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The man threatened his sister-in-law with a knife, and wins that "conviction will harm his occupation"

How in today’s reality is it likely that a guy who tightly pushed his sister-in-law while holding his baby and nearly leading to her death and then threatening her with a knife, will be prosecuted only for the sake of harming his livelihood?

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• Domestic violence

David Rosenthal

Tuesday, February 23, 2021, 3:20 p.m.

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July 2017, 7 p.m.

A young man arrives at his sister - in - law's apartment in one of the northern Sharon settlements, which is supervising his baby at the time and demands that she hand it over to him.

The sister-in-law refused to transfer the baby into his custody until the return of her sister (the boy's wife).

At this point, his nerves reach the end of a boil and within seconds he holds his sister-in-law tightly in her hands and begins to shake her, this when she is holding the baby.

Luckily she remained stable and the baby did not fall from her hands and miraculously was not thrown hard on the ground.

However, this does not end the frightening saga because in a short time, he finds a large kitchen knife lying in the living room, and swings it in threatening motions towards his sister-in-law.

Following her complaint to the police and in light of the seriousness of his actions, the prosecution files an indictment in the Hadera Magistrate's Court that includes an offense of 'mere assault', where according to the provisions of section 379 of the Penal Code, a person who illegally assaults his friend Another sentence was imposed due to the circumstances of the offense.

According to the indictment, the guy was in conflict with his wife and later the two divorced.

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Adv. Moshe Oren (Photo: Yachz)

The defendant, represented by Adv. Moshe Oren, an expert in criminal law, does not deny the incident itself nor the chain of events and admits guilt and the case is transferred to the probation service for the purpose of examining the question of revocation of the conviction and the sentence.

Following a review detailing the young man's current situation, the court debated the dilemma of how to balance the public interest in deterrence, defending public safety and the necessity to fight the scourge of violence in society, versus the public and personal interest in S.'s rehabilitation.

The case comes to the table of Hadera Magistrate's Court Judge Moshe Ginot, who decides to cancel his conviction and instead, he is required to perform 140 hours of public service work on the condition that another violent offense he commits during the next two years will result in his 10,000 shekels.

Why does the judge 'pity' the defendant and not send him behind bars?

"Conviction may harm his occupation," the judge writes, "Balancing the public interest in deterrence, protecting public safety and the need to combat the scourge of violence in society and the public and personal interest in paralyzing the defendant is not an easy task. However, in the unique circumstances of the case before me. "In the work that a conviction may harm his occupation, given that we are dealing with a defendant who is from his first testimony, he has no criminal record, which he accepted full responsibility and expressed sincere remorse for the commission of the offense."

The court also took into account that he had a 49% disability due to a car accident he had, and in light of his clean past, agreed to give S. a chance to return to the beneficiary and imposed 140 hours of community service on him.

In fact, this is not the first time the court has dramatically eased a defendant who has used severe violence against his family, just for reasons of livelihood.

For example, in a verdict handed down about a year ago in the Magistrate's Court in Petah Tikva, a man was convicted of attempting to assault his partner after throwing a stone at his two-year-old wife and toddler daughter. The judge ruled that this was a serious act of indiscretion and violent behavior.

However, it was written that the conviction of the man would cause serious damage to his rehabilitation and the source of his livelihood, so he decided to cancel it and settle for a service for the public.

Naamat Chairman Hagit Peer: "In general, we often encounter outrageous decisions by the courts, which indicate a fundamental lack of understanding of the phenomenon of domestic violence and of the aggressor-victim dynamics.

Too often we see judges showing excessive compassion towards the violent man due to livelihood considerations, thus giving legitimacy to the repetition of the violent behavior on his part.

A violent man who is not convicted and is not punished in a way that reflects the severity of his actions and especially that he does not go through any process of internalizing the severity of his actions, the chance of repeating the pattern of violent behavior is almost certain.

"Regarding the mitigation of punishment so as not to impair the violent man's livelihood, it is important to understand that sometimes the woman who is harmed by the violence itself seeks to mitigate the punishment of the spouse, out of anxiety to undermine the family's financial situation and fear for her children. "That will allow her to separate from him and stand on her own two feet, she and her children. This is instead of imposing a light punishment that does not deter, neither the perpetrator nor the public, from violent behavior within the family."

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