The Central District Attorney filed an indictment on Thursday charging a
57-year-old Jerusalem man with a string of pedophilia offenses.
A
court-imposed gag order prevents publication of the name of the defendant, who
is referred to only as “G.”
The charges against G.
include counts
of attempted sexual harassment against an underage boy, and attempted sodomy
under the circumstances of rape.
Alongside the indictment, the district
attorney also filed a request that G. be remanded in custody throughout the
legal proceedings against him, and that the court rescind the gag
order.
The indictment is the first to be filed after police arrested 27
suspected pedophiles earlier this month, in what was the largest operation
against sex offenders in Israel to date.
The police said they carried out
the sting as part of an ongoing war against pedophilia offenses, including
grooming and assaulting minors using Internet chat software.
As part of
the operation, police agents posed as children and talked to suspects over a
chat service offered by the Walla! website, and also via the Microsoft Messenger
instant messaging software.
Police agents also operated a phone line on
which agents posing as children would take calls from suspects who telephoned to
set up sexual encounters with minors.
The indictment includes transcripts
of chat conversations that G. allegedly conducted with a police agent, whom he
believed to be a 12- year-old boy. The conversations include blatant and
sometimes graphic sexual content.
According to the indictment, on May 29
G. began chatting over the Walla! website with a police agent, “M.,” who was
posing as a 12-yearold boy with username “Idan12.”
G., who logged onto
the site under the name “Seeking a Young Boy,” told Idan12 that he wanted to
meet, and asked to continue the chat via Microsoft’s instant messaging service,
the indictment said. Allegedly, G. gave Idan12 his email address to facilitate
contact.
The police agent, M., later contacted G. via Messenger, again
posing as the same 12- year-old boy, and asked G.
what sort of things he
liked to do, according to the indictment.
At this stage in the
conversation, G. introduced sexual subjects, telling Idan12 that he had engaged
in sexual intercourse at age 12 and had enjoyed it, the indictment
said.
The chat transcripts listed in the indictment include descriptions
of the various sexual acts G. told Idan12 he liked to perform with
children.
During that first chat, G.
allegedly gave his telephone
number, so that he could arrange to meet Idan12.
Sometime later, on July
25, the police agent posed as a 12-year-old boy named Idan and contacted G. via
Messenger.
The conversation once again turned to sexual matters and this
time, G. persuaded Idan to set up a meeting, again giving his telephone number
before discussing in graphic sexual detail what would happen during the meeting,
the indictment said.
The police agent gave G. a telephone number, and in
conversations during that day G. arranged to meet with Idan, whom he believed
was a 12-year-old boy, in a residential building in Yavne.
G. entered the
building at the address Idan had supplied, and went to the floor on which Idan
said he lived, the indictment said, and where he had agreed that he would engage
in a sexual encounter with a minor.
Police surprised and arrested G. at
the scene.
At the time of his arrest, the indictment said, G. was also in
possession of obscene images of children on his personal computer.
The
district attorney is expected to file additional charges against more of the
suspects in the upcoming days. Only six are still remanded in custody, including
several who are suspected of actual physical harm against minors.
Yaakov
Lappin contributed to this report.