Courtesy of those photographed

"Here, I'm inside you, it's not that terrible": the shocking confession of Yuval Raz who was raped at the age of 13

Yuval Raz, who turned her rapist's defense in court into a dance show, tells Ofir Sagersky about the four rapes she went through by her dance teacher, the lawsuit she filed and her win, after years of attrition.

Severe trigger warning ***

Ofir Sagarsky

19/05/2022

19/05/2022

• Share on Facebook

• Share on WhatsApp

• Share on Twitter

• Share on Email

• Share on general

• Comments

  Comments

"I get to say 'my rapist' a lot," Yuval Raz, 18, from Kiryat Bialik, tells me with her characteristic lightness.

"There was also a time when I also used a lot of terms of rape, for example, 'And this is not rape my brain,' all sorts of concepts that people have a hard time with. But I feel that when they raped me they took the power from me, and when I say that, I return the power to me. ".

Now it has finally been announced that the man who raped her four times, when she was only 13-14, is going to go to jail - and she feels at her peak.

"I really wanted to close this circle and received it in the best way possible, with all the media explosion and messages I now receive from girls," she said.

"It's something I wanted to do for a very long time. I have nothing to be ashamed of. I came out of court with a big smile. He is the one who came out shrunken and with his head down."

Her floor uprightness is a challenge against years of stooping.

I see in her the profound process she went through in a few years, from a lecturer and self-blaming girl to a mature and proud girl, and afraid of damaging the inner stability she had built with her own hands out of the rubble.

But as the one who complained about her rape to the police, she told her story about thirty times to police investigators and lawyers, won the lawsuit and turned the attacker's lawyer's words into the soundtrack of her dance submission work - this interview is small for her.

More on Walla!

The corona also made an impact: the Israeli elections in this year's product competition

In collaboration with Product of the Year Israel

"The first second he came home, I saw him as the most amazing thing in the world" (Photo: courtesy of the photographers)

We sip our drinks at the cafe, and carefully walk back to that dark box office, in the apartment in Kiryat Motzkin of her dance teacher, Kirill Shahaf Chaikin.

To understand the system of forces that Tchaikin established between himself and Raz, the same system of forces that allowed him to force himself on it time and time again, one has to dive into the period prior to Raz's bat mitzvah, sometime at the age of 12. So she first met Tchaikin.

In those days, Raz asked to perform at her bat mitzvah party a "bat mitzvah dance" together with a professional dancer, a common tradition in her class.

The person who chose Cheikin is Yuval's mother, Tali Raz, who met him as part of her work as an event producer and invited the teacher to teach her daughter dance.

"The first second he got home, I saw him as the most amazing thing in the world," Raz recalls.

"I admired him. Everyone has this teacher they admire."

Coincidentally, that made Raz happy, about a year after that sweet memory, Chaikin began teaching at the dance studio where she had been dancing for some time.

Cheikin was not welcomed by the students, but Raz already felt a special connection to him, which isolated her from the rest of the class and created the ideal balance for Cheikin - both, so to speak, against the world.

As a 12-year-old girl who recounts that she has always had a hard time finding herself in social situations, Raz saw Cheekin as her redeeming angel;

A mature and talented man who recognizes in her what others are missing.

She felt special.

"When you're a girl and in love - it's not like when you're an adult," the 18-year-old Raz explains to me. "Adults hide things, children do not.

The 12-year-old Raz thirstily drank all the knowledge and insight that the revered teacher agreed to impart, and accompanied him whenever she had the opportunity.

"We started walking together after the studio towards the house or before the studio towards it, talking about the world of dance," she recalls.

"He did a lot to tighten the bond between us, and talked to my mom about wanting to take me to more classes at other studios."

The mother, for her part, exploded with pride.

Who would not be proud of her daughter when she is recognized by such a valued teacher at such a young age?

"Slowly, something has changed in our conversations," says Raz.

"He started introducing me to his life, gossiping with me about other teachers and teachers."

In retrospect, she speculates, he tried to isolate her from any authority other than him.

"He told me no one would open me up like him."

When she expressed to him the enthusiasm of buildings around her, he resented it.

"I had to remind him that he is my God," Raz says.

"Somewhere, it was an abusive relationship."

"He told me that no one would open me up like him" (Photo: courtesy of those photographed)

As the relationship tightened, Chaikin shared with the student more and more intimate details of his life.

"Children are like a sponge, and what you give them is what they will receive and learn," says Raz, who was used to protecting her childish behavior at the time.

"As a girl who knows nothing, what he taught me became a fact for me. He knew I adored him, and told me I was in love with him - so for me that's what he was. If Kirill says - I'm probably in love."

It is worth mentioning, of course, that even if a 12 or 13 year old is in love with you, as an adult - it is your job to set firm and clear boundaries.

As far as Chaikin is concerned, these boundaries were not crossed all at once, but gradually, in a clever and calculated way.

For starters, Chaikin occasionally invited her to stop by for a glass of water on the way to the studio.

"He did not touch me," she says, "but he started dripping messages to me about his previous relationship, and the sex that was there. I did not really understand why he was telling me that,

Unfortunately, the curriculum that Raz quotes describes well-being among art teachers of all kinds.

Most often, it is precisely the teachers who provide many reasons not to trust them, and tend to regularly invade particularly intimate areas of students' minds and bodies.

Even the minds of older than 12-year-old students are captivated by manipulation, and sometimes even years after school they will prefer to attribute artistic intentions to a teacher who has hurt them.

It is better to continue to admire these teachers, and to believe that they are so genius that their wisdom could not be understood in the moment of truth.

The main thing is just not to admit that you were exploited, that you invaded, that you were a victim at the hands of the person you trusted.

"Once, when we were with him, I told him that I had learned in London about a type of dance called 'contact'," says Raz.

"It's a style where every movement of mine is influenced by the movement of my partner, and it has a lot of touch."

Chaikin immediately recognized an opportunity for action, turned on music and offered her to dance, taking advantage of the dance to get closer and closer to her.

When her hand accidentally touched his thigh, she pulled it back in panic.

"He stopped the music, approached me with a serious look and told me that I need to understand that in contact there is no sexuality, and there are no boundaries in it - it is allowed to touch anywhere," says Raz.

"To 'prove to me that everything was fine,' he grabbed me and gave me a kiss on the mouth."

At that moment, for the first time, Raz felt clearly that something was wrong.

The body understood, but the mind had not yet digested.

"I did not want to think he was taking advantage of me, that I fell into the net," she explains.

"I perceived myself as intelligent. And besides, it's Kirill - it does not make sense that he would hurt me, he cares for me and knows everything."

Raz asked to go home.

Just before releasing her, Chaikin told her for the first time, "This - do not tell your mother."

Raz never told her parents anything, but only after the first meeting with Kirill, so they drank an innocent glass of water.

This story already sounded strange to her mother, and she ordered her daughter not to do it again, which caused Raz to hide the encounters from now on.

The messages exchanged between them, Doug Chaikin himself Sharaz will delete after each call.

Luckily, over the years, the police will be able to recover them.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Yuval Raz (@yuval_raz)

"How do you get up in the morning, comb your hair and go for a rape?"

At a subsequent meeting, Kirill decided that they would dance contact again.

"While dancing, he started massaging my shoulders, spun me around with my face to him and kissed me," she recalls.

"I did not move. Then he picked me up on his hips and took me to the bedroom, and I was in the market."

Just before entering the room, Raz raised her hands and grabbed the lintels.

For a moment, she managed to stop him.

"I told him I did not want to go into his bedroom and it scared me. He looked at me like I said the most exaggerated and strange thing in the world."

Systematically, whenever Raz tried to set a limit and expressed fear, the teacher made her feel that she was exaggerating, delusional, crazy.

Only today, Raz knows that this manipulation is called "Gazlite".

Today she also knows that cultivating a relationship with her for the purpose of sexual exploitation is called "grooming".

But at age 12, while lacking basic life definitions of these, she had no tools to deal with the physical and psychological pressure that was constantly exerted on her.

on the same day,

"I remember trying to hold on to the kiss as much as possible, because anything else could have just been bad and painful," Raz says.

"He put a hand under my shirt, and it was not pleasant for me but did not tell me anything, and then came to put my hand through my pants into my underwear."

At this point, she tried again to stop him.

"I grabbed his hand and said, 'It scares me and I do not want to.' He said, 'But you said you love me, that you trust me.' 'But I do not want, it will hurt me.' "The one I did not catch, he took my hand and pressed it to my head. He put the other hand into my panties and put his finger inside. It hurt."

Despite the paralyzing experience, Raz continued to frequent Chaikin's apartment at his request.

"I asked myself later, why did you come? How do you get up in the morning, comb your hair and go for a rape?", She says.

"It's a difficult question to explain. I cut my body off from my head and from everything I believed in. Whenever I thought a bad thought about Kirill I felt it was wrong, and I whipped myself for it, I thought I was forced to be good. Who am I anyway? 'Shut up and do what he says. to you'".

At that time Kirill founded a code word, to acquire Raz's faith.

"A word that as soon as you say it - I will know it needs to stop," she quotes.

"I was always a stinging girl, so I said to him, 'Enough' is not enough? '. He laughed, and said,' No, but you really have to think of a word, because sometimes you say 'enough' and then you get convinced."

Kirill thought about it a little more, and declared: "'Bat Mitzvah'. Say 'Bat Mitzvah',

They met again, and Cheekin led to the bedroom.

After a brief psychological struggle he laid her on his bed.

"Always above me, controlling the situation and leading it, and making sure to distract myself all the time with his touch and voice so I don't have a moment to stop and sober up," she recalls.

"He wanted me to take off my pants and I was ashamed, I did not want to. I remember he said to me, 'You like being done things by force, right?'. He took off my tights and threw him to the wall. I stayed in my underwear."

"He said to me, 'Here, I'm inside you, it's not that bad, is it?'" (Photo: Courtesy of those photographed)

Then, she said, Chaikin asked her to demonstrate to him a "modeling round" in the room.

Raz refused, but Chaikin did not give up.

"He took me, put me in front of the mirror and forced me to look at my body. Then he laid me on the bed, moved my panties and tried to enter me, without any prior warning. He had a hard time entering, I had a girl's body. I asked. He stopped. I said, 'Enough, I'm not comfortable.' He said to me, 'You love me, you trust me.' I said to him, 'Bat Mitzvah.' "And I was just thinking, what else were you planning to do ?!"

Raz tried to fend him off but eventually lost her strength.

"He said to me, 'Here, I'm inside you, it's not that bad, is it?'" She says.

"I realized I had no point in continuing to fight. He canceled me. It's better to let it happen, because that way it will be the least painful."

Afterwards, Chaikin swore not to tell anyone about what had happened, and threatened that if she did, he would commit suicide.

At this point Raz was 14, and in retrospect, she understands why her teacher “waited” until then.

"He was waiting for me to reach the age of 14 because there is a difference in the law between raping a minor under the age of 14 or over the age of 14," she notes, adding with a wink, "Do some research, check on Google."

Raz is in a major risk group for being called a "graduate of her age."

She is sarcastic, funny, witty, sharp-witted.

All of this data serves as fertile ground for predators to justify an act of rape.

If she's mature enough to answer insolently, the pedophile mind calms down, she's probably mature enough to have sex - and more with an older person.

But no 12-year-old is mature enough to have sex, and neither a 12-year-old nor a 15- or 18-year-old is old enough to sleep with her teacher, not even "by consent."

Never.

Strange that it should be noted at all.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Yuval Raz (@yuval_raz)

"I asked myself later, why did you come? How do you get up in the morning, comb your hair and go for a rape?" (Photo: courtesy of those photographed)

"I was crying"

At the end of two hours of a particularly crowded interview, Raz begins to show signs of exhaustion and I decide to stop the interview and schedule a continuation after she rests.

Two days later we meet at her request in the apartment of her partner Sharon (24) and his partners.

The spouse is gone, and I am greeted by Raz and Sharon's partner, who is lying on the couch in the living room where we are about to continue the interview.

The partner recognizes the question on the tip of my tongue, and even before it is asked, he replies, "Yuval said it was okay for me to be here."

"Sure?", I ask her.

"Sure," she replies freely.

"Obviously, we're like brothers."

Later, the other partner also returns home, both of whom Yuval thinks of her friends.

At night, they proudly recount, Yuval left them letters on the bed.

"I kept it in my drawer of memories," says the guy on the couch with a smile.

"I like to leave little reminders of love, of the people I love," Raz reveals.

"I wrote letters to Sharon and both of them about how much I love and appreciate them,

After all she has been through, it's amazing to find that she feels so comfortable in one apartment, not particularly large, between three men. "At first it was very difficult for me to come here," she shares.

"In my head, even if it's not true, I'm sure whenever a man has a chance, he will rape me."

"What? I was full of opportunities and I did not do it," the partner on the couch interjects.

Yuval bursts out laughing, stomping her feet enthusiastically.

"Obviously good," she returns, "where do you get 100,000 shekels to pay?".

They both roll with thunderous laughter.

"My family bursts out laughing. With the humor about the rape my mom had a hard time at first, but in the end she succumbed to it, and it's really funny. When she asks me to wash dishes, I say, 'I can not, I was raped.' There's nothing to do, it's funny." .

The humor on the subject is a fairly new matter.

Everything is pretty new.

In fact, until last July, Yuval's parents did not even know anything about the atrocity inflicted on their daughter.

Raz kept the secret in her heart for about four years, until a small event that changed everything for her: while she was a total of 17, she talked to a good friend about his little sister celebrating 12. Suddenly, the token fell to her.

"I thought, Buena, she's almost 13 years old," she says.

"She's a student in the studio, she's dancing with Kirill, and she's almost 13 years old. I felt like someone slapped me with responsibility in the face."

At that moment, Raz had a clear and sharp understanding that she had to "do something with it," but she still did not know what.

In the first stage, Raz turned to her older sister, Yarden (28), who is a decade older than her and is a sympathetic ear and a supportive shoulder to Yuval.

"I have something to tell you," Yuval muttered during a small talk.

"Are you pregnant?", The nurse joked.

"No," Yuval replied, "but my dance teacher raped me."

"She burst out laughing," Raz recalls.

"She was sure I was working on her."

Very quickly the nurse's smile was replaced by shock and shock.

"She started to cry," says Raz.

"As the education officer she was, her initial instinct was to take care of and protect me."

Jordan immediately decided to take her little sister to the parents, and tell them.

The next moment they were both in the car.

Along the way, parents received from them the most disturbing message parents can get from their children: "We have something to tell you."

"I felt my heart beating all over my body," Raz recalls.

"When we got to my parents' house, from the stress, I went to the bathroom. I stayed there for about 12 minutes, because I knew what was waiting for me when I left."

All the while, the tense parents waited in the living room, urging their daughters to talk.

Finally, it was Jordan who landed the gospel.

That moment, when her mother discovered that her youngest daughter had been raped by the same person she knew herself, she will never forget.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Yuval Raz (@yuval_raz)

"Obviously she felt guilty," Raz says in pain.

"Today she goes to such a support group for mothers of rape victims. It is a trauma in itself."

As throughout the interview, even this painful moment, she immediately breaks into comic insight.

"My dad just got up and said, 'I'll take care of this. Where does he live?'

That's the way it is, Dad. "

Her laughter rolls all over the apartment.

Throughout the interview Yuval swings back and forth on the armchair, but by this point he is already moving like a fishing boat in the middle of a stormy sea.

It is difficult for her to sit in one position for a long time, and it seems that the more difficult the subject is for conversation, the more she directs her energies to physical, repetitive, intensifying pursuits.

Next, she stretches her right leg to above the head, and from there another leg - a small, unintentional dance performance, to discharge cumulative tensions, during which she continues to tell about the visit to the police.

It happened a few days after the conversation with her parents, and she remembers the youth researcher asking her if he could close the door.

"I thought, wow, what fun to be asked at all," she says.

Since then, she has told her story to police investigators and lawyers about thirty times, each time rediscovering the story herself, through the evidence and testimonies.

"There were our messages, letters I would write about myself, a greeting he wrote to me at age 14, a Pilates ball he bought me and a lot of friends who have witnessed and known this story for years," she said.

"I read parts of the diary I had at age 13, and think, 'Wow, I was crying.' I wrote there 'I hate you, why are you doing such things to me,' and on that sentence X, and 'I love you.'

Chaikin's confession was swift, but not immediate.

"At first, he said he did not understand why this girl he knew and loved and nurtured suddenly decided to ruin his life, and that freaked me out," she says.

"Then he said the relationship happened but in agreement, and that's where the story was signed."

In a short time, Raz found herself in the Haifa District Court, on the same bench with her rapist, with only a security guard between them.

"I felt disconnected from everything that was happening, I did things on an automaton, my mind was disconnected," she said.

"Probably so I can function and contain it all."

Carmel Pizuati's attorneys Avi Kurzberg ("Write that they are amazing") who represented Raz accompanied her every step of the way, prepared her for the future and softened her acquaintance with the legal world as much as they could.

But no one could really prepare her for the moment she would meet her rapist in court, accompanied by his mother and wife.

"There were a few seconds that our gaze met," she recalls.

"At first I had a hard time looking at him and then I couldn't stop looking at him. It interested me to see how he reacts to things."

The defense attorney's arguments, Adv. Michael Carmel, did not improve the situation.

I personally know that this is not true. "

Eventually, Adv. Carmel's defense will, as it was announced in the media, become the soundtrack of her dissertation in the field of dance.

"I read the indictment," Raz quotes bitterly.

"I am sorry that the prosecution was misled after the false testimony of a complainant who is not telling the truth. I believe that the court will do justice here and in the end my client will be acquitted of the charges attributed to him."

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Yuval Raz (@yuval_raz)

In the video documenting the final thesis, five girls from Raz's class are seen on stage, moving to the outrageous recording of the defense's words.

After that, the song "The Little Secret" by Yoni Bloch begins to play.

The words of the hymn: "I will give everything / to keep you / from anyone who may harm you / It will be my and your little secret."

Last February, Raz posted video footage of her work on Tiktok and Instagram, videos that instantly went viral and garnered immense public interest.

See You have been warned: You can not watch them without bursting into tears.

It's hard to imagine how such a disgusting soundtrack fits into a won and pure art as dance, but for Raz, the sacred has been created much earlier.

Symbolically, on the occasion of her graduation, Raz decided to settle accounts with her assailant at the place where she was injured, and again, regained power.

It is almost unbelievable that dance manages to continue to be a healing tool for her, but above all, Raz sees it as a tool for conveying a message.

"The purpose of dance is to make you feel something, and I was able to make people feel what I wanted," she concludes.

From the moment her face and name were revealed, Raz says, most of the negative reactions towards her disappeared.

And there were quite a few of them.

Of her memories in particular: "Why do you remember now", "Where were the parents", "She did not get a front row in the dance so she decided to take revenge", and the climax: "She had fun with her teacher and realized he would not leave his wife for her".

"Obviously," laughs Raz, "at 13."

The sentence handed down this month sentenced Chaikin to eight years in prison and compensation in the amount of one hundred thousand shekels.

Raz, who has initiated criminal proceedings against him primarily to gain recognition of pain and deter potential attackers, sees this as a success.

In the end, out of the four previous rapes, Chaikin was convicted of only two, but she said, for the better.

"It was part of the plea deal," she explains.

"My lawyer very much took care of me, she is a mother to the children herself and was very dedicated to this case, and made sure he was charged with all the important counts. She agreed to drop one or two clauses that changed nothing in the sentence, net for the process to close and sign. They wanted to end it for me."

Nothing in Raz's coping and recovery process is self-evident.

Not her humor, not the dance, not the courage to be exposed and not the fact that she's been in a benevolent relationship for half a year.

The secret to the success of the relationship, she says, is the sense of security that the spouse manages to instill in her,

"Our relationship started as a friend, but we felt from the beginning that there was something there," Raz says indulgently.

"On first dates he didn't even hug me. He made me feel very comfortable."

It took a long process to acquire Raz's faith, but in the end, they became an inseparable couple.

"He's just the best person in the world, I have no words for how much I love this person and how significant he is to me," she smiles.

"I know I sound like a girl in love who's sure she's going to marry her Sweethart High School, but I'm really sure I'm getting married to my Sweethart High School."

"Let's be full of dogs, first of all. And I would like to continue with the dance for another period of a few years, and then move on to something that will challenge my brain. I feel like my brain has a lot of untapped potential during the dance period. I have not yet decided what I would like to learn, "I'm very interested in space and math. Today I do things in Tiktok, and I would be happy to continue with that as well. I would like to do good, as much as possible for the world and the people."

• Sheee

• Sex and relationships

Tags

• Ounce

• women

• abuse