In my view, this line of defense is unfounded, devoid of any basis in reality and evidence, and as far from the truth as East is from West.
- It should be noted here that the testimonies of the welfare officials indicate that the defendant was the one who cut off all contact with his children, for a period of about a year and a half. This behavior is inconsistent with the words of the defendant, who testified that he cared for his children with devotion, warmth and love [p. 255 of the transcript], and that it was the complainant who distanced his children from him.
- For the most part, the defendant's answer to the events described in the indictment was identical – the event did not exist and did not exist. However, in some of the cases and arguments, the defendant confirmed the prosecution's version, even if indirectly and partially:
- The defendant confirmed that he had taken the phones from his two daughters, A and B [p. 255 of the transcript], due to the inappropriate content that was revealed to him. The defendant confirmed that during his interrogation with the police, he did not mention this detail to his interrogators. The aforesaid supports and strengthens the prosecution's version both with regard to the actual occurrence of the incident, with respect to the reliability of the complainant and girls A and B, and with respect to their claim that the defendant forced his will on them with regard to his perceptions and his strict observance of religious observances.
- On at least two occasions during his interrogations with the police, the defendant denied that a plate had been thrown at the complainant. The defendant even called it a "blood libel" [see P/23, line 100; P/25, line 20]. In his testimony before me, he noted that in every normal home, a plate falls on the Shabbat table, and that "the plate was thrown into the ceiling, flew here and flew there. They took an event that happened, intensified it into a negative and turned the father into a monster" [p. 267 of the transcript].
- In his interrogations with the police, as well as in his testimony in court, he categorically denied that there was any dispute or argument between him and the complainant regarding the documents [p. 270 of the transcript]. In the same breath, it was argued in the defense summaries that as the defendant's business for the complainant touched his documents, he was "quite legitimate anger" (paragraph 64 of the defense summaries).
- The defendant categorically denied in his interrogations that he had hit G., or that the "bicycle incident" had occurred. In his testimony before Naf, he noted that the children have a fertile imagination and that they "can tell all kinds of stories," and that nothing has ever happened. In the same breath, the defense summaries argued that "it is not impossible that the defendant was indeed angry with G., even very much, for losing V. However, it should be noted that the childish interpretation of an adult's anger is varied, and sometimes ... They will tend to intensify the event..." (Section 198 of the defense's summaries).
- The defendant's sweeping denial that none of the allegations in the indictment ever happened, and that all the testimonies, all the details, the dates, the anchoring of other events, the feelings, the prolonged treatments, the emotional and other difficulties of the children – all of which are a "blood libel" of the complainant – are completely unreliable. Hanging the line of defense on "parental alienation syndrome", which has not been proven or confirmed by any of the therapists who testified before me, indicates the low degree of trust that can be placed in the defendant's denial of everything attributed to him in the indictment. And as the size of the denial is, so is the size of the fracture in the defendant's version.
I reject the defense's version, and determine that the defendant's testimony is completely unreliable.