Development in the serious case:
The Central District Attorney's Office today (Thursday) filed an indictment against the psychotherapist Yariv Cohen, after a series of complaints that he committed sexual offenses against his patients.
The indictment shows that between the years 2017-2022 Yariv worked as a therapist in "physical psychotherapy" - treatment of crises, mental distress and emotional disorders with the help of talk therapy that combines techniques of physical contact, breathing, movement, meditation and more.
As part of his occupation, Yariv committed sexual acts on female patients such as rape, sodomy and obscene acts, all under the guise of physical psychotherapy treatment.
Cohen in court, today // Photo: Moshe Ben Simhon
During the conversational treatment, the patients revealed intimate details of their personal lives, concerns, fears and the problems that brought them to seek treatment to Yariv.
Yariv used to gain the trust of the female patients on the sly, among other things, by, in conversations of a sexual nature with the female patients, he asked them to share with him details from their sex lives and shared his personal sexual experience and details about the sex lives of other female patients.
In order to perform the body treatments, Yariv ordered the patients to take off their clothes and remain dressed only in underwear, lie on the treatment bed and cover themselves with a sheet.
The patient who asked to remain clothed used to be told that it would interfere with the treatment and make it difficult for him to achieve a result.
In some cases, the defendant moved the sheet in a way that left the female patients bare-chested.
During the body treatments, Yariv performed sexual acts on the female patients, taking advantage of the weaknesses revealed to him during the treatments and while presenting a false representation that the contact with these organs is necessary to provide a balm for those problems.
In some of the treatments, Yariv performed massages on the patients which involved touching and massaging, among other things, intimate organs, without the consent of the patients and in some cases despite their objections.
In one of the cases, a rival inserted his fingers into the patient's genitals without her consent.
He performed the acts without giving an explanation to the patients about the course of the treatment, where he was going to touch, without obtaining their prior consent and under the pretense that sexual contact is part of the treatment.
More than once, in order to gain the trust of the patients, Yariv allayed the fears of the patients under the pretext that he is well aware of the limits of his work as a therapist and that the manner of performing the treatment does not exceed the said limit.
At the end of each treatment, the defendant used to hug the complainants in a close and long hug that is not appropriate for a therapist-patient relationship.
The message that the sixth complainant sent to Yriv Cohen after the treatment in which she claimed she was raped,
Some of the patients, who put their trust in the opponent, developed an emotional dependence on him and the treatment and agreed to perform the touch treatments because, despite the feeling of discomfort, embarrassment and disgust that the touch treatments caused them, they believed in his words that this was an integral part of the treatment and all with the understanding and hope that the treatments would be useful for improving their condition the emotional
The indictment attributes to Yriv Cohen eight charges that include indecent acts, some without consent and fraudulently, where the first charge also includes rape and sodomy.
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