Romi Gonen, victim of Oct. 7, 2023 attack, kidnapping
By agency reports
Former hostage Romi Gonen tells Channel 12’s “Uvda” program about her harrowing ordeal in Gaza.
Gonen says she was sexually assaulted by four different men during her time as a hostage.
She says the first assault happened on her fourth day in captivity, the abuser being a doctor who was tasked with caring for her injuries sustained during the Hamas-led October 7 attack and her abduction.
Gonen says she was allowed to take a shower, and the man followed her in “because he’s a nurse and he came to ‘help’ me in the shower.”
“I was injured, I had no power, and I was in a situation in which I couldn’t do anything,” she says.
“He took everything from me,” she says. “Afterward, I had to continue living with him in the house.”
Gonen says her next attacker was a cameraman who filmed clips of her for propaganda purposes.
When she was moved homes, she was forced to stay alone with man, Muhammad, who then began touching her.
Gonen says she told him to stop and went to another room, but that the next day Muhammad told her he would be beside her from then on out.
“And that’s how my ordeal in that house began,” she says.
She says that for many days, Muhammad and a second man, Ibrahim, assaulted her.
“I’m sitting on the bed. Ibrahim comes and sits next to me, and harasses me.
“Everything happens in the room, in complete silence. I start crying insanely.
“Everything is quiet, and he says, ‘Be careful, if you don’t calm down, I’ll get angry.”
”And that’s how the days pass: I go to the bathroom and Muhammad is with me, and he watches me. I pee, and with one hand I pull down my pants.
”I sit on the toilet so that God forbid he won’t see anything of me. Ibrahim keeps bothering me endlessly.
“They grab my leg and move up to my thigh. I kick. It went on for 16 days… Those were by far the worst 16 days of my captivity,” she said.
Her account exposes the systematic use of sexual violence as a weapon against Israeli hostages after October 7.
Gonen’s testimony has intensified calls for the immediate release of all remaining hostages and serves as stark evidence of the crimes committed by Hamas in captivity.
