Tel-Chai Nation

A Haredi woman estranged from her husband who refuses to give her access to an apartment was treated like a criminal, despite the fact she has children, one of whom needs care:

The Rabbinic court in Jerusalem ordered on Thursday the release of a woman, who had been handcuffed on its previous order for refusing to accept a get (Jewish bill of divorce) from her husband.

The court had her put in handcuffs and arrested her Tuesday, after she refused to sign the divorce deal offered her. During her arrest the woman fell ill and was taken to Shaare Zedek Medical Center. She was kept under guard and handcuffed to the bed during her stay.

The woman, a 48-year-old resident of Jerusalem, separated from her husband four years ago. The couple has seven children, one of them in need of round-the-clock care. The two reached an agreement in the Family Affairs Court two years ago, by which the woman would receive the home registered in her husband's name in order to take care of her disabled child, but the husband never handed her the apartment and opened divorce proceedings through the religious court.

The court called in the woman, but she did not attend its hearings because, according to her daughter, she had undergone surgery and had health problems. According to the daughter, the woman provided the court with doctors' notes regarding her condition.

The police brought her to the court Tuesday with a subpoena. The judges, Avraham Scheinfeld, Eliyahu Abergil and Mordechai Toledano, gave her an agreement to sign. She refused, asserting her husband had not given her the apartment as agreed upon. The judged arrested her for a week in response. She would have to pay a bond of 10,000 shekels ($2,548) to be released, but her daughter said she cannot afford to pay such an amount.

The woman told Ynet that she was being treated like a criminal, replete with handcuffs and police officers. "I can't understand this unreceptiveness and cruelty," she said. I'm just carrying out the ruling of the Family Affairs Court."

Her daughter told Haaretz, "She has two policemen on her, as if a criminal were involved. It's all a fixed game. We have no way of paying 10,000 shekels."

Vered Swid, director of the PMO Authority for the Advancement of the Status of Women, said Thursday justice calls out for the handcuffed woman to be released. She vowed she would do everything "so they won't be able to arrest women for this kind of reason in future."

Swid is demanding the establishment of a committee to investigate the rabbinic court judges' "shocking, outrageous and incomprehensible" behavior.

The rabbinic court commented that the woman was given the option of being released on bail. "The woman is eligible to appeal the decision to the regional court," it stated. "Court management is prevented from going into further details due to a gag order put on family affairs issues discussed in religious courts."

This is truly disgusting, and another example of how religion is misused in petty matters.

There's more over here:

The police were acting on orders of the rabbinic court, which called for the woman’s arrest after she failed to appear in court. However, the Rackman Center for the Advancement of Women, which has taken on the woman’s case pro bono, claims that she missed the court date as she had just returned home after undergoing surgery and had sent medical confirmation to the court.

Police arrested the woman a few days after her surgery, and she was on her way to Neve Tirza prison near Ramle when she began to feel sick. She was brought to Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, where police officers handcuffed her to the hospital bed for almost a full day, a move which is in contravention of the Israeli Prison Service’s 2011 guidelines as well as the ethical guidelines of the doctors’ and nurses’ unions.

The arrest order also seemed to go against a family court decision to allow the woman to defer accepting the get until after the couple’s property is divided.

She was released on Thursday afternoon.

“A difficult case likes this proves again the devastating consequences of competing jurisdictions in the State of Israel,” MK Aliza Lavie (Yesh Atid) told Ynet.

According to the Rackman Center her husband, a contractor, owns six apartments and, under the family court’s decision that was handed down two years ago, he is meant to give her one of them and pay off its mortgage.

Vered Swid, director of the Authority for the Advancement of Women, a state-run body, came to visit G in the hospital and “was shocked to find a woman chained with handcuffs to her bed. A woman who was not a robber, not a murder and not a rapist. Few of the rapists that I’ve seen have been handcuffed to their hospital beds.”

Swid went on, “I don’t understand what thought process enables a woman in her condition to be chained to a bed, when there are no less than two officers in the area.”

After news and photographs of the story broke police finally removed the handcuffs on Wednesday afternoon.

From what they're telling, it does not appear the woman was balking for the wrong reasons. She needs financial support for the children, and this court went out of their way to subject her such a cruel act despite the fact that she cooperated with authorities. There has to be laws passed to prevent this kind of nasty behavior from occurring again.

Labels: haredi corruption, Israel, misogyny, Moonbattery