The case that won’t leave the prosecutor’s mind: “She was a child. It wasn’t only the horrors”
Attorney Einat Blenro recalls one of the most difficult cases in her career: a girl who grew up in a closed society and became a victim of systematic abuse by her father, supported by her entire family. “This was not just a legal story, it was a human story,” she says.
There are cases that stay on the shelf. There are cases that stay in the head. And there are cases that stay in the heart. More than a decade has passed since one of the most difficult sexual-offense cases opened in the Southern District Prosecution, but for attorney Einat Blenro, who handled the case on behalf of the state, the complainant’s figure still lives in her memory as if she had just left the courtroom. “I can close my eyes and see her,” she says. “Her face is engraved in me. I have had dozens of other sexual-offense cases since then, but this girl stayed with me forever.”
The ruling handed down in the District Court and later upheld in the Supreme Court described a prolonged sequence of sexual offenses and violence committed by a father against his daughter over the years. The Supreme Court justices rejected the father’s appeal and adopted the findings of the court of first instance, foremost the direct impression from the complainant’s credibility. The ruling emphasized that even when there are inaccuracies or certain changes in the account of a victim of a sexual offense, this does not necessarily undermine her credibility, and the testimony must be examined as a whole. But from Blenro’s perspective, the real story was never only the conviction. “The story of this case is not the legal story,” she says. “It’s the human story.”
Blenro recalls that the case did not begin with the indictment. “I received it after it had already been handled by another prosecutor,” she says. “They asked me to appear at an urgent hearing that dealt with a young woman who was smuggled abroad before she was supposed to testify against her father. I arrived at the court and saw a young woman, dressed in very adult, modest clothes. I understood there was an indictment against her father, that she was supposed to testify about severe harm, and that she had disappeared right before the testimony. That was my first meeting with her.”
Blenro clarifies that it was not the sexual offenses themselves that shocked her over the years—she saw many such cases. What was imprinted was the combination. “On the one hand, sexual offenses, and on the other, unimaginable violence inside the home,” she recalls. “It was a daily reality of horrors. It wasn’t enough that he chose to turn his daughter into a victim of sexual offenses—he was also a beating father. That combination was unimaginable.”
Blenro has difficulty to this day calling her “the complainant.” For her, she was “a child.” “She was already 19, but she was a child. She grew up in a very depressing home, in a very closed society. She didn’t know another world.”
This may be one of the statements that explains more than anything else what happens far from the public eye. “When there’s nobody, we’re there,” says Blenro. This sentence took on tangible meaning the night when the complainant’s first testimony ended. “We left the courthouse, it was already dark, and I knew she couldn’t go back home. We arranged an intake apartment for her in another city. We were going to wait with her until the taxi arrived.”
Then, almost incidentally, Blenro asked her if she had pajamas or a toothbrush. The answer was short: “No.” Blenro says that at that moment she and her two colleagues pooled together money and drove with her to the mall. “We went store by store,” she recalls. “Bras, underwear, pajamas, a bag. We also bought her food and drinks.” In the Delta store, she told her: “Choose.” The girl looked at her with a small smile and said: “I never bought for myself. I never chose for myself.”
Blenro pauses for a moment. “She turned around afterward and asked me: ‘What, are there also people like you in the world?’ More than ten years have passed since that evening. I’ve handled dozens of cases since then, but I will never forget that moment.”
The connection between the prosecutor and the complainant did not end with the issuance of the court’s decision. While the case continued to be handled, a human connection was maintained between the prosecutor and the young woman that deepened over time. “I remember there was an attack in Be’er Sheva, and she called to check that I was okay,” says Blenro. “She remembered that the prosecution was located near the central bus station. That says it all.”
When the appeal to the Supreme Court arrived, Blenro felt she had to be there. “I went to the hearing, and when I met her I simply couldn’t believe it. This was no longer the same girl I had met for the first time in court. A completely different girl stood in front of me. Torn jeans, a leather jacket, hair half shaved. She no longer belonged to the world she came from. She had a big smile, she spoke with confidence.”
“When I receive a case, I must assess the chances of a conviction,” says Blenro. “In this case, we had no doubt. Both the District Court and the Supreme Court placed full trust in her testimony.”
Blenro admits that even after many years in the system, there are still things that manage to surprise her, particularly the family's behavior. “I can’t understand how they are able to stand in court, say things that aren’t true, and mobilize everyone together to save the father, instead of asking what happened to the girl.”
“No one taught me how to deal with a girl who was sexually harmed. There is no such course. There is no training. You simply find yourself inside the situation and try to be a human being despite the emotional baggage,” emphasizes Blenro.
When the ruling was handed down in the District Court, she felt professional satisfaction. Then came the sentencing as well, 22 years in prison. “At that time it was an exceptional sentence in terms of its severity. Today maybe we’ve gotten used to sentences like that, but then it was a very meaningful message. I felt it was a fitting punishment for what he did, and no less importantly, it was fitting for her.”
At the end of the conversation, she returns to that young woman she met more than a decade ago. “The word ‘justice’ is too big,” she says quietly. “You can’t really repair what she went through. But you can give proper consolation.”
