81% of Israeli Sex Offence Cases Are Closed Without Charges

Rape crisis centres across Israel received more than 55,000 requests for assistance during 2023, and the great majority of the cases behind them never produced a criminal charge, according to the annual report of the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel. The report was published ahead of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on 25 November.

Its figures cover the year before the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023. Nearly 60 per cent of new cases concerned people under 18, and 28 per cent concerned children aged 12 or younger. Eighty-one per cent of sexual assault and harassment cases were closed by prosecutors without an indictment being filed. According to the association’s executive director, Orit Sulitzeanu, public awareness has grown while the law enforcement response has not kept pace.

Who is reporting, and who is accused

The nine centres, which serve both Jewish and Arab communities, recorded 55,044 contacts in 2023, including 17,484 new cases. In 85 per cent of assaults the person responsible was known to the victim. Family members accounted for 35 per cent of reported assaults: parents for 10 per cent, siblings for 13 per cent and uncles or aunts for 11 per cent. Current or former partners accounted for 19 per cent, and friends and acquaintances for 22 per cent. Where sufficient information was given, 87 per cent of victims in new cases were female and 13 per cent male; 98 per cent of reported offenders were male.

The reported offences were divided as follows: 36 per cent involved incest, 28 per cent rape or attempted rape, 21 per cent sexual harassment, 11 per cent indecent acts and 2 per cent group sexual assault. More than half of reported assaults took place in the victim’s home. Educational or religious institutions accounted for 8 per cent and workplaces for 6 per cent, while 8 per cent of reported cases took place over the internet or the telephone.

From complaint to courtroom

Police data included in the report showed 6,405 criminal investigations into sex crimes opened in 2023, a 3 per cent fall on the previous year. Prosecutors filed indictments in 663 of them, roughly 17 per cent of completed investigations. The largest group of cases (3,175 investigations) was closed for insufficient evidence, a rate that advocates say points to systemic problems in how these cases are investigated and prosecuted rather than to the merits of individual complaints.

The report also recorded gaps in treatment for convicted offenders. Among prisoners serving sentences for sex crimes, 28 per cent received no psychological treatment at all, and only 24 per cent were taking part in specialised rehabilitation programmes for sex offenders, down from 53 per cent in 2020.

The organisation behind the numbers

The association is an umbrella body founded in 1990, coordinating nine regional rape crisis centres; the first centre had opened in Tel Aviv in 1977. It runs national helplines (1202 for women and 1203 for men) alongside chat and messaging services, and handles more than 50,000 inquiries a year, according to published material on the organisation. It provides legal aid, counselling and referrals as well as prevention programmes and advocacy. Sulitzeanu, its chief executive, told The Jerusalem Post in April 2025 that the organisation runs largely on private donations, with some centres drawing about a fifth of their budgets from state sources. The same 2023 dataset was reported by the paper in November 2024.

What the war added

In the first six months of the war that followed the 7 October attack, the crisis centres received 26,379 requests for help, including 8,340 new cases. The attacks themselves included widespread reports of sexual violence, which the association documented in a separate report that drew international attention. Many people who had experienced sexual violence in the past described what that report called a “hierarchy of suffering”, hesitating to seek help while national attention was on the hostages and military casualties. The new report recorded worsening mental health symptoms among those victims and a sense of being pushed to the margins, and noted reports of sexual assaults in evacuation centres housing displaced families.

The association also recorded six new laws passed during the period, including an expansion of free legal representation to all victims of sexual offences from the moment a complaint is filed rather than only once charges are brought. It helped establish protocols for handling sexual violence cases connected to 7 October, and worked with international bodies, meeting United Nations officials and members of the United States Congress to document wartime sexual violence.

What is still unclear

The headline figures count contacts and cases, not individuals, so a single person may appear more than once. The report did not say how many of the closed investigations were later reopened, nor how the 2023 indictment rate compares with earlier years. It also did not explain why participation in offender rehabilitation programmes has fallen by more than half since 2020.