Documentation from 2018 of abuse of toddlers at the Tirat Carmel kindergarten of kindergarten teacher Irina Shakirov, who was extradited to Israel from Uzbekistan (Walla system!)
Irena Shakirov, the kindergarten teacher from Tirat Carmel, was sentenced to 18 months in prison on Monday for abusing toddlers and fleeing to Uzbekistan. The sentence was handed down after Shakirov confessed to the acts as part of a plea bargain she signed. However, she is expected to be released in the coming days, because she has been in custody for 11 months and after an expected reduction of a third of her sentence. "I'm very sorry for what I did," she told Judge Erez Porat before sentencing.
Shakirov, a 37-year-old Israeli and Uzbekistani citizen, married and herself a mother, left the country at the end of the criminal investigation against her. She was convicted of physically and mentally abusing infants and toddlers between the ages of one and a half and three as part of her work as the owner of the Little Ship Garden at Tirat Carmel. The police did not ask for a ban on her leaving the country or the seizure of her passports, and before charges have been filed against her, she has already flown to Uzbekistan. In early April 2022, while moving from Moldova to Georgia, she was arrested there at Israel's request.
"Sorry for what I did." Irena Shakirov (Photo: screenshot, from social networks)
Attorney Roy Keren (Photo: official website, none)
Ira, the mother of a kindergarten toddler who exposed the case in 2017, said the parents were not satisfied with the decision to reach a plea bargain. "She ruined our lives, hurt our children, didn't take responsibility and even fled the country," she explained. "We were under a lot of pressure to agree to this plea bargain, and each time we were told that it might receive less since there is no record of all the acts, but the case is based on our testimonies and unfortunately we agreed. We're very incomplete with the deal and think it's a disgrace, but we're tired already."
Attorney Roy Keren, who represents the parents, expressed his disappointment with the verdict. "I am disappointed with the punishment imposed on her after many efforts and resources that we, the parents, the state and I, invested in bringing her to Israel," he said. "The punishment does not reflect her serious actions, especially since we are in a reality in which there is a harsher punishment in these cases, and in my opinion it would have been appropriate to bring the law to the fullest."
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Kindergarten teacher extradited from Georgia accused of child abuse: 'Pushed their heads into a plate'
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Footage from the security cameras in the kindergarten (Photo: official website, none)
Attorney Kobi Margolov (Photo: official website, PR)
"The plea bargain includes a significant prison sentence component," he told Walla! Attorney Kobi Margolov of Katz Margolov Harel law firm, who represented Irena Shakirov. "She lacks any support, her husband and children in Uzbekistan. Even if she is eligible to go to a parole board, no one guarantees her that she will receive parole because she has not undergone any special treatment, has nowhere to live and nowhere to work."
Chen Kubritz Cohen, of the Children's Struggle Headquarters, said: "Today's reality is far from what happened here in 2017, when Irena Shakirov committed the offenses she confessed to today. How is it possible that a conviction for six offenses of child abuse amounts to 18 months in prison? Should the Haifa State Prosecutor's Office and Judge Erez Porat, who is once again lenient with abusers, be reminded that there is stricter punishment for anyone who harms helpless people, and even a law has been passed on the subject? We regret that the prosecution chose to take the easy route of a plea bargain, at the end of which it will sit for only a few months, and not fight for justice for the sake of the children who were harmed through a full evidentiary process."
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"Pushed toddlers' heads onto a plate"
The indictment, in which Shakirov was convicted, recounts events against her in the kindergarten for about six months, from July 2017 to February 2018. Many of the incidents were documented on security cameras, and the charges indicate that Shakirov used to feed the children aggressively, despite their objections, and did not stop even when they cried or vomited. In one of the incidents, she tied the hands and body of A., a two-year-old baby, behind her back with a cloth diaper and fed her, telling her, among other things, "I'm stronger than you," all while A. was crying, screaming and vomiting.
She was not the only one who gasped there and vomited, so at another time she sat with B., also a baby under the age of two, grabbed his hands under the table, grabbed the chair he was sitting on with her legs and aggressively fed him, while B. screamed, cried, choked, coughed and tried to resist. According to the indictment, as a result of her actions, B. also sustained real bruises that left blue marks on his hands.
The indictment states that she called baby H a "pig" in Russian, and on one occasion when she noticed that she had taken food from the plate of one of the kindergarten children, she beat her. She fed V., as a 4-year-old, aggressively and did not stop even when she cried and spat out the food, and blood dripped from her lips. She sat Baby Z., who was less than two years old, on the dining chair and strapped him to the chair for long periods of time to prevent him from getting out of the chair, and told the other children in the kindergarten not to come near him.
She took T., about two and a half years old, into the bathroom and hit him on his buttocks. In the cases described in the indictment, she pushed toddlers' heads into the plate while forcibly grabbing the back of their necks. In one case, she covered a toddler's head with a blanket because he refused to sleep and later physically assaulted him. She used to curse the children in Russian and threaten to hit them with a belt.
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- Abuse of toddlers
- Tirat Carmel
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