Click photo to enlarge
Israeli Goel Ratzon is seen during a hearing at a courtroom
in Tel Aviv. Ratzon is in a Tel Aviv jail, suspected by
police of enslaving a cult-like harem of at least 17 women
and 37 children. (AP Photo/Moti Milrod)
The women tattooed his name and portrait on their bodies
and gave their children his name - Saviour.
They spoon-fed the bearded, one-time healer as if he were
royalty, brushed his shoulder-length white locks, sent him
text messages when they were ovulating and slept with him at
his bidding.
They turned over wages and welfare payments to him and lived
in cramped, rundown Tel Aviv apartments with the children
they bore him. According to police, he fathered some of his
own daughters' children.
The man, 60-year-old Goel Ratzon - whose first name is Hebrew
for "Saviuor" - is now sitting in a Tel Aviv jail, suspected
by police of enslaving a cult-like harem of at least 17 women
and 37 children. Ratzon, who's lived this way for two
decades, denies any wrongdoing, his lawyer says.
Ratzon's alleged crimes and unconventional lifestyle have
gripped Israel and become newspaper and talk show fodder.
How he managed to lure so many young women and live this way
so long in full view of authorities remains a mystery. While
cult leaders like Jim Jones, who led hundreds of followers in
a 1978 mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, claimed messianic
status, Ratzon did not.
"I'm not their Messiah, I'm not their saviour. I'm just good
to them," he said in a rare interview to Israel television
last year.
Police, however, said they swooped down on Ratzon when the
children were at school because they were afraid their
mothers might hurt them if they were at home at the time.
According to police, his lawyer and testimony from the women,
Ratzon kept tabs on his "extended family" through
closed-circuit TV, and fined them for violating rules that
included modest dress and a ban on unauthorized telephone
calls.
"He doesn't live like you or me. He lives differently. And
the fact that the women accepted it and were part of it gave
him the legitimacy that it was OK, that it was good for
them," said his court-appointed lawyer, Shlomzion Gabai.
Police broke up the harem on January 12, taking the children
and women to various shelters. Police investigating him on
suspicion of enslavement, rape and incest have until Friday
to charge him or else his detention runs out, Gabai said.
In an Israeli television documentary aired last year, Ratzon
said the women were drawn to him because he was "perfect" and
had "all the qualities that a woman wants."
But Asher Wizman, a private investigator who said his company
was hired by two sets of parents to extricate their daughters
from the clan, told The Associated Press that Ratzon preyed
on troubled young women.
Some of his women invited sisters, cousins and friends to
join the harem. Ratzon would go trawling for others in two
busy Tel Aviv malls, Wizman said.
He said a private investigator he sent to infiltrate the
harem was badly shaken after her first encounter with Ratzon.
"He looked her in the eye" for about 90 seconds, "and she
felt like she was losing control, it was a kind of hypnosis,"
he said.
