(3) The experience of detention
- As explained, the emotional damage caused to the respondent stems from three sources: the first source is the 88-day detention. The second source is the interrogators' concrete actions – violence, threats, and demanding to masturbate to the police. I discussed all of these above. I will now move on to the third source, which is the emotional damage caused by the experience of detention as a whole.
According to this view, it was not the arrest alone that caused the respondent the alleged emotional damage. Nor is the demand for masturbation and violence alone. The additional factor that must be taken into account is the interrogators' conduct towards the respondent during the period of his arrest and interrogation: the presentation of "tainted evidence" before the courts, which did not correctly reflect the state of affairs and painted the respondent in bright incriminating colors; the respondent's subjective feeling that he was "marked" in advance as a rapist, that he was treated with humiliation and that all his answers to the interrogators fell on deaf ears; negligence in exhausting investigative directions that could have undermined the suspicion that adhered to the respondent; inaccuracies in the presentation of the evidence before the court by the police, between evidence originating from the minor and evidence originating from the respondent himself; and the repeated acts of violence and the making of threats. The combination of all these together created a very difficult experience of detention for the respondent, whose registration even left him with permanent mental disability.
In this view, the test is qualitative (in the negative sense), not quantitative. The number of days of detention per se, the number of blows given to the respondent and the number of times he was required to masturbate – these are all details that make up one overall picture: an exceptionally abusive detention experience. It should be emphasized that I do not usually offer such a test. However, in every tort case, the damage caused to the concrete plaintiff must be examined. In the case before us, the conclusion regarding the abusive experience of detention derives directly from the nature of the damage caused to the respondent. Suffice it to say that it is not usual to meet a person who has been detained for 88 days, for which he suffers a permanent mental disability of 10% – as happened to the respondent. However, this is the damage caused to the respondent, and its essence must be discussed.