An Israeli man who kept a sect-like harem of at least 17 women, fathering scores of children, is denying charges of rape, enslavement and incest.
Goel Ratzon is accused of keeping a cult of concubines in Tel Aviv, inspiring total obedience and loyalty. The 60-year-old, who resembles Indian cult leaders with long white hair and beard, has appeared before the media for the first time since his arrest, protesting his innocence. His harem allegedly included at least 17 women with whom he fathered at least 37 children, some of whom are also his grandchildren.
Police believe he committed incest with his own daughters. An Israeli television documentary crew exposed Ratzon and his women in their squalid apartments last year.
The women appeared to be utterly in Ratzon’s thrall. They bore tattoos showing his face in messianic images and referred to him as their saviour. “Goel” means “redeemer” in Hebrew.
The lineage of the Hebrew Patriarchs who founded the Jewish people was highly inbred. Abraham said his wife Sarah was also his half-sister. His son Isaac married Rebekah, a cousin once removed. And Isaac’s son Jacob wed his two first cousins, Leah and Rachel.a tendency toward inbreeding can turn an extended family into a miniature racial group with its own partially isolated gene pool. (Dog breeders use extreme forms of inbreeding to quickly create new breeds in a handful of generations.)
The ancient Hebrews provide a vivid example of a partly inbred extended family (that of Abraham and his brothers) that evolved into its own ethnic group. This process has been going on for thousands of years in the Middle East, which is why not just the Jews, but also why tiny, ancient inbreeding groups such as the Samaritans, the John the Baptist-worshipping Sabeans, and the Lucifer-worshipping Yezidis still survive.
Jacob’s dozen sons were the famous progenitors of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Due to inbreeding, Jacob’s eight legitimate sons had only six unique great-grandparents instead of the usual eight. That’s because the inbred are related to their relatives through multiple paths.
In one scene, Ratzon tells the camera: “I’m perfect, I have all the qualities a woman wants.” Police say the women lavished Ratzon with attention as if he was royalty and texted him to tell him when they were ovulating.
They say Ratzon wrote a list of commandments ensuring the women were kept in near total slavery. They were forbidden from talking to other men and were not allowed to question any of his commands.
He is accused of using physical punishment on the women and controlling them by making them believe in his divine status. His lawyer says the women willingly accepted the conditions and way of life and the sex was consensual. He denies the charges against him.
According to the State Prosecutor’s Office, Ratzon had many diverse ways to influence his wives, causing them to depend on him completely. He allegedly instilled a distorted reality, leading them to believe that their entire being, essence and physical and mental life derive their existence from him.
The indictment describes the “family” setting Ratzon built around him: “The defendant captured the women in a human group structure with the nature of a pseudo-family revolving around the ritual of his image, turning the birth of his children into a supreme goal the wives must aspire to, all with the aim of glorifying him while serving him and providing all his needs.”
The State went on to say that Ratzon abused his wives by scorning them, while ridiculing their personality and independence and trampling over their self-image and self-value.
He kept them away from any external social connection, including their families, damaging their judgment and free will and enslaving them to provide his economic and sexual needs, the indictment said.
‘Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it’
Many of the indictment clauses refer to the sex offenses allegedly committed by Ratzon. One describes a 19-year-old girl who was raped by Ratzon from the age of 15 to 17 on a nearly daily basis. He is also accused of indecent assault of another girl, by caressing her sexual organs and kissing her while pushing his tongue into her mouth.
He is also accused of raping and sexually harassing a girl whose mother died when she was a baby. According to the indictment, he distanced the girl from her family and promised to marry her. He convinced her that he had supernatural powers and ignored her request to stop kissing and caressing her.
Several days later, he took a shower with the girl and raped her. When she complained that it hurt, he responded, “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.” In another incident, he performed oral sex on the girl and raped her again.
“The defendant knew that the young girl was subject to his magical influence, which he nurtured and implanted in a way preventing her from granting her free agreement,” the indictment stated. “Shortly after these acts were committed, the young woman’s father managed to locate her and remove her forcibly.”
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