The aforesaid does not criticize the District Court's decision to detain the respondent until the end of the proceedings. The decision was based on the material submitted to the court. My argument, in the negligence component and the causal connection component, is directed at the manner in which the material was presented and to material that was not submitted: for example, the diary was not seized, the alibi claim was not properly examined, and the respondent's words were presented inaccurately before the court. My focus at this stage is the experience of detention. In this context, it should be noted that during the hearing, counsel for the state claimed that "the defendant told his cellmate that he loved children very much and was attracted to them" (p. 32, paras. 23-25). The matter was based on a memorandum written by the policeman and reviewed on July 23, 1999, in which he reported that he heard the respondent say these words to his cellmate. However, as the trial court noted, as well as my colleague Justice Amit, the expression "attracted to children" was a figment of the policeman's imagination and survey, and was not uttered at all by the respondent.
Let us examine the matter in terms of the respondent's experience of detention. He is portrayed by the state's attorney in court as a pedophile, when there is no basis for it. This is also connected to the pressure exerted on him to masturbate to the police, even though he refused. The experience of detention is a head of damage in itself, and relates to the entire period in which the respondent was in detention – 88 days, and not only those fifty days that could have been prevented.
- I discussed above the nature of the police's negligence, as it is expressed in a tendentious, partial and often even inaccurate (to say the least) of the details of the investigation. These join other elements that I have discussed above, the main of which are the acts of violence, the issue of masturbation and the manner in which the respondent was presented to the court in his presence. All of these together create a harsh detention experience. The next question that must be clarified is whether there is a causal connection between this experience that the respondent underwent, and the emotional damage caused to him. My answer to this is yes. The statements were argued in the pleadings, examined and found to be correct in the various psychiatric opinions submitted to the trial court, and confirmed in the judgment of the trial court.
I will begin with the respondent's arguments. In the statement of claim he submitted, he claims that his soul "suffered irreparable damage in the interrogation rooms and detention cells" (p. 10, para. 32). In other words, the emotional harm does not stem from the arrest per se, nor from the acts of masturbation, violence, and threats per se. This is also the case later in the statement of claim, when it relates to the causal connection between the conduct of the investigators and the damage caused to him: "There is a causal connection between the defendant's actions and omissions – beginning with the investigation of the crime scene, continuing with [the respondent's] arrest, continuing during [the respondent's] arrest, and continuing with [the respondent's] criminal record – and [the respondent's] mental disability and the damages caused to him" (p. 58, para. 259). The same is true in the opening paragraph of the summary of claims submitted by the respondent to the District Court: "This lawsuit concerns irreparable bodily injury caused by the defendant to [the respondent]. The defendant did not separate facts from speculation. The police and the State Attorney's Office in their wake were plagued by an investigative concept, prejudice and a lack of interest in investigating the truth to this day. The police investigators were sure that [the respondent] was a pedophile and a serial rapist, and this was already in the first hours after his arrest." In other words, the respondent's claim of emotional damage was based on the entire conduct of the police towards him throughout the entire period of the interrogation and arrest.