Harvey Weinstein sentenced to 15 years for sexual assault after retrial
Kirtland cult murders: Remembering the Avery family
ChatGPT driving rise in reports of ‘satanic’ organised and ritual abuse, UK experts say
Bloodline and Blind Faith: Untold Stories of the Kirtland Cult Killings
'Swipe Right on the Devil' filmmakers detail bizarre case of murder, mind control and witchcraft
Hulu's newest true-crime docuseries looks at how witchcraft and black magic played into a murder
Victims Reported Organized Child Sexual Abuse. Israeli Police Struggled to Investigate It
Bloodline and Blind Faith: Untold Stories of the Kirtland Cult Killings
'Swipe Right on the Devil' filmmakers detail bizarre case of murder, mind control and witchcraft
Hulu's newest true-crime docuseries looks at how witchcraft and black magic played into a murder
Victims Reported Organized Child Sexual Abuse. Israeli Police Struggled to Investigate It
Harvey Weinstein sentenced to 15 years for sexual assault after retrial
USA TODAY Anna Kaufman and Liza Esquibias, USA TODAY Wed, September 23, 2026
Harvey Weinstein has been sentenced to 15 years behind bars.
The disgraced movie mogul's sentencing took place Wednesday, Sept. 23 in a New York federal court, one year after he was convicted of a first-degree criminal sexual act stemming from the assault of former production assistant Miriam Haley in 2006.
Haley shared her victim impact statement in court, saying Weinstein, 74, "abused his position and power," causing a "devastating effect on my life and sense of security that may never go away," per multiple outlets, including NBC and CBS.
"Making the decision to speak up will have me looking over my shoulder for years to come," Haley added. "It's a life sentence for me."
Weinstein spoke as well, denying all allegations and apologizing to "anyone I may have hurt by my actions." "I do have remorse for Miriam Haley's pain, but I have to reiterate my innocence," he said.
USA TODAY Anna Kaufman and Liza Esquibias, USA TODAY Wed, September 23, 2026
Harvey Weinstein has been sentenced to 15 years behind bars.
The disgraced movie mogul's sentencing took place Wednesday, Sept. 23 in a New York federal court, one year after he was convicted of a first-degree criminal sexual act stemming from the assault of former production assistant Miriam Haley in 2006.
Haley shared her victim impact statement in court, saying Weinstein, 74, "abused his position and power," causing a "devastating effect on my life and sense of security that may never go away," per multiple outlets, including NBC and CBS.
"Making the decision to speak up will have me looking over my shoulder for years to come," Haley added. "It's a life sentence for me."
Weinstein spoke as well, denying all allegations and apologizing to "anyone I may have hurt by my actions." "I do have remorse for Miriam Haley's pain, but I have to reiterate my innocence," he said.
Harvey Weinstein was convicted after a retrial
Weinstein was initially given a 23-year sentence for a 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges, but the case was overturned four years later. The retrial took place in 2025, putting some of the defining accusations of his original #MeToo case back in the spotlight.
A 12-person jury ultimately handed down only one guilty verdict for Weinstein's crimes involving Haley, but did not deliver the same for the other two charges. He was acquitted of a second first-degree criminal sexual act stemming from his alleged assault of Kaja Sokola in 2002 when she was a 16-year-old aspiring actress.
The judge also declared a mistrial on a count of third-degree rape of Jessica Mann after one juror refused to continue deliberations, and prosecutors later declined to pursue another trial. In a June press release, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg attributed the decision to focusing on getting justice through Weinstein's sentence in Haley's case.....
Weinstein, once a Hollywood institution, is currently serving a separate 16-year prison sentence after being found guilty of rape in a 2022 case in California.
https://www.aol.com/articles/harvey-weinstein-sentenced-15-years-155230000.html
ChatGPT driving rise in reports of ‘satanic’ organised and ritual abuse, UK experts say
Exclusive: ‘Witchcraft, spirit possession and spiritual abuse’ offending typified by sexual abuse, violence and neglect
ChatGPT is driving a rise in reports of organised and ritual abuse, UK experts have said, as survivors of “satanic” sexual violence use the AI tool for therapy.
Police say organised and ritual abuse, and “witchcraft, spirit possession and spiritual abuse” (WSPRA) against children, is under-reported in the UK. There is no modern-day charge that covers it specifically, but such offending is typified by sexual abuse, violence and neglect involving ritualistic elements – sometimes inspired by satanism, fascism or esoteric religious beliefs – to control victims.
Perpetrators include abusive families and networks, human traffickers, online gangs and paedophile rings.
Exclusive: ‘Witchcraft, spirit possession and spiritual abuse’ offending typified by sexual abuse, violence and neglect
ChatGPT is driving a rise in reports of organised and ritual abuse, UK experts have said, as survivors of “satanic” sexual violence use the AI tool for therapy.
Police say organised and ritual abuse, and “witchcraft, spirit possession and spiritual abuse” (WSPRA) against children, is under-reported in the UK. There is no modern-day charge that covers it specifically, but such offending is typified by sexual abuse, violence and neglect involving ritualistic elements – sometimes inspired by satanism, fascism or esoteric religious beliefs – to control victims.
Perpetrators include abusive families and networks, human traffickers, online gangs and paedophile rings.
There have been 14 UK criminal cases since 1982 in which ritualistic practices in sexual abuse were acknowledged. However, 2025 research by clinical psychologist Dr Elly Hanson found convictions reflected the “tip of the iceberg”.
Experts are now rolling out training for police forces, in a drive spearheaded by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), which has set up a specialist working group.
Gabrielle Shaw, the chief executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac), said there had been a “sustained rise” in reports to them of ritual abuse over the last 18 months, with an increasing number of people saying they had been led to report it by AI.
Shaw said: “Over the last six months to a year, we’re getting people contacting the Napac support line saying: ‘I was referred to you by ChatGPT’. People are using AI, ChatGPT as a form of therapy and exploration. There are mixed feelings about that, but if it’s a route into support, that has to be a good thing.
“We would normally see spikes in calls around days that have significant supernatural or religious overtones – but this is not a spike – it’s a sustained rise. There’s increasing knowledge of the crime and of where you can get support … satanism does come up a fair bit.”
NPCC, Napac and the Hydrant policing programme, which supports forces nationwide with child protection, commissioned a review from Hanson last year and launched a WSPRA briefing for professionals this month.
Last year members of a paedophile ring in Scotland – who posed as witches and wizards – were jailed for sexual offences.
Shaw said of 36,700 calls over nine years to NAPAC, 1,310 mentioned organised ritual abuse. She said offending could be “intergenerational in nature” and while perpetrators were predominantly male, survivors named “grandmothers and aunts” as perpetrators.
Richard Fewkes, Hydrant Programme’s director, said the fact ritual elements sounded “fantastical” had contributed to the justice gap.
He added: “We need to improve right the way across the system in dealing with it – it’s out there, it does exist and it’s not actually being reported (to police) … we’ve known about this for many, many years.”....
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/08/chatgpt-driving-rise-in-reports-of-satanic-organised-ritual-abuse-uk-experts-say
‘This can happen to anyone’: What the Kirtland cult murders teach us about mind control How ordinary people end up in extraordinary situations and what we can do about it. By Sara Goldenberg Oct. 22, 2026
Editor’s note: Ashlen Hilliard is a cult intervention specialist and the founder of People Leave Cults. She was not involved in the Kirtland Cult case. She was interviewed by 19 Investigates as part of the reporting for the documentary “Deadly Devotion: The Kirtland Cult Murders,” available in the video player above and streaming now on 19News+. All quotes are drawn from that interview.
CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) -When 19 Investigates set out to report the Kirtland Cult Murders, one question kept surfacing above all of the others. How could something like this happen? To answer that question, 19 Investigates sat down with Ashlen Hilliard, a cult intervention specialist and the founder of People Leave Cults, an organization that works with survivors of high-control groups. Hilliard was not involved in the Kirtland case, but she has spent her career studying the forces that made it possible. What she told us may be uncomfortable to hear, but it’s important.
Q: What defines a cult? Is that hard to define?
Hilliard: It can be. And even among academics, there’s not one agreed upon definition, which is really interesting. There’s a lot of good definitions, but the reason why it’s a struggle is because cults are so diverse. They can look religious or non-religious. You may have a cult leader, you may not have a cult leader. And because of that, that’s why definitely it’s a hard issue to tackle.
But the way that I define a cult is a cult is a group that is united by a particular cause, person, or idea that involves thought reform, coercive control, and a restriction of autonomy.
At its core, when it comes to a destructive cult, it is an excessive devotion to something — whether that’s a person or an idea — and coercive control or restriction of autonomy is employed throughout that system.
Q: How do cult leaders gain power over their followers?
Hilliard: I never doubt the power that a very charismatic religious leader can have over their followers. It can be male or female as we’ve seen. I think there’s been a lot of coverage on male leaders, but there are female cult leaders as well. And I think they’re particularly good at making people in their group feel special, feel understood, feel seen. Someone once told my mentor that “being in a cult is akin to being in a prison of specialness.” Like you may be in some sort of psychological prison, you may not be out on a compound, but you’re made to feel really special while you’re there.
Q: Are certain types of people pulled into cults more easily?
Hilliard: Well, I think we’re all susceptible to being influenced, manipulated, persuaded. But I have found that people who join groups usually join because they’re looking for something.
We’ve maybe questioned a shift in identity, maybe we’ve been divorced, or an empty nester, or have had a new healthcare diagnosis. These are all major shifts of change in someone’s life.
Q: How does coercive control work? Why don’t people just leave?
Hilliard: It can be hard to recognize when control is actively going on because coercive control is applied intentionally over a period of time. It’s not always obvious until things feel really bad.
And once we’re able to step out away from that system, we’re in a place where we can better reflect on what has happened to us. So it can be a really hard journey for people.
Q: What happens to people psychologically when they’re inside a high-control group?
Hilliard: The question of “who am I?” is one that survivors from cults will wrestle with for a long time. Because when you’re in a cult system, you can oftentimes take on a new identity, a sort of overlayer personality or persona while you’re in that system. You may be still you at your core, of course, but you kind of take on the traits of people around you, or you have to find ways to adapt in order to just survive in that controlling system of harm. And so when people leave those systems, it’s sort of a huge period of reflection that they undergo. Like, ‘who was I before the group? Who was I during the group? And who do I want to be now?’
Q: What is the long-term impact on survivors?
Hilliard: It can be really shame-inducing for survivors. There’s a lot of internalized shame that someone can carry because of either what happened in the group or maybe what you did during your time in the group. And that’s hard because internalized shame can sort of keep you in this prison — the psychological prison — for a long time before you feel comfortable to talk about your situation with professionals. And it can be a lot to carry. And so what we often times encourage family members who are on the outside is, can we find ways to mitigate shame? Can we be curious about someone’s situation instead of from an immediate place of judgment? So that they feel more open to talking to you about the highs and lows of their experience....
Q: What can we do to prevent tragedies involving cults from occurring?
Hilliard: I mean, sometimes it can take people who are in relationships with those already involved in order to like raise the alarm, right? Or to seek help with experts. I always tell family members if they notice that the group may be escalating and what they’re telling their followers to do or if their loved one has had a radical shift of personality or if they’ve become, become really sick or if they’re worried, to consult with experts and let them know what’s going on.
And I think one of the best things that you can do too is to start keeping a record of things that you’re noticing, keeping a timeline, gathering as many, I guess, bits of evidence that you can. It’s much harder to do that when you’re in crisis than, you know, sort of leading up to it. And so collecting evidence, consulting with experts is a really good idea to stay on top of it....
https://www.cleveland19.com/2026/10/22/this-can-happen-anyone-what-kirtland-cult-murders-teach-us-about-mind-control
Kirtland cult murders: Remembering the Avery family
Dennis, Cheryl, Trina, Rebecca, and Karen Avery were more than victims. By Sara Goldenberg Oct. 15, 2026
Editor’s note: 19 Investigates attempted to reach members of the Avery family. We did not hear back. This article is built from court records, archival news footage, community memorial accounts, and the recollections of people who knew the family — including former cult members interviewed for the documentary “Deadly Devotion: The Kirtland Cult Murders,” streaming on 19News+ this Saturday at 8 p.m.
KIRTLAND, Ohio (WOIO) - Dennis and Cheryl Avery were people of faith. They raised their three daughters — Trina, Rebecca, and Karen — in the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a faith that had been part of their family long before it led them to a small town in northeast Ohio.
In the spring of 1989, Jeffrey Lundgren murdered all five of them in a barn on Euclid Chardon Road, after his teachings took a radical turn away from the church.
They are remembered here as more than victims. We tried to learn who they were before Jeffrey Lundgren decided their lives were his to take.
Dennis Avery, 49
Dennis Avery was a husband, a father of three, and a man of faith. He was born in Los Angeles and later moved to Missouri. He worked as a computer programmer for a bank and as a security guard. By 1988, he had left that job as his family’s involvement with Lundgren’s group deepened. He gave the group everything he had: his time, his resources, his trust. Those who were there remember Dennis as a man who kept trying to belong, even as Lundgren and his inner circle pushed the Avery family further to the side.
“It was heart-rending to watch what looked like they were being pushed away,” former cult member Ron Luff told 19 Investigates. “They didn’t appear in all the classes. They weren’t there at a number of classes.”
Dennis Avery kept showing up, and he kept believing.
Cheryl Avery, 46Cheryl Avery was born in Yakima, Washington and later moved to Missouri. She married Dennis in 1970 in Independence, Missouri. They were described by a friend in an old newspaper article as “sweet, family-oriented people.” She taught preschool and Sunday school....
The RLDS church was clear and immediate in its response to Jeffrey Lundgren.
“He in no way represents what this church represents,” a church leader said.
https://www.cleveland19.com/2026/10/15/kirtland-cult-murders-remembering-avery-family/
Bloodline and Blind Faith: Untold Stories of the Kirtland Cult Killings
Damon Lundgren and Danny Kraft speak publicly for the first time about the 1989 cult killings in Kirtland, offering unprecedented insights into the crime.
Peter Fleischer November 21, 2025 contains graphic details
In 1989, Northeast Ohio cult leader Jeff Lundgren killed the Avery family: Dennis, Cheryl, and their three young daughters. A dozen men and women followed the self-proclaimed prophet through fanaticism, into the wilderness, and ultimately to prison.
Thirty-five years after justice was served, Damon Lundgren — Jeff’s oldest son — and Danny Kraft — Jeff’s most loyal follower — are speaking to the media for the first time.
In our five-part series titled, “Bloodline and Blind Faith: Untold Stories of the Kirtland Cult Killings,” investigative reporter Peter Fleischer sits down with Lundgren and Kraft for the only interviews they’ve ever given.
Lundgren and Kraft were not compensated for their time or stories. They say they are not looking for sympathy or redemption; They are choosing to tell their stories to provide a window into their life experiences and the mindsets and circumstances that shaped their decisions.
Fleischer also interviews former Lundgren cult member Debbie Olivarez, Kirtland’s lead investigator into the Lundgren cult Ron Andolsek, local first responders who were on scene when the Averys' bodies were discovered, and media members who covered the crimes and trials in real time. Hours of archived video from 1989 and 1990 will take viewers back in time, to the years these events occurred.
This project allows for unprecedented insight and access into one of Ohio’s most notorious crimes and its ensuing trials. It takes viewers inside the minds of Lundgren’s family and closest followers; details and perspectives that have never been shared before.
The cult forms; Jeff Lundgren gains power
Jeff Lundgren grew up in Missouri, in a home defined by strict faith and a controlling, abusive father.
“It was a lonely life. I had few playmates and I had few friends,” Lundgren once admitted.
Eventually, he realized force brought power....
“He was very aggressive, very dominating. Incredibly strong. He was abusive in a lot of situations,” Damon said. “But I don’t think that was the key defining thing about him. He was the most devout person I’ve ever seen. The one thing above all was my dad actually did believe the religious teachings that he followed.”
Called to Ohio
Lacking direction as a struggling father and husband, Jeff clung to religion like a lifeline. In a world where God’s word was absolute, he rose through the ranks of a local Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Church.
The church offered deference that the rest of the world never did: Structure, reverence, and people eager to be led. Volunteer work led to ordination, and his sermons and classes were intense.
“The role of each person in the family was dictated by religion, by what he understood,” Damon explained. “Everything was run according to what he understood God wanted.”....
Kirtland, Ohio, had been a sacred site for the Mormon faith since its earliest days in the 1830s. Jeff Lundgren felt God was guiding him there.
“He believed what he believed and he did what he believed,” Damon insisted, just barely a teenager when his family made the move. “And nothing on Earth was going to come between those two things.” In 1984, Jeff relocated his family to Kirtland and started as a tour guide at the historic Kirtland Temple built by Joseph Smith in 1836. He quickly became a church leader, and eventually something more.
He quickly developed a reputation, and families would travel from across the country to experience his passion and knowledge.
“But it was the things that he said and the way that he said them that was unique,” Kraft remembered. “He had a photographic memory of the texts. When he quoted a verse, it was absolutely word for word... He presented information about the architecture of the Kirtland Temple that I had never heard before. It was like completely new. And he was the only one talking about these things.”
“Dad had a passage in the scriptures for everything that he did,” Damon confirmed. “You may not agree with his interpretation. I'm not trying to tell you he was right, but he had a passage that he said, 'This means this.'”
Creating his own theology, Lundgren’s tours and teachings began to clash with church leadership.
“When he was giving a tour, Dad was God,” Damon said. “He was an authority. Everyone had to listen to him.”
“People didn’t like what Jeff was teaching,” Kraft admitted.
A growing group of parishioners began putting Jeff over the church itself. A self-proclaimed prophet was rising.
“It opens the door to new questions and new ways of thinking about the world and everything in life,” Kraft recalled of the way Jeff was finding messages in religious texts. “And I loved it because I believed it was the truth.”
And with each step, Jeff’s devotion to a higher power twisted into power over other people.....
Lundgren kills the Avery family
By the late 1980s, Jeff Lundgren was more than a tour guide at the Kirtland Temple; church leaders had handed him the keys. He controlled finances, and as his power grew, so did his defiance. Temple tours turned into private, unsupervised classes.
“Those of us who attached ourselves to him and his family, I think, looked at this as we’re on a journey to become God’s people,” Kraft explained.
Jeff’s cousin Debbie Olivarez joined the group in the late 1980s. She says she watched Jeff change....
“When he first started teaching, there would be a survival knife on the table. And in the end, there was a .357 magnum,” Olivarez detailed. “So, that spoke volumes. That said, ‘You don’t agree with me, you die,’ because he was the prophet.”
Jeff became convinced organized religion had strayed from God’s path. In 1987, he was fired as a tour guide by The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints for stealing donations. A year later, he was cut off entirely after being caught calling the church corrupt.
“He did nothing but get up on the pulpit and tell everybody the church is in apostasy: 'It’s wrong. You should listen to me. I know what I’m talking about,'” his oldest son Damon Lundgren admitted.
Excommunicated and defiant, Jeff led more than a dozen followers to a rented farm outside of Kirtland. They started turning over their paychecks while Jeff proclaimed he was a prophet and needed to devote himself fully to study and worship....
At one point, Jeff began planning a violent takeover of the Kirtland Temple. A former follower warned police before it could happen.
“These people had to die because they had taken the Lord’s Temple and defiled it,” the informant told law enforcement in a recorded interview.
Ron Andolsek, a detective with the Kirtland Police Department at the time, began investigating the group, but had trouble getting charges to stick.
“It was for domestic terrorism, conspiracy to violate civil rights. Because the takeover involved breaking into church property across the street,” explained Andolsek.
The police veteran believed Lundgren was dangerous, but without hard evidence, police and federal agents couldn't act.
“The thing with a conspiracy, you need an overt act — a substantial overt act. Without that, you don’t have a conspiracy,” Andolsek lamented.
Jeff was now on law enforcement’s radar, but no one could imagine what atrocities he had in store....
Among Jeff Lundgren’s followers was Dennis Avery: quiet, awkward, and devoted. Dennis had admired Jeff since Missouri, though the feeling was not mutual. My dad hated Dennis from the day he met him. Dennis is annoying,” Damon outlined. "My dad had zero respect for him because he was a bad male, a bad father, a bad husband, a bad provider for his family."
A married father of three young girls, Dennis packed up his family and drove to Kirtland without warning after hearing of Jeff’s successful worship group. Jeff’s irritation turned to acceptance when Dennis handed over his car and $10,000, though the resentment lingered....
As 1989 began, Jeff actively raged against the church and society itself. The Averys, he decided, would never meet his standards for God’s people. He began to plan their fate.
“We were going to have to take them out. God was going to make a mountain and we were going to get those who were not worthy off the mountain,” Olivarez said.
“No matter how much time the Averys would be given on this earth, that they would never repent of what they were doing, and so there was an answer of judgment of that they need to be executed,” Kraft remembered, solemnly.
The murders
On April 17, 1989, Jeff invited the entire Avery family over under the guise of dinner. At Jeff’s direction, the men in the group each played a part.
According to law enforcement records, Ron Luff, Dennis Patrick, Danny Kraft, and Damon Lundgren helped to physically attack and subdue Dennis, who was led into an isolated barn where the men waited with a stun gun and duct tape.
Beaten, bound and gagged, Dennis was brought before Jeff, who shot him three times....
One by one, the Avery women followed — led into the same barn, unaware of the horror inside. First Cheryl, then the girls: Trina, 15; Becky, 13; Karen, just 7 years old....
When the Lundgren group was arrested, when books were written about the crimes, and when Jeff was executed in 2006, the self-proclaimed prophet publicly explained the killings as blood atonement: a belief that the Averys wouldn’t ever live up to God’s standards.
Could the Averys have the opportunity to repent? Yes. Did they have the opportunity to repent? Yes. Would they repent? The answer is no,” Jeff Lundgren boldly proclaimed during his 1990 trial, while attempting to explain the killings....
As the Lundgren group reeled after the Avery murders, the next morning unfolded like a scene from a movie.
“We had 60 FBI agents and like six of us (local law enforcement officers),” Andolsek recalled. “We were each assigned a cult member to interview.”
Federal agents raided Lundgren’s Kirtland farm just hours after the Averys were buried beneath the barn where they were killed. Authorities had no idea what lay below; they were there because of fears the group was preparing to take over the Kirtland Temple....
The night after he murdered the Avery family, Jeff Lundgren gathered his group of followers and chose exile. They landed in rural West Virginia, a place Jeff felt called to, and a place he claimed God would appear.
“The idea was that we would go into the wilderness so that we could remove ourselves from the rest of the world,” explained Kraft. “God would feel comfortable to come down and live among us.”
But even Jeff’s most devout followers struggled with the way they lived. Tents and cold conditions were tough enough, but life with Jeff himself was the biggest challenge....
As months wore on, the group began to splinter, but it was Jeff’s treatment of the women that would fracture them for good.
“He talked about (how) we had to submit to him, and that's when he basically wanted us to do a striptease in front of him. And that was definitely the beginning of the end,” explained Olivarez. “That’s where I was like, 'I’m done. I’m done!”
“My dad convinced all the men to let him have sex with their wives,” Damon admitted.
Using his own scriptural interpretations, Jeff first claimed group member Tonya Patrick as his new wife, as the group lived together in a collection of tents. Weeks later, he started an affair with Kathy Johnson, wife to his best friend since college, Keith Johnson.
All of this took place in the same camp, while his real wife, Alice, broke down. It was Jeff’s relationship with Kathy that would destroy the group and later cost him his freedom.
“I think that was like the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Damon said. “It was just too much.”
Faith and loyalty finally break
By October, six months after killing the Averys, the prophet lost his followers. The group went their separate ways, with many scattering to different parts of the country. By December, their loyalty was gone....
“Jeffrey Lundgren is a self-proclaimed prophet who told his followers that he’d lead them to salvation,” one 1990 WKYC report said. “Prosecutors are out to prove that he’s a cold-blooded killer who deserves to die.”....
While the trials were taking place, Jeff Lundgren remained unapologetic.
“He hasn’t always been pleased with me in my life, but I have no doubt what my standing is with my God at this point in time,” Jeff said in a 1990 interview with WKYC. “I have no fear in standing before him and facing his judgment. I pleased my God, definitely.”....
"He wanted me to take some kind of a plea so I could avoid the death penalty at the same time. My lawyers were bewildered,” Kraft detailed of refusing to accept a deal despite Jeff Lundgren's advice. "There was not a single thought that I had or adopted on my own that was not thoroughly tested and examined and scrutinized and researched. I mean, I really did."
His parents refused to stay silent.
“He needs to be deprogrammed. He is under mind control, totally,” his father, David Kraft, told media outside the courtroom.
“I’ve lost my son to this person, to Jeff,” wept his mother, Georgia Kraft. “He’s (Jeff) destroyed not only the Averys, but he’s destroyed many other people’s lives.”
“They blamed Jeff more than anyone and believed that he was the one that brainwashed me and convinced me to do things that I, their little Danny, would have never done,” Danny Kraft admitted with heavy emotion. "It felt like the things that I did killed my family. I really felt like I had actually killed them. And yet, they managed to stay alive and survive and continue to love me and continue to be there for me, and they have been all these years."
Sentences came down in late 1990, and LaTourette made sure no one got off easy....
Jeff Lundgren received the death penalty. Damon Lundgren was sentenced to 120 years to life. Danny Kraft received 50 years to life. Debbie Olivarez got seven to 25 years, ultimately serving about 21 years before being released and moving out of Ohio to rebuild her life closer to family.
“This is all because of him,” Damon admitted, reflecting on his father’s actions. “None of this could have or would have happened if it was not for him in my life.”
The self-proclaimed prophet had promised heaven, but delivered despair....
After arrests were made and trials were finished, Jeff Lundgren’s group was destroyed. In total, 13 Kirtland cult members went to prison....
Cult (of personality)
Inside Jeff Lundgren’s cult, blind faith and a desperate need to fit in dominated followers. Thirty-five years after they were sentenced, watching the world from the inside out, Damon Lundgren and Danny Kraft say the pull that once drew them into a cult isn’t so different from some forces that shape society today.
“They are a cult of personality,” Kraft believes, referring to extreme fandom and fanatical devotion. “I was in a cult, and each person believes the source or the author of the intelligence that they submit to, they believe that’s the good one, that’s the true one, that’s the right one.
"They are doing the same things that I did. I believe that this cult of personality has lost its moral high ground, has lost its right to point its holier-than-thou finger at me. They are not better than me, and their God is not better than my God.”
“The truth is, if you follow a political figure, if you follow a religious figure, it’s the same thing,” Damon explained. “You’re getting something out of it. They’re giving you words that are what you want to hear.”....
https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/investigations/kirtland-cult-lundgren-jeffey-bloodline-blind-faith-killings-avery-family-damon-danny-kraft/95-7103db51-bde6-461c-adf1-255a85ec836f
'Swipe Right on the Devil' filmmakers detail bizarre case of murder, mind control and witchcraft
The 3-part series investigates the disappearance and murder of Sydney Loofe
ByGina Sirico OTRC logo Wednesday, October 21, 2026
In November, 2017, Nebraska resident 24-year-old Sydney Loofe went missing after a Tinder date with a girl named Bailey Boswell.
As investigators searched for her, they uncovered a chilling tale of murder, witchcraft and mind control.
Three weeks later, her dismembered body was found on the side of the road about 60 miles from her last known location.
That's the story told in "Swipe Right on the Devil," a new true-crime documentary. The three-part series details the search for Loofe as well as the arrest and trials of Boswell and her boyfriend Aubrey Trail, who told people he was involved in witchcraft.
"You've got witchcraft and black magic and then you have the modern day world of online dating. And those two worlds meeting each other, thematically was something that I, as a filmmaker, needed to dig into," director and executive producer Brian Biegel told On The Red Carpet. "More importantly, I wanted to tell the true story of what happened to Sydney Loofe. We need to tell the real story of who Sydney was as a person and what happened to her."
Loofe's family was involved from the start, as were investigators from the case and other women who had also been lured into Trail and Boswell's world....
Some of the most haunting moments in the docu-series are the police's interview tapes with Aubrey Trail.
"When we first saw the interview tapes from the law enforcement, you just sensed there was a con man who was sort of playing a cat and mouse game, right? But underneath that, there's really like true evil," said Biegel.
"I got to experience it firsthand because I went to visit him on death row and I sat across from him and we had a two-hour conversation and there was nothing in his eyes. It was just, it was dead in there. And so he felt so comfortable in prison that it was shocking to me."
"The headline of witchcraft and murder, like, is engaging. But we find that the heart of the story is really about, like, a group of young women who were looking for belonging and having a hard time finding it and as a result became somewhat vulnerable in a really terrible situation. And I think that the story and the way that these women dealt with it in various ways, the way, that obviously one of them met with a terrible end, but the support that her family and friends gave her even after her death was like, was crucial to solving this crime and putting someone behind bars," said St. John....
https://abc7.com/post/filmmakers-behind-hulus-swipe-devil-detail-bizarre-case-murder-mind-control-witchcraft/19961698/
Hulu's newest true-crime docuseries looks at how witchcraft and black magic played into a murder All three episodes of "Swipe Right on the Devil" premiere Oct 22 ByGina Sirico OTRC logo Tuesday, October 6, 2026
Sorcery, mind control and murder are the focus of Hulu's newest documentary series, "Swipe Right on the Devil," investigating a 2017 murder in Nebraska. The 3-part series streams Oct. 22 on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+. Hulu released the trailer for "Swipe Right on the Devil," a new docuseries about a 2017 murder in Nebraska involving an online date and mysterious sorcery.
The official description for the docu-series is as follows: "When 24-year-old Sydney Loofe disappears after a Tinder date, what begins as a missing-person case quickly spirals into a haunting mystery. As investigators race to uncover her whereabouts, they are drawn into an astounding world of manipulation, witchcraft, mind control and black magic. Each new lead uncovers disturbing revelations, exposing behavior that shocks even seasoned FBI agents. With every answer raising new questions, Sydney's story becomes a cautionary tale about trust, vulnerability and the hidden dangers that can lurk behind seemingly ordinary encounters, culminating in a chilling case that remains as perplexing as it is unforgettable."
The trailer, seen in the video player above, details how four girls met a couple via Tinder. The male told them he knew witchcraft and needed one more woman to "complete his coven."
What did they need to do to become part of this man's inner circle? "I would have had to kill somebody and take their soul." One detective says, "I can say I've never had a case like this."
https://abc7.com/post/swipe-devil-hulus-newest-true-crime-docuseries-looks-how-witchcraft-black-magic-played-murder/19914602/
Victims Reported Organized Child Sexual Abuse. Israeli Police Struggled to Investigate It
A Shomrim investigation has obtained dozens of current and historical testimonies, case files, internal correspondence identifying repeated cases in which authorities received allegations of organized child sexual abuse but failed to establish whether broader networks existed. Some of the families eventually moved to the United States, where American trauma specialists documented similar accounts and sent their findings to Israeli police. A former Coordinator of Interpol’s Crimes Against Children Unit says there is a total lack of understanding combined with a lack of motivation.
Haim Rivlin August 13, 2026 describes abuse
Rivka (not her real name), 28 years old, says that beginning in early childhood, she was abused by a group of adults that included her father. She described multiple children being brought together, adults exchanging money and the abuse being photographed and filmed.
“I remember that hand gesture, when they would count out the money and give it to my father. We were a group of 20 to 25 children, from kindergarten age up to the age of 12. Not all the children were together every time." She tells Shomrim, as she recollects the severe sexual, emotional and physical abuse she suffered from childhood until just a few years ago. She goes on to say that there were five assailants, including her father – an organized group that employed sadistic methods, including drugging their victims into a dissociative state, rape, keeping children locked in cages and forcing their victims to fight naked for an audience of adults.
Rivka grew up in a prestigious and well-connected ultra-Orthodox family in Jerusalem, the daughter of a familiar, strong and influential figure in the community. In her testimony, she talks about falling pregnant to her father in seventh and eighth grade – pregnancies that ended with dangerous illegal abortions. “One of the members of the group was a doctor and he carried out the abortions,” she says.
Some two years ago, in June 2024, Rivka took her testimony to the police station in Zichron Yaakov (a town in northern Israel). That was around 18 months after she fled her parents’ home and found a place in a shelter for abused women. Accompanied by one of the shelter’s social workers, she told police investigators the whole story of her abuse. The officers listened and promised that they would take immediate action.”
“We waited a long time for that ‘immediate action’ to happen,” Rivka tells Shomrim with evident frustration. “After a year went by, they called me in again and told me that they had asked my brothers [about the allegation] and they had denied them. [The investigators] started to tell me, ‘So, it looks like none of it ever happened.’ Do you think I invented it all? Like, wow. Like, do you really think I’d invent a story like that?”
Some three months ago, in April, Rivka got a laconic letter from the Jerusalem District of the State Prosecution Service, saying that the case had been closed and that the state had decided not to file any indictments.
Rivka, for her part, has no intention of accepting the decision which puts more children at risk. To support her appeal against the decision, Rivka waived her doctor-patient privilege with Dr. Sharon Levy – the psychiatrist who has been treating her in recent years – and asked her to put into writing all of the information she had.
Rivka shared with Shomrim that document, parts of which are being published here. They raise serious questions about the decision not to prosecute. Dr. Levy, deputy head of mental health services for Meuhedet in the Jerusalem district, documented in the medical file, in real time, how Rivka was still being abused as an adult. She detailed serious burn marks, bruises and evidence of the use of chemicals – all the result of severe violence. In addition, the psychiatrist detailed in the document the existence of consistent medical records from 2006 onward indicating severe iron deficiency, to the point of requiring an intravenous infusion, along with a series of other medical complications that, according to her, may point to extreme abuse and deliberate starvation. Rivka herself says that she suffered damage to her nervous system that still affects her physical capabilities – something that is also well documented in her medical records.
Dr. Levy, who testified to the police and even shared with investigators medical records, concluded her letter with the following request: “I want to know why my testimony is not considered sufficient evidentiary basis to support the complaint that Rivka filed.”
The State Prosecution Service submitted the following response: “The State Prosecution reviewed the case thoroughly at every stage. In reviewing the matter, all investigative materials, findings and leads raised throughout were examined, including claims regarding the involvement of additional parties. Where necessary, supplementary investigative actions were carried out. Upon completing the review of the totality of the evidentiary foundation, it was determined that there is no evidentiary basis justifying the continuation of criminal proceedings, and the case was therefore closed.”
Rivka’s account is not an isolated one. Shomrim reviewed several cases spanning years in which victims who did not know one another described similar patterns of alleged organized abuse. Shomrim also examined internal police correspondence and assessments by senior experts in Israel and the US. Taken together, the testimonies and records reveal significant shortcomings in how Israeli law enforcement have investigated allegations of organized child sexual abuse.
In an exclusive interview with Shomrim, Uri Sadeh, who served until recently as the Coordinator of Interpol’s Crimes Against Children Unit, sharply criticizes the police for failing to expose abusive organized child sexual abuse network . “In Israel,” he says, “there is a total lack of understanding of the subject – coupled with a lack of motivation. I can tell you that police forces across the world – and Interpol brings together forces from 196 different countries – have developed expertise and invest a lot of resources and manpower in this issue. There are international collaborations between the relevant police forces and Interpol; sometimes Europol also provides equipment, communication and management. But the Israel Police is almost totally invisible on the international scene when it comes to this issue.”....
Rivka (not her real name), 28 years old, says that beginning in early childhood, she was abused by a group of adults that included her father. She described multiple children being brought together, adults exchanging money and the abuse being photographed and filmed.
“I remember that hand gesture, when they would count out the money and give it to my father. We were a group of 20 to 25 children, from kindergarten age up to the age of 12. Not all the children were together every time." She tells Shomrim, as she recollects the severe sexual, emotional and physical abuse she suffered from childhood until just a few years ago. She goes on to say that there were five assailants, including her father – an organized group that employed sadistic methods, including drugging their victims into a dissociative state, rape, keeping children locked in cages and forcing their victims to fight naked for an audience of adults.
Rivka grew up in a prestigious and well-connected ultra-Orthodox family in Jerusalem, the daughter of a familiar, strong and influential figure in the community. In her testimony, she talks about falling pregnant to her father in seventh and eighth grade – pregnancies that ended with dangerous illegal abortions. “One of the members of the group was a doctor and he carried out the abortions,” she says.
Some two years ago, in June 2024, Rivka took her testimony to the police station in Zichron Yaakov (a town in northern Israel). That was around 18 months after she fled her parents’ home and found a place in a shelter for abused women. Accompanied by one of the shelter’s social workers, she told police investigators the whole story of her abuse. The officers listened and promised that they would take immediate action.”
“We waited a long time for that ‘immediate action’ to happen,” Rivka tells Shomrim with evident frustration. “After a year went by, they called me in again and told me that they had asked my brothers [about the allegation] and they had denied them. [The investigators] started to tell me, ‘So, it looks like none of it ever happened.’ Do you think I invented it all? Like, wow. Like, do you really think I’d invent a story like that?”
Some three months ago, in April, Rivka got a laconic letter from the Jerusalem District of the State Prosecution Service, saying that the case had been closed and that the state had decided not to file any indictments.
Rivka, for her part, has no intention of accepting the decision which puts more children at risk. To support her appeal against the decision, Rivka waived her doctor-patient privilege with Dr. Sharon Levy – the psychiatrist who has been treating her in recent years – and asked her to put into writing all of the information she had.
Rivka shared with Shomrim that document, parts of which are being published here. They raise serious questions about the decision not to prosecute. Dr. Levy, deputy head of mental health services for Meuhedet in the Jerusalem district, documented in the medical file, in real time, how Rivka was still being abused as an adult. She detailed serious burn marks, bruises and evidence of the use of chemicals – all the result of severe violence. In addition, the psychiatrist detailed in the document the existence of consistent medical records from 2006 onward indicating severe iron deficiency, to the point of requiring an intravenous infusion, along with a series of other medical complications that, according to her, may point to extreme abuse and deliberate starvation. Rivka herself says that she suffered damage to her nervous system that still affects her physical capabilities – something that is also well documented in her medical records.
Dr. Levy, who testified to the police and even shared with investigators medical records, concluded her letter with the following request: “I want to know why my testimony is not considered sufficient evidentiary basis to support the complaint that Rivka filed.”
The State Prosecution Service submitted the following response: “The State Prosecution reviewed the case thoroughly at every stage. In reviewing the matter, all investigative materials, findings and leads raised throughout were examined, including claims regarding the involvement of additional parties. Where necessary, supplementary investigative actions were carried out. Upon completing the review of the totality of the evidentiary foundation, it was determined that there is no evidentiary basis justifying the continuation of criminal proceedings, and the case was therefore closed.” The full response appears below.
Rivka’s account is not an isolated one. Shomrim reviewed several cases spanning years in which victims who did not know one another described similar patterns of alleged organized abuse. Shomrim also examined internal police correspondence and assessments by senior experts in Israel and the US. Taken together, the testimonies and records reveal significant shortcomings in how Israeli law enforcement have investigated allegations of organized child sexual abuse.
In an exclusive interview with Shomrim, Uri Sadeh, who served until recently as the Coordinator of Interpol’s Crimes Against Children Unit, sharply criticizes the police for failing to expose abusive organized child sexual abuse network . “In Israel,” he says, “there is a total lack of understanding of the subject – coupled with a lack of motivation. I can tell you that police forces across the world – and Interpol brings together forces from 196 different countries – have developed expertise and invest a lot of resources and manpower in this issue. There are international collaborations between the relevant police forces and Interpol; sometimes Europol also provides equipment, communication and management. But the Israel Police is almost totally invisible on the international scene when it comes to this issue.”
Sadeh, who worked for the Israel Police prior to joining Interpol and who retired with the rank of superintendent, was one of the founders of the police’s 105 unit, dedicated to protecting children online. In a conversation with Shomrim, he says that the biggest failing of all is the fact that the Israel Police is not present on the International Child Sexual Exploitation database (ICSE), the largest and most important resource in the global battle against online sex crimes against children.
The ICSE database allows investigators in participating countries to compare millions of images and videos, identify victims and determine whether material seized in one country is connected to investigations elsewhere. Sadeh says Israel is effectively absent from that system. Police dispute his characterization and say they maintain full cooperation with international authorities. “When police in Israel confiscate a computer and find child sexual abuse material on it, they should be putting that information into an international database so that other forces know that it is being dealt with,” he says. “That isn’t happening. The Israel Police is not uploading material.”
According to Sadeh, the Israeli officers are also not making use of Interpol’s database for investigations inside Israel, which could give them additional intelligence and help analyze material in their possession. “They barely train people to deal with the issue and there is a high turnover of investigators,” he says. “I am not even certain that police in Israel have users with database access.”
Are you aware of any request from the Israeli police to be updated if photographs of children from Israel are uploaded to the database?
“I am not. Not at Interpol, at least. Obviously, if anybody in the world recognizes Hebrew, they will flag it. The question is whether there is anybody in Israel to talk to; if the Israel Police has any officer willing to pick up the gauntlet. That is why it is so important for there to be an Israeli presence in the database. Investigators who deal with it say that they use the database on a daily basis. There are forums and discussion boards, but Israeli officers simply do not use it.”
The Israel Police submitted the following response: “The individual [Sadeh] served in the Israel Police for a limited period and has not served in either the police or Interpol for a long time; he is therefore not up to date on current developments or procedures. Contrary to his claims, full and successful cooperation with international authorities is ongoing.” The full response appears below.
Attorney Rotem Aloni Davidov, who specializes in representing victims of sex crimes, is not convinced. “For years, there was a clear pattern evident with the police. When it comes to sex crimes committed against children – and especially very young children – there is almost zero enforcement,” she claims. “The police do not pursue investigations fully and allow the culprits to evade responsibility.”
According to Davidov, this is because “the police and the prosecution put most of the weight on their interrogation of children, in which interviewees only rarely provide details about the abuse – making it very difficult to determine credibility. Over the years, there have been numerous cases where, if the police had investigated the information that did reach them, cross-referenced it with additional sources, and summoned relevant individuals for questioning, many more offenders could have been brought to justice.”
The Nahlaot Affair:
Computers disappeared, material wasn’t investigated and most of the suspects were released
The shortcomings in law enforcement’s handling of such allegations are perhaps most evident in the 2012 “Nahlaot affair,” a child sexual abuse case in Jerusalem that was described at the time as one of the largest of its kind in Israel.
The allegations bore many of the hallmarks associated with organized child sexual abuse: the systematic targeting of children between the ages of five and 10, extreme violence, intimidation, drugging, deliberate efforts to confuse the victims, ritualistic acts and the photographing or filming of the abuse.
Following a police investigation, indictments were filed against three suspects in the Jerusalem District Court. One of them was acquitted and the other two – Zalman Cohen and Binyamin Satz – were convicted of indecently assaulting several children over a prolonged period. Satz was sentenced to 15 years in prison, while Cohen received a nine-year sentence, which was later reduced to six and a half.
While this may seem like the successful conclusion of a case, a deeper dive into the details reveals a very different picture. “Based on the testimony of the children, it appears that other adults who were present at the time were actively involved in these crimes, abetted the defendant and perhaps even directed him,” the District Court judges who convicted Satz wrote in their verdict. “His actions were not isolated incidents involving a single victim but were committed against several children in a systematic manner.”
Addressing the fact that there were photographs, the judges wrote: “The defendant was the one who instructed two other adults present at the scene to film the children while they were naked. Those individuals, whose identities are unknown to the court, watched the children while the defendant inserted sticks into their anuses.” Even though the filming of abuse is mentioned in several other incidents listed in the two convictions, police were unable to obtain the footage.
Two computers belonging to Zalman Cohen mysteriously disappeared shortly before a police search. The judges ruled that the reason for their disappearance was to conceal the incriminating evidence stored on them. Remarkably, about 20 other suspects in the case were released without a search ever being conducted for what is known as a digital fingerprint—on computers and cell phones. Additionally, a cyber investigation into their possible involvement in trading child sexual abuse and exploitation material never took place.
The Nahlaot Affair was widely referred to as the largest organized child sexual abuse network in Israeli history because of the large number of child victims. More than 100 children testified to special police investigators about organized abuse. However, the closed nature of that society, coupled with the panic that struck parents, contaminated the testimony to such an extent that much of it was disqualified as admissible evidence. So, suspects that the children had identified were freed from police custody and hugely valuable information that could have been used to analyze intelligence and to deepen the police’s understanding of how organized child sexual abuse network work, was lost....
She named alleged abusers and gave police an address. The case was closed
At the same time as the Nahlaot Affair was hitting the headlines, around 2012, Miriam (not her real name) walked into the Israeli embassy in Washington D.C. There she met with representatives of the Israel Police, to whom she related the story of what happened to her in a Jerusalem neighborhood in the early 1990s. It was one of the earliest complaints reviewed by Shomrim in which an alleged victim explicitly described multiple adults abusing multiple children and photographing the abuse. The main thing that stood out in Miriam’s testimony was the fact that there were multiple assailants abusing multiple children.
Extracts from Miriam’s five-page testimony are being reprinted here for the first time. We have chosen to omit some of the more disturbing descriptions. Miriam provided investigators with a detailed description of what happened in a residential building in Jerusalem when she was just five years old. She provided them with an exact address, with the names of the assailants and their victims – kindergarteners and schoolchildren who went through the same abuse, including being tied down, electrocuted, raped by multiple men, strange rituals and the constant presence of a camera. “I remember at least six men [...] They photographed me naked [...] They raped me and filmed me while they were doing it [...] I remember a polaroid photo; I remember that they argued about whether it was a good photo or not.”
Around a year later, Miriam visited Israel and the police asked her to come to the Moriah station in Jerusalem to complete her testimony. In addition to a coherent complaint, vivid and clear memories about group rape and abuse, Miriam also provided forensic evidence to back up her testimony.
The police did not follow up on Miriam’s complaint. No officer visited the building in question, and no background checks were done on the people whom Miriam named. “The file was closed – and rightly so – because of the statute of limitations,” a senior attorney who examined the case file confirmed to Shomrim. “This was indeed shocking – but complicated,” she added.
Former prosecution attorney Michal Gilad refused to accept this. “If there was no investigation,” she says, “then that’s negligence. When dealing with child sexual abuse network, when you have even a shred of evidence, even if it’s decades old, it is in the interest of the law-enforcement system to continue to investigate, to see if there are any other victims. I simply cannot defend it. Something is odd there.”....
Rivka (not her real name), 28 years old, says that beginning in early childhood, she was abused by a group of adults that included her father. She described multiple children being brought together, adults exchanging money and the abuse being photographed and filmed.
“I remember that hand gesture, when they would count out the money and give it to my father. We were a group of 20 to 25 children, from kindergarten age up to the age of 12. Not all the children were together every time." She tells Shomrim, as she recollects the severe sexual, emotional and physical abuse she suffered from childhood until just a few years ago. She goes on to say that there were five assailants, including her father – an organized group that employed sadistic methods, including drugging their victims into a dissociative state, rape, keeping children locked in cages and forcing their victims to fight naked for an audience of adults.
Rivka grew up in a prestigious and well-connected ultra-Orthodox family in Jerusalem, the daughter of a familiar, strong and influential figure in the community. In her testimony, she talks about falling pregnant to her father in seventh and eighth grade – pregnancies that ended with dangerous illegal abortions. “One of the members of the group was a doctor and he carried out the abortions,” she says.
Some two years ago, in June 2024, Rivka took her testimony to the police station in Zichron Yaakov (a town in northern Israel). That was around 18 months after she fled her parents’ home and found a place in a shelter for abused women. Accompanied by one of the shelter’s social workers, she told police investigators the whole story of her abuse. The officers listened and promised that they would take immediate action.”
“We waited a long time for that ‘immediate action’ to happen,” Rivka tells Shomrim with evident frustration. “After a year went by, they called me in again and told me that they had asked my brothers [about the allegation] and they had denied them. [The investigators] started to tell me, ‘So, it looks like none of it ever happened.’ Do you think I invented it all? Like, wow. Like, do you really think I’d invent a story like that?”
Some three months ago, in April, Rivka got a laconic letter from the Jerusalem District of the State Prosecution Service, saying that the case had been closed and that the state had decided not to file any indictments.
Rivka, for her part, has no intention of accepting the decision which puts more children at risk. To support her appeal against the decision, Rivka waived her doctor-patient privilege with Dr. Sharon Levy – the psychiatrist who has been treating her in recent years – and asked her to put into writing all of the information she had.
Rivka shared with Shomrim that document, parts of which are being published here. They raise serious questions about the decision not to prosecute. Dr. Levy, deputy head of mental health services for Meuhedet in the Jerusalem district, documented in the medical file, in real time, how Rivka was still being abused as an adult. She detailed serious burn marks, bruises and evidence of the use of chemicals – all the result of severe violence. In addition, the psychiatrist detailed in the document the existence of consistent medical records from 2006 onward indicating severe iron deficiency, to the point of requiring an intravenous infusion, along with a series of other medical complications that, according to her, may point to extreme abuse and deliberate starvation. Rivka herself says that she suffered damage to her nervous system that still affects her physical capabilities – something that is also well documented in her medical records.
Dr. Levy, who testified to the police and even shared with investigators medical records, concluded her letter with the following request: “I want to know why my testimony is not considered sufficient evidentiary basis to support the complaint that Rivka filed.”
The State Prosecution Service submitted the following response: “The State Prosecution reviewed the case thoroughly at every stage. In reviewing the matter, all investigative materials, findings and leads raised throughout were examined, including claims regarding the involvement of additional parties. Where necessary, supplementary investigative actions were carried out. Upon completing the review of the totality of the evidentiary foundation, it was determined that there is no evidentiary basis justifying the continuation of criminal proceedings, and the case was therefore closed.” The full response appears below.
Former Interpol official:
Israeli Police are falling behind in investigating child sexual abuse
Rivka’s account is not an isolated one. Shomrim reviewed several cases spanning years in which victims who did not know one another described similar patterns of alleged organized abuse. Shomrim also examined internal police correspondence and assessments by senior experts in Israel and the US. Taken together, the testimonies and records reveal significant shortcomings in how Israeli law enforcement have investigated allegations of organized child sexual abuse.
In an exclusive interview with Shomrim, Uri Sadeh, who served until recently as the Coordinator of Interpol’s Crimes Against Children Unit, sharply criticizes the police for failing to expose abusive organized child sexual abuse network . “In Israel,” he says, “there is a total lack of understanding of the subject – coupled with a lack of motivation. I can tell you that police forces across the world – and Interpol brings together forces from 196 different countries – have developed expertise and invest a lot of resources and manpower in this issue. There are international collaborations between the relevant police forces and Interpol; sometimes Europol also provides equipment, communication and management. But the Israel Police is almost totally invisible on the international scene when it comes to this issue.”
Sadeh, who worked for the Israel Police prior to joining Interpol and who retired with the rank of superintendent, was one of the founders of the police’s 105 unit, dedicated to protecting children online. In a conversation with Shomrim, he says that the biggest failing of all is the fact that the Israel Police is not present on the International Child Sexual Exploitation database (ICSE), the largest and most important resource in the global battle against online sex crimes against children.
The ICSE database allows investigators in participating countries to compare millions of images and videos, identify victims and determine whether material seized in one country is connected to investigations elsewhere. Sadeh says Israel is effectively absent from that system. Police dispute his characterization and say they maintain full cooperation with international authorities. “When police in Israel confiscate a computer and find child sexual abuse material on it, they should be putting that information into an international database so that other forces know that it is being dealt with,” he says. “That isn’t happening. The Israel Police is not uploading material.”
According to Sadeh, the Israeli officers are also not making use of Interpol’s database for investigations inside Israel, which could give them additional intelligence and help analyze material in their possession. “They barely train people to deal with the issue and there is a high turnover of investigators,” he says. “I am not even certain that police in Israel have users with database access.”
Are you aware of any request from the Israeli police to be updated if photographs of children from Israel are uploaded to the database?
“I am not. Not at Interpol, at least. Obviously, if anybody in the world recognizes Hebrew, they will flag it. The question is whether there is anybody in Israel to talk to; if the Israel Police has any officer willing to pick up the gauntlet. That is why it is so important for there to be an Israeli presence in the database. Investigators who deal with it say that they use the database on a daily basis. There are forums and discussion boards, but Israeli officers simply do not use it.”
The Israel Police submitted the following response: “The individual [Sadeh] served in the Israel Police for a limited period and has not served in either the police or Interpol for a long time; he is therefore not up to date on current developments or procedures. Contrary to his claims, full and successful cooperation with international authorities is ongoing.” The full response appears below.
Attorney Rotem Aloni Davidov, who specializes in representing victims of sex crimes, is not convinced. “For years, there was a clear pattern evident with the police. When it comes to sex crimes committed against children – and especially very young children – there is almost zero enforcement,” she claims. “The police do not pursue investigations fully and allow the culprits to evade responsibility.”
According to Davidov, this is because “the police and the prosecution put most of the weight on their interrogation of children, in which interviewees only rarely provide details about the abuse – making it very difficult to determine credibility. Over the years, there have been numerous cases where, if the police had investigated the information that did reach them, cross-referenced it with additional sources, and summoned relevant individuals for questioning, many more offenders could have been brought to justice.”
The Nahlaot Affair:
Computers disappeared, material wasn’t investigated and most of the suspects were released
The shortcomings in law enforcement’s handling of such allegations are perhaps most evident in the 2012 “Nahlaot affair,” a child sexual abuse case in Jerusalem that was described at the time as one of the largest of its kind in Israel.
The allegations bore many of the hallmarks associated with organized child sexual abuse: the systematic targeting of children between the ages of five and 10, extreme violence, intimidation, drugging, deliberate efforts to confuse the victims, ritualistic acts and the photographing or filming of the abuse.
Following a police investigation, indictments were filed against three suspects in the Jerusalem District Court. One of them was acquitted and the other two – Zalman Cohen and Binyamin Satz – were convicted of indecently assaulting several children over a prolonged period. Satz was sentenced to 15 years in prison, while Cohen received a nine-year sentence, which was later reduced to six and a half.
While this may seem like the successful conclusion of a case, a deeper dive into the details reveals a very different picture. “Based on the testimony of the children, it appears that other adults who were present at the time were actively involved in these crimes, abetted the defendant and perhaps even directed him,” the District Court judges who convicted Satz wrote in their verdict. “His actions were not isolated incidents involving a single victim but were committed against several children in a systematic manner.”
Addressing the fact that there were photographs, the judges wrote: “The defendant was the one who instructed two other adults present at the scene to film the children while they were naked. Those individuals, whose identities are unknown to the court, watched the children while the defendant inserted sticks into their anuses.” Even though the filming of abuse is mentioned in several other incidents listed in the two convictions, police were unable to obtain the footage.
Two computers belonging to Zalman Cohen mysteriously disappeared shortly before a police search. The judges ruled that the reason for their disappearance was to conceal the incriminating evidence stored on them. Remarkably, about 20 other suspects in the case were released without a search ever being conducted for what is known as a digital fingerprint—on computers and cell phones. Additionally, a cyber investigation into their possible involvement in trading child sexual abuse and exploitation material never took place.
The Nahlaot Affair was widely referred to as the largest organized child sexual abuse network in Israeli history because of the large number of child victims. More than 100 children testified to special police investigators about organized abuse. However, the closed nature of that society, coupled with the panic that struck parents, contaminated the testimony to such an extent that much of it was disqualified as admissible evidence. So, suspects that the children had identified were freed from police custody and hugely valuable information that could have been used to analyze intelligence and to deepen the police’s understanding of how organized child sexual abuse network work, was lost.
“You talk about inadmissible evidence – and the court’s hands are indeed tied – but there are a lot fewer restrictions on the police,” says Dr. Michal Gilad, a former attorney with the State Prosecution Service’s Central District who now investigates online child sexual abuse network and heads the Multidisciplinary Center for Childhood, Public Policy and Sustainable Society, operating out of New York.
“Even if the statute of limitations has expired on the evidence, even if it is hearsay and even if the witness has been influenced somewhat – it doesn’t matter,” Gilad says. “The police are not bound by such things; they can use them as intelligence and look for other information that comes to light as a result. And if that other information is reliable and credible, they can use that, too. There's something negligent going on here, unless they have some highly credible information showing that someone is sending these people to testify and make up stories.”
The Nahlaot neighborhood in Jerusalem. The location and subjects pictured are unrelated to the article. Photo: Reuters
The Nahlaot neighborhood in Jerusalem. The location and subjects pictured are unrelated to the article. Photo: Reuters
She named alleged abusers and gave police an address. The case was closed
At the same time as the Nahlaot Affair was hitting the headlines, around 2012, Miriam (not her real name) walked into the Israeli embassy in Washington D.C. There she met with representatives of the Israel Police, to whom she related the story of what happened to her in a Jerusalem neighborhood in the early 1990s. It was one of the earliest complaints reviewed by Shomrim in which an alleged victim explicitly described multiple adults abusing multiple children and photographing the abuse. The main thing that stood out in Miriam’s testimony was the fact that there were multiple assailants abusing multiple children.
Extracts from Miriam’s five-page testimony are being reprinted here for the first time. We have chosen to omit some of the more disturbing descriptions. Miriam provided investigators with a detailed description of what happened in a residential building in Jerusalem when she was just five years old. She provided them with an exact address, with the names of the assailants and their victims – kindergarteners and schoolchildren who went through the same abuse, including being tied down, electrocuted, raped by multiple men, strange rituals and the constant presence of a camera. “I remember at least six men [...] They photographed me naked [...] They raped me and filmed me while they were doing it [...] I remember a polaroid photo; I remember that they argued about whether it was a good photo or not.”
Around a year later, Miriam visited Israel and the police asked her to come to the Moriah station in Jerusalem to complete her testimony. In addition to a coherent complaint, vivid and clear memories about group rape and abuse, Miriam also provided forensic evidence to back up her testimony.
The police did not follow up on Miriam’s complaint. No officer visited the building in question, and no background checks were done on the people whom Miriam named. “The file was closed – and rightly so – because of the statute of limitations,” a senior attorney who examined the case file confirmed to Shomrim. “This was indeed shocking – but complicated,” she added.
Former prosecution attorney Michal Gilad refused to accept this. “If there was no investigation,” she says, “then that’s negligence. When dealing with child sexual abuse network, when you have even a shred of evidence, even if it’s decades old, it is in the interest of the law-enforcement system to continue to investigate, to see if there are any other victims. I simply cannot defend it. Something is odd there.”
The Sanhedria Affair
The same passive approach would also characterize Israeli law enforcement bodies when it came to the next major case: on July 9, 2015 – exactly a year to the day after a verdict was handed down in the Nahlaot Affair – Dr. Fortunato Benarroch, a psychiatrist working at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem where he is director of the Service for Traumatized Children and Adolescents, sent an extraordinary and urgent letter to the police. Under the headline “The Need for a Comprehensive Systemic Investigation into the Phenomenon of Child Abuse,” Benarroch described serious concerns over the existence of organized networks that were abusing children – similar to those documented in Nahlaot.
“I encounter numerous cases related to this issue,” he wrote to the police, “both through families seeking treatment at our clinic and in professional consultations with fellow practitioners in the field [...] The fact is that a very large number of children have been harmed, a number far too large to be explained by lone, uncoordinated perpetrators. Added to this is the fact that abuse involving this many children was successfully hidden for so long. Furthermore, we are observing similar, strikingly unusual symptoms among many children who have no connection to one another or to each other’s families. These include strange facial expressions inconsistent with the child’s age or situation, peculiar difficulties with speech or writing and a preoccupation with strange figures whom the child keeps partially or fully secret – people about whom they feel absolute terror when revealing details. The fact that all of these phenomena are emerging once again in more neighborhoods only heightens the concern.”
The unusual letter from the head of a department at Hadassah came against the backdrop of new reports from ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods of northern Jerusalem – Sanhedria, Ramot, Ramat Shlomo and others – about children coming for treatment because of strange behaviors and dissociative states that had developed. During treatment, allegations of severe sexual abuse, abduction and child trafficking emerged. In the police files that Shomrim obtained, those allegations would be referred to collectively as the Sanhedria Affair and the investigation would be led by Superintendent Gilad Bahat, who is now a senior official in the police legal advisory division.
Three months after he sent the letter, Benarroch was invited to meet with Bahat at a Jerusalem police station. There, he tried to explain to the officer that he and other therapists had identified extreme patterns. “This does not sound like typical adult-on-child abuse; there are signs that these children underwent manipulation involving animals and adults who terrify children,” reads the protocol from the police meeting, revealed here for the first time. Benarroch singled out the “fantastical” accounts given by the children, with some describing being taken into tunnels that led to the Old City, alongside descriptions of crosses and strange rituals. He assessed that all of these are components of the manipulation techniques deployed by the perpetrators.
Four months later, another expert was invited to testify to the police: Dr. Danny Brom, a clinical psychologist and expert in complex post-trauma. Brom met with and trained the therapists who treated those children who were most severely abused. He told Bahat, the lead police investigator, about children as young as three or four who were displaying behavior that was not appropriate for their age. The following is a quote from the police memorandum obtained by Shomrim: “The children suddenly undress and ask their parents to perform a sexual act on them, while also responding in bizarre ways to ordinary events like Friday night dinner. Examples include fits of rage, tearing prayer books and sacred texts, violence toward siblings and the like. During clinical supervision, I viewed videotaped treatment sessions showing children with severe dissociative phenomena. Dissociation is recognized as a post-traumatic phenomenon.”
At the same time as these testimonies, most of which came from professional therapists, there was also a trickle of parents turning up at police stations to file complaints. A tiny number of children testified to dedicated police investigators trained to talk to children.....
The investigation was not approved
Uri Sadeh is only too familiar with the affairs that were investigated in Jerusalem. He took a sabbatical from Interpol between 2014 and 2018, after the Israel Police recruited him to set up a dedicated anti-pedophilia unit – originally called the Maor Unit and later Unit 105. Sadeh reveals that he asked to examine the Jerusalem files but his request was turned down. “At a certain stage, I asked that my team be allowed to breathe new life into the Jerusalem investigations that did not lead to anything and which no one seemed interested in pursuing any more. I was not given permission, and I have no information about what happened thereafter.”
Sadeh adds: “It is evident that the Sanhedria Affair is something that should have been handled very differently and a much greater effort should have been made. They may try to tell you that they did, but the only measure is the measure of success. Closing the case and saying that all the allegations were fabrications is just a way of making life easier for yourself. Clearly it is a network and it is extreme; even if 70 percent of the descriptions were exaggerated, that is still extreme and extraordinary. If this were to happen in the United States, they would be allocated all the necessary experts and resources.”....
https://www.shomrim.news/eng/victims-reported-organized-child-sexual-abuse-israeli-police-struggled-to-investigate-it
