Captive: The Chronology of Professional Incest

Captive

The Chronology of Professional Incest

Ruti Gavish

Copyright © 2025 Ruti Gavish

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2025

ISBN 979-8-89308-123-7 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-89308-124-4 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

To my family, my beacon of love.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank everyone who knew me during the darkest periods of my life and to everyone who believed in me, strengthened me, and accompanied me on my winding journey toward recovery. Thanks to you all I am alive and not just surviving.

I thank myself for choosing life. It was not an easy choice, and it was not an obvious one. More than once, I felt it was easier to give up. I am happy I did not!

Yael and Black Dina, you were conceived in the darkness of those nightmarish days. You gave me the strength and the courage to survive that I could not find within myself. You were my role models—each in her own way—whom I gladly adopted within me. You are my source of inspiration to this very day. Truthfully, I don't know where I would be today without you.

My dear friend Moran Amit, may you rest in peace, the younger sister I never had. We made our first steps toward recovery together; scared and hesitant, we gave each other the needed courage. You were the first person to know the real me, and in that way, you were my first real friend. You encouraged me to publish Captive, and without your belief in me, spurring me on, I doubt whether I would have had the courage. But you never lived to see my book displayed proudly in the bookstore window. I mourn your passing, feel the pain of the cruelty of your murder, and sad you could not see the light together with me. I will remember you forever in our shared dream—large bulldozers breaking down the barricades, demolishing them one by one, crushing them until all that remains is dust and a wave of imprisoned girls breaking free, engulfed within the embrace of the knowing believing world.

Ilana Sobol, the founder of Macom—a support site for sexual abuse victims—and Daniel, who was a prominent member of the team. Thank you both for your true friendship and for your partnership in both the online support forum and in person, for sharing with me the spiraling ups and downs and, most importantly, that you were my witnesses.

Members of the incest survivors' support forum, you were my safe place, and you believed in me and reacted to me with sensitivity and empathy. Even when I wrote during the wee hours, flooded with memories and nightmares, there was always someone awake with me on the screen in front of me. All of us came from there and shared the burden, even though we were all different, a welcoming diversity. This diversity allowed us to see things from different perspectives, to examine the proportions they occupied in our lives, to discuss and enrich one another. You accompanied me during my therapy and always encouraged me to deviate from the familiar, automatic, and unhelpful patterns.

Sheri Oz, you were my therapist for about ten years. I came to you a broken and crushed person, and you helped me pick up the pieces. You believed in me and never gave up on me, even when I gave up on myself. You supported me when I fell, you gave me the energy and optimism when I failed to see it, and you restored my faith in goodness and taught me what true love is.

A special thanks to my most precious—my sons and daughters-in-law and my grandsons and granddaughters. I look at you and I see the tiara of creation, two generations of beauty and hope, full of life, devouring the world with happiness and love.

Thank you for the privilege of being a mother, and that together with you, I learned the power of a smile, a hug, and a good word; that you fulfilled my dream to be part of a warm and loving family; and that you gave and still give meaning to my life. Thank you, my loves, for the surprise birthday gift, the translation of my book Captive into English, for initiating and funding it, for turning the idea into a reality, and for making me happy and proud.

Last but not least, Gadi, my partner of so many years. Together we walked an unpaved road, strewn with stumbling blocks and without anyone to guide us. Together we experienced ups and downs, times of happiness, and times of crisis. You absorbed quite a bit of my pain, my fears, and my being unpredictable at times. You supported me in times of need and were always there in crucial moments. I still keep those handwritten notes with me, on which you wrote encouraging words for me before the confrontation with that malicious therapist. Thank you, my beloved husband, for being a significant part in my life and for the joint creation of our wonderful tribe. Without you, none of this would have happened. At this point, I can just hope for the continuation of our current peace of mind and our enjoyment of life and family, for many more years to come.

Opening Words for the English Translation

The English translation of the book is dedicated to the #MeToo movement and to the women who broke their silence.

January 2024

Two decades have passed since my book Captive was first published in Israel, in Hebrew, and still we are witnessing the horrifying dimensions of sexual assault in all its shades and forms.

Despite the growing public awareness that a woman has her own rights to her body and her dignity and despite the laws that have been passed to prevent assault and sexual harassment, it seems that law enforcement authorities such as the police, the attorney's office and courts, and the employers and ethical committees of trade unions are all lagging behind the spirit of change happening around us. They show a lack of implementing the laws to make it easier for the victims to come forth, put in a complaint, and receive a decent response, and they don't have the power to provide a backup system to the social processes that are moving forward; victims who are searching for justice within the law face high hurdles, and in many cases, they initially avoid this avenue for different reasons—feelings of denial, shame, or guilt (which the victims reflect toward themselves); self-flagellation (for not having prevented the damages caused); and mostly fear (from the offender, from the invasive procedure, the stigma of the offense, and of ruining any professional future they may have). Many times, these are impenetrable barriers, and in many cases, the journey is a torturous and arduous one against the law enforcement judicial system, which leads one to stop the process even before it is finished.

The #MeToo movement surged forward into this vacuum, accompanied by a well-known international network against sexual violence and sexual harassment. The campaign started in 2017 in the United States and spread rapidly like wildfire, and it's ripples could be felt all over the world. #MeToo is a social movement whose purpose is to give a voice to women who have been sexually assaulted and have kept silent or had been silenced. They supply them with extralegal tools to deal with the assault they had gone through, to post these cases on social media, and to directly expose and shame these offenders.

The campaign revealed the magnitude of the problem; it unraveled an ancient bond of silence around the toxic and offensive culture, where many of us, unfortunately, carry our physical and mental scars. The virtual space was filled with testimonies and stories under #MeToo. The phenomenon of the exploitation of power and status to demand sexual favors received an amazing unprecedented resonance. People who had been sexually assaulted came forth and broke their silence, some for many years. Many of us, women, came out of the closet and testified against serial offenders who had abused their status over the years while being backed up by their peers who had kept silent, and there were many. The list is long and is still longer. Well-known celebrities—dizzy with their success and their newly earned power and have influence with the media, in politics, in sports, and in the academia—as well as ordinary professional people such as doctors, teachers, rabbis, and therapists earned the right to be virtually shamed, which was enough to ruin their name and get them suspended from their jobs. There are those who went public and apologized, and a few of them were prosecuted and convicted. The message that proclaims I too was assaulted means no more.

I want to add that this current situation has raised many questions about proportionality, such as what is the correct punishment and where is the line drawn between evil behavior, rudeness and insensitivity, and the offense on hand, but this isn't the place to discuss this issue.

For me, the #MeToo movement broke out too late. It is possible that my story might have been entirely different if the revolution had occurred years earlier. I have learned over time that the what-if scenario won't give me relief. I am happy to be a part of this era and a witness to the evolvement of this battle and to the social changes it has brought about.

The original edition of Captive was published under my pen name Maya Reed out of fear, shame, and a sense of guilt. Publishing the English version of Captive now under my real name and revealing the real names of the offenders are my ways of returning the blame and the responsibility to those who harmed me, of participating in the battle, and mainly of contributing to the campaign with the hope that it will have a long-term effect.

To die just as required without excess.

To grow back just what's needed from what's left.

—Wislawa Szymborska: Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts, 1981, Princeton University Press

Prologue

Monday, August 14, 1995

A forty-day-old baby was hospitalized two weeks ago with broken limbs and bite marks all over his tiny body. His father did this to him. I know of such a father.

And his mother stood by and kept silent. I know of such a mother.

On the same day, the high court charged a father with twenty years imprisonment for sexually assaulting his daughter for many years, beginning when she was six years old. I know of such a father.

Six days ago, a father murdered his two young children and committed suicide. He had threatened to do so before he actually killed them, but no one took him seriously, maybe only his little five-year-old who hid under his blanket in fear. I know of such a father—one who threatened and frightened me but did not murder me. Sometimes I was sorry he hadn't.

Nuri knew all this about me; despite being a therapist and knowing better than anyone else what would happen to broken souls, it did not stop him from abusing me. In exactly one month, I am scheduled to appear before the Ethics Committee of Social Workers and tell them my story about how a clinical relationship with him turned into a nightmare.

*****

Nuri was my therapist, and in the original Hebrew version of this book, I referred to him as N because I was still afraid to identify him by name. If I had wanted to refer to him as N in this book as well, that would have been quite suitable as the letter N could represent the word negative.

*****

Once, when he was still respectful toward me and professional in his behavior, he told me that the name given to him by his parents was Rachamim, which means mercy in Hebrew. I thought, then, How symbolic a name for this good man. That's how I am, always trying to find meaning in symbols and signs. Now it makes sense to me that he changed his name—a person who causes so much harm to others cannot go around with the name Mercy.

I turned to the Ethics Committee because I need an authoritative and professional body to tell him to his face that he was a criminal. Hearing these harsh words would mean he would not be able to cancel them with the dismissive wave of his hand as he used to do to me whenever I gathered the courage to tell him what I thought of him and his behavior. He would hear it from the committee members; he would not be able to run away from the truth anymore and would have to live with it for the rest of his life.

I also needed to hear these cleansing words from them, You are okay, and only then will I be able to live with myself in peace.

I am taking into consideration that Nuri, with his extraordinary manipulative talent, will be able to fool the committee members, persuading them into thinking that it was just an affair between two consenting adults and that he did not know why I was making such a fuss.

The committee session is equivalent to a court hearing in that the truth does not always win. In a court of law, it is often about who has the shrewder and more cunning lawyer. In the Ethics Committee, individuals represent themselves, and without a doubt, Nuri surpasses me with these qualities.

That is why I am so scared.

I told Sheri, my current therapist, who has been trying over the last year and a half to help me recover after the ruinous relationship with Nuri—so far without much apparent success—that if the scenario in my head was what was going to happen, then I would rather be dead. I'll just die, I told her, and Sheri answered me by saying that it was only a committee and the most important thing was that I knew the truth.

But I know myself—if the committee is persuaded that Nuri did me no harm, I will lose confidence in myself and would start doubting what was true and what was not. I would not be able to distinguish between the truth and what was just my fucked up imagination, as Nuri described it.

I knew that this nightmare scenario might play out in real life, but I would not let fear guide me and make me weak at the knees. Not anymore. I needed to maintain my composure and regain control of my life. That was why, next month, I would sit in the presence of ten or twelve people, and I would lay out before them the last five years of my life.

But how could I explain to them that a grown woman would become a tiny and frightened little girl? How could I explain it to someone who was not there, who did not experience it?

I will just have to tell them everything.

Part 1

Dress Rehearsal

Chapter 1

March 1989: Nuri Comes into My Life

I met Nuri for the first time in March 1989 when I was interviewed for a new job.

I had applied for a social work position at a boarding school, and after the director found me suitable, she invited Nuri, the clinical supervisor and professional coach, to interview me as well and to have the final say in whether or not I would be offered the job.

I very much wanted to work there and had spent the last few stressful days leading up to the interview preparing for it. In my imagination, I invented possible scenarios, recruiting my best friend Yael for role-play and question-and-answer exercises. On the evening before the interview, we stood in front of my wardrobe, trying to decide what I should wear the next day.

I chose what I thought to be a suitable pair of pants, a white T-shirt, and sneakers, but Yael made a face, vigorously protesting, and hastened to change my worn-out jeans into something more to her taste—a long colorful Indian skirt.

This is more appropriate, she said. And wait a minute before you scowl at me.

Yael bent down and pulled out a rectangular cardboard box from under the bed, handing it to me with a jubilant cheer, Taddaaam… surprise! Amazing new high-heeled shoes, a subject of ongoing arguments between us.

Yael and I had walked hand in hand through life since the days of my military service, and once every few months, in a kind of recurring cycle, she would decide that it was time for me to look like a woman, that is, to start wearing skirts and dresses with matching high heels. On such days, she would show me her latest purchases, managing to sweep me up with her enthusiasm, instilling in me a spirit of revolution and the joy of change. That night, before bed, we organized the outfit that suited both me and the much-anticipated job interview.

But, like on all mornings, I woke up without Yael. My figure dressed in her clothes was reflected back at me in the mirror. Unfamiliar, foreign, strange, I hurriedly took off the frightening status symbols these garments represented to me, inserting myself, instead, into my own clothes, and felt good. The morning of the interview was no different from those other mornings and no different from those that came after it. I rejected Yael's advice, respectfully returned her selection to the wardrobe, and then left, as myself, to meet Nuri.

At first glance, he seemed a bit peculiar, reminding me of the German spy in the book Eight in the Footsteps of One (by Y. A. Tchernowitz), as he appeared in my childhood imagination—short and potbellied, like people in their sixties, with round-rimmed glasses and a pointed goatee. I almost expected to hear a heavy German accent when he spoke, and I was afraid I would not be able to hold back a burst of laughter. But he didn't. His voice and his intonation were quiet, calm, and soft. This brought me back very quickly to the office where we were sitting, and apparently to his satisfaction, I answered questions such as who I was and what I had done up until then. At the end of the interview, he accepted me for the position.

Although on the surface, it looks like my story is going to be a story about social workers. It is not. It