a bit of pressure on children to testify. They may not have been specifically told what to say in all cases, but certainly there was quite a bit of pressure put on the child to say something, as in the case of S. who testified against Zalman C. S was questioned by her mother so intensely that she passed out. It wasn't until a couple of weeks later that she 'remembered' that she was molested and had a detailed story of being molested by all three people who were indicted, with almost exactly the same story being told regarding each of those three people, going from one person's apartment to the next and having almost exactly the same things done to her by each of them. The honorable judge in the case of Zalman C. also did not seem to think that the intense pressure put on the child by the mother should have been considered into the verdict. (What went unnoticed by the judge in the case of Zalman C. was that any mother that would question her child until she passed out IS a clear case of child abuse!) It should be no surprise that the mother of S was the same mother mentioned above that went door to door looking for other mothers to testify against Binyamin Satz.
So it seems to me that what needs to be looked at is the promptings of the two mothers that went door to door and the encouragement of the mothers of these children who were so adamant that their children were molested and the rampant gossip that was going on at the time of the accusations.
So is Binyamin guilty as charged? Being that the original accusation was thrown out and that all the subsequent accusations came as a result of certain mothers canvassing the neighborhood informing other mothers that their children were almost certainly molested if they were ever in Binyamin's apt., and the fact that all the children in the neighborhood were speaking about what they heard, I find it highly unlikely that any of the children's testimony was not contaminated and therefore, Binyamin Satz should have been aquitted on that fact alone.
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