Alleged Tel Aviv cult leader described as charismatic, yet domineering
Thursday, February 11, 2010 | by yaakov lappinNeighbors who lived near Goel Ratzon in south Tel Aviv’s Hatikva neighborhood said he was revered as a gurulike saint by his women and children.
Ratzon banned all of the women who lived with him from communicating with men — including their own brothers — and demanded absolute obedience, the neighbors added. “They were his slaves,” one neighbor said.
The 59-year-old Ratzon was arrested in mid-January on suspicion of enslaving members of his group and raping a number of the women. He was romantically involved with at least 17 women and fathered 37 children with them.
The arrest of the self-styled “spiritual guru” occurred following a 7-month-long undercover investigation by the police. Ratzon’s partners were detained for questioning and later taken with their children into temporary protective care by the Ministry of Welfare and Social Services.
Ratzon has long been the target of suspicion by authorities, and welfare services are facing intense criticism for not acting sooner to disband the group.
But the women who lived with Ratzon did so on a voluntary basis, and both police and welfare services believed they were powerless to act until new anti-enslavement legislation was introduced in 2006.
Previous checks on children from Ratzon’s group, carried out by social services at kindergartens, found that they were well dressed, well fed and equipped for school.
An amendment to the anti-enslavement law, which prohibits anyone to “hold a person in conditions of slavery, including sexual slavery,” finally enabled the authorities to act. The offense carries a maximum prison sentence of 16 years.
The authorities are interpreting “slavery” in this case to mean psychological slavery, resulting in total control by Ratzon of the women and children who lived with him in several different apartment complexes.
Police say financial penalties of hundreds of shekels would be meted out by Ratzon to the women for the smallest of transgressions, like “sitting on the stairs.”
“It’s like a state — I have to uphold my principles, order and laws,” Goel said during an Israeli TV documentary made about him last year.
Neighbors said he preyed on the insecurities of vulnerable young women who came from unstable backgrounds.
“The minute you look at him, he broadcasts tranquility into your eyes,” Efrat, one of the women who lived with him, said during the documentary.
In the film, the women can be seen showing the camera large tattoos bearing Ratzon’s face and name on their arms and neck. All of the children conceived by the women and Ratzon are named after him, like Tehilat Ratzon (Ratzon’s Glory), one of his daughters, and Goel Goeli, one of his sons.
Yet unlike cult leaders such as Jim Jones of the People’s Temple, Ratzon claims he never told the women he was the messiah or other God-like figure.
“I’m not their messiah, I’m simply good for them,” Ratzon said in the documentary.
Other actions by the “guru,” however, were reminiscent of cults that have advocated vengeance against a government that tries to shut them down.
“When I die … you are to lead peaceful and constrained lives … but if the State [of Israel] harms me, go out and strike them as much as you can. Even at the cost of shedding your own blood,” Ratzon told one of the women in the film.
Parents of the women would periodically stop by the house to plead for their daughters to come back. “It would happen routinely,” one neighbor said. “The parents filed many complaints with police and social services.”
The Channel 10 documentary showed how groups of three to four women and their children lived on every floor of Raton’s multistoried buildings and formed self-sustaining “economic units,” working and contributing to the commune. Ratzon also received large state funds in the form of child benefit payouts.