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

their body showed it, but the health system failed to see the signs and left them feeling abandoned. Thus, training programs must work toward changing attitudes in the health system regarding survivors of sexual abuse, so as to prevent the recurrence of harmful interventions. (2) Survivors indicated the necessity of reforming health services to a trauma-informed system . As things are today, medical interventions carry the risk of recreating survivors’ trauma. To prevent this, adaptations should be made in the health system to increase the focus on practical tools for intervention in the context of sexual abuse. (3) Inequality in the health system – frameworks and services must be developed that are tailored to the needs of sexual abuse survivors from all parts of Israeli society – both from Israel’s geographical periphery and from different cultural and religious backgrounds. (4) It is necessary to promote children’s rights to a healthy life free of pain. This requires active work by community medical services for children. Children’s physicians in the community are the first responders in the treatment of child sexual abuse. Therefore, promoting prevention practices in community medical services is essential and can truly enhance children’s safety. | 3. The education system The education system, with its various figures, plays a central role in the lives of children in the context of child sexual abuse, as revealed in the survivors' testimonies. First, the education system is one of the arenas where abuse takes place, whether within the system or in its vicinity; educators can be the perpetrators of sexual abuse, as can other adult figures or peers in the educational frameworks. These frameworks are also a focus for reporting abuse, and most survivors shared that they tend to expose the abuse while exhibiting behavior that is harmful toward themselves or others. The education system mostly does not interpret these behaviors as potentially harmful, and the approach it takes is rather supervisory, according to the survivors. After the abuse is exposed, the reactions of the education system lie along a spectrum. On one end of the spectrum, survivors describe the education system and the figures in it as the ones who saved them, physically or emotionally. On the other end of the spectrum, the system’s reactions are described as hurtful, dismissive, denying, or inappropriate.

The Israeli Independent Public Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse

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