The Israeli Independent Public - Abstract of the Inquiry Report - December 2021

Atty. Ofra Ben Meir Director of the Haruv Children’s Campus. The campus brings together under one roof eight organizations that provide services to at-risk children and their families. It operates in academic collaboration with the Hebrew University of

Jerusalem. Ben Meir holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in law from Bar Ilan University and a joint master’s degree in administrative law from Tel Aviv University and Northwestern University in Chicago. She was certified as a lawyer in 2004, has served as Deputy Legal Counsel at the National Council for the Child, and managed the Program for Accompanying Child Victims of Crime. Ben Meir has lectured at the Children’s Rights Clinic of the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya and at Sha’arei Mishpat College. Currently she is a lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “Beyond the great importance of the inquiry’s work in collecting testimonies of people who experienced abuse and exploitation in childhood, I see our purpose in trying to raise awareness to sexual abuse that is silenced and unspoken. Sexual abuse always takes place in secret, it is silenced and repressed into the psyche of the child experiencing it. However, even in the rare cases where abuse is exposed, it often does not receive the social recognition that the victims desperately need.”

Tzviki Fleishman A psychologist in the public sector and a social activist in the field of child sexual abuse in the Haredi community in Israel. One of the founders of Lo Tishtok, a group raising awareness and combating the silencing of child sexual abuse. Fleishman

is the former deputy director of Magen, a non-profit organization working with victims from the religious and Haredi community in Israel. He holds a master’s degree in adult clinical psychology from Bar-Ilan University.

The Israeli Independent Public Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse

15