Following the suspected murder of 17-year-old Lital Yael Melnik and the subsequent arrest of a 49-year-old man who worked as a nurse in the Tirat Hacarmel psychiatric ward where Melnik was hospitalized, women's organizations called attention to mental health service failings that may endanger patients and may have enabled Melnik's murder.
Melnik was found partially buried near a park in Kiryat Motzkin on Saturday morning, after a passerby contacted the police to report suspicious activity. When reporting her disappearance, Melnik’s grandmother gave police the name of a 49-year-old man from Kiryat Motzkin who was allegedly intimately involved with the girl.
During the police investigation into the murder, the suspect reportedly stated, that Melnik's grandmother had issued a restraining order against him once in the past, according to N12.
Employees of the ward allegedly knew about the inappropriate attention the suspect paid to Melnik, Kan reported Sunday. Police also reportedly alerted the hospital to inappropriate behavior on the part of the suspect and a young woman in the ward, N12 reported.
This was reportedly not the first incident in which a young patient was assaulted by the ward's staff. A security guard at the institute was accused of sodomizing a 13-year-old patient around six months ago, N12 reported.
"We are not safe in the health system," said the head of Israel's lobby against sexual violence, Yael Sherer on Twitter Sunday. "It is no accident, it is their policy and a sweet girl has paid with her life for their fight to ensure that they don't touch [abusers].
"A psychiatric nurse is having relations with hospitalized minors and it is known and documented and the mental health system does not expel that person from within itself. And this is certainly not an abnormal incident. The rule is that the Health Ministry allows sex offenders to continue to operate. That is what is normal unfortunately."
Sherer also commented on systems in place for those hospitalized in psychiatric wards to complain saying that those who complain are met with "mistrust, contempt and sometimes actual sanctions from staff." Sherer also commented on police handling saying that patients who complain "certainly are not granted the trust of the police."
"In a place where there is no chance of a sanction, sexual violence runs rampant and opportunists go to town."
"She didn't deserve what happened to her at all, no one deserves that, but in today's reality it happens far too often," a friend of Melnik told feminist news source Politically Correct. "I hope that no one experiences this," she concluded.
"Her blood is on the hands of people who were supposed to take care of this girl," said the Tal Aviv chapter of the SlutWalk organization on Twitter Saturday.
"How can it be that Lital Yael Melnik's grandmother gets a restraining order against the worker suspected of the murder of her grandchild and the staff of the psychiatric ward does not know about it? doesn't ask questions? doesn't see fit to fire the worker who is taking advantage of minors?"
Shira Silkoff contributed to this report.