Doctors charged with child abuse

A married pair of doctors who admitted to abusing their two children, aged 11 and 14, were indicted on Monday morning at the Tel Aviv District Court.The parents, residents of Tel Aviv, were charged with obstructing justice and abuse of minors, in particular their 14-year-old boy.The parents, aged 39 and 40, are suspected of having beaten, humiliated and used foul language against the boy for a period of eight years under the guise of “education.”Ordered to lie about his bruises, the boy told his friends that he had taken up karate.The charge sheet described several incidents in which the parents exhibited abusive behavior and reacted disproportionately to the boy's misdemeanors. In one incident, the boy, then 13 years old, accidentally dirtied the wall of their home. When his mother found out that he was responsible, she shouted, “What have I done to deserve such a son?”; the father, meanwhile, repeatedly bashed the boy's head against the wall.In other incidents, the parents expressed their dissatisfaction with the boy's low grades at school by flogging him with a belt in their own bedroom and verbally humiliating him.