The district court sentenced the husband to 9 months in prison instead of 3 weeks, after harassing his wife and children in a shelter for battered women
The sentence of a husband who violated a restraining order was aggravated
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Illustration: Joshua Joseph
The Be'er Sheva district court decided in an unusual move to aggravate the sentence of a husband who violated a deportation order and arrived at a shelter for battered women, where his wife and children were staying.
This is after the Magistrate's Court in Eilat "satisfied itself" with a minimum sentence of 21 days in prison and compensation in the amount of NIS 2,000.
According to the indictment, which later led to the conviction of the man on his confession, the defendant violated a restraining order issued by the court order, according to which he was not allowed to contact, directly or indirectly, the complainant for 90 days. To 100 meters.
Despite the order, the defendant arrived at the battered women's shelter where his wife was staying with her children, climbed onto the roof of a nearby synagogue along with another man and called his children.
The complainant went out to the steps of the shelter and asked the respondent for his actions, and he replied to her "Who is Asi?", And fled the scene.
In view of these acts, the husband was convicted of violating a court order intended to protect a person.
At his trial in the Magistrate's Court in Eilat, the judge was satisfied with 21 days in prison and NIS 2,000 in compensation for a woman.
The police prosecution department did not give up, filed an appeal against the decision and the panel of judges of the Be'er Sheva District Court, and it decided to increase his sentence to nine months in prison.
The panel of district court judges headed by President Revital Yaffa Katz accepted the appeal and ruled that the Magistrate's Court erred in its handling of the case and concluded: "The facts of the indictment should not include the anxiety felt by the complainant as a result of the respondent's actions.
Any sensible person can understand that whoever ran away from home and came to a home for battered women with 5 children, does so only to receive protection, and when it became clear to her that even in this place she could not be protected from the respondent, she must have felt anxiety, terror and despair;
But it was clear that she was terrified when she realized that the respondent knew where she was hiding, and these things did not have to be recorded in the indictment for the court to understand this, "the judges' decision read.
The judges added: "The court erred in determining the penalty compound without giving weight to the manner in which the order was violated, an order intended to protect human life, by reaching a place which was supposed to be a refuge for the complainant from the accused, using the minor children, who are in any case not in their favor. In the eyes of the family and legal storm and the court erred when it did not find it appropriate to aggravate with the defendant also in order to protect other women who seek protection in similar shelters. "
"The appellate court is not inclined to prosecute the defendant. However, the case before us is one of those exceptional cases that justify intervening in the sentencing court's judgment mainly due to the lack of an appropriate relationship between the seriousness of the offenses in the circumstances and the defendant's guilt. Imposed on him. "