Silencing Testimonies: Why Laitman Was Not Fully Questioned

Bnei Baruch Investigation · Entry point · Part 4 of 4

The foreign complainant whom TheMarker identified as “C” had left Kabbalah La'Am several years earlier. She emailed Israeli police with a complaint about sexual assaults by Michael Laitman. A police officer sent an official written confirmation: the complaint had been transferred to the investigations department. Then it stopped. Police acknowledged the complaint only after the newspaper asked about it. The investigations department could not find the complaint itself and had to be shown its own confirmation letter.

Ilanit Yezersky was a clinical social worker in the inner Kabbalah La'Am group in Petah Tikva. According to TheMarker, movement members were her neighbors, clients, and parents of children in the same educational environment. Several women told her about sexual relationships with Laitman that were presented as part of spiritual ascent. She wanted to speak for a Kan 11 investigation, but stepped back after receiving a message that her family would be expelled from the group’s frameworks. In September 2022, in the Bat Yam Magistrate’s Court before Judge Azaria Alkalay, she testified under oath: in a private meeting, she asked Laitman about intimate relationships and told him about the complaints; according to her, he first denied it, then admitted it and laughed when she said, “Get treatment, you have a problem.”

In its August 8, 2025 publication, TheMarker laid out the chain: three women lived outside Israel; one did not sign a prepared affidavit after contact with people from the movement; a clinical social worker withdrew under pressure. None of those lines led to Laitman being interrogated.

Complainants against "Kabbalah La'Am"

א׳
Testified about a system of intimate relationships with Michael Laitman, using his position as a spiritual leader. She further testified that Hanoch Milwidsky instructed her how to lie in court in order to deny a relationship with Laitman, and that Milwidsky himself attacked and raped her. She gave testimony to the police.

ב׳
Signed a declaration documenting how she was allegedly forced to enter an intimate relationship with Laitman through the use of his position as a spiritual leader. She concealed the declaration and the interview she gave about it because of threats she allegedly received against the lives of her family members abroad. Police tried to investigate, but B did not cooperate.

ג׳
Filed a complaint about a system of intimate relationships with Laitman and other senior members of Kabbalah La'Am, using their spiritual authority. She contacted the police to give testimony, but the police never contacted her to take her testimony.

ד׳
Testified that senior members of the group exploited new joiners by using their position as people who allegedly possessed spiritual abilities, and also about cases in which she saw Laitman stroking the buttocks of a woman in the group in public. She withdrew her intention to submit a declaration about this after meeting with Milwidsky and others. Police did not investigate.

ה׳
A clinical social worker who testified that her patients told her about intimate relationships with Laitman while he was their spiritual teacher. For some time, she refrained from disclosing what she had learned against the backdrop of threats to exclude her family, including her young daughter, from Kabbalah La'Am frameworks. Police did not investigate.

Complaints That Did Not Move on Their Own

Victim “A” publicly described sexual abuse by Milwidsky and by Laitman. The track connected to the Knesset member moved: Milwidsky was questioned. The allegations against the movement’s leader did not lead to comparable action.

The gap - an investigation of Milwidsky without comparable procedural movement on Laitman - was separately emphasized in TheMarker's July 27, 2025 reporting and in TheMarker's August 8, 2025 article. The issue is what happened after the women spoke: some complaints moved; others stayed at the edge of the investigation.

In the Aaron Appelbaum case, former participants gave written testimony about sexual exploitation, pressure, and attempts to prevent information from being made public. Some witnesses initially agreed to speak, then disappeared from the process. In The Seventh Eye’s court account from January 23, 2023, journalist Gur Megiddo spoke about complainant “K” and said he had seen evidence of threats, including messages with the addresses of her family members. The episode is not a separate Appelbaum story here. It shows an early version of the same route: witnesses moved toward an external process and then vanished from it.

Witness “R,” who had been preparing to sign an affidavit about violations she had seen in the inner circle, wrote to attorney Carmel Pomerantz on the eve of signing that Bnei Baruch had contacted her again and offered a meeting with Hanoch, Parovoz, and Mushi. She asked: “What do you think - is this a trap?” The affidavit was never signed.

Institutional cover. Information did not disappear only through hidden threats. At the same September 2022 hearing in the Bat Yam Magistrate’s Court before Judge Azaria Alkalay, Tahel Shadmon, Bnei Baruch’s human-resources director and the official responsible for preventing sexual harassment in the movement, testified. When attorney Yuval Yoaz asked what she had done, as an office-holder, to examine the grave accusations against Laitman, Shadmon admitted under cross-examination: “I did nothing.”

Expert confirmations. In January 2023, Rachel Lichtenstein, director general of the Israeli Center for Cult Victims, testified in court about a related account. She described the many-hour account given by victim “K” in 2016: Laitman, she said, used his spiritual authority to coerce her into a relationship. Lichtenstein added: “The harm to women is caused not only by Laitman himself… His behavior trickles down to other men in the community.”

Olesya, Galman Office, and Legal Support

Olesya’s story gives the pressure names, a lawyer, and a procedural record. Here it shows the same gap: her testimony entered the investigative track around Milwidsky, but did not become full procedural movement against Laitman. The detailed chronology is covered in a separate article.

Why “Consent” Does Not Work Here as a Concept

Across different testimonies, men from the “inner circle” carried special spiritual status. Sexual intimacy with them was presented not as a personal initiative, but as part of the spiritual path. Refusal was treated as a breach of hierarchy.

In Mona’s testimony, Katya Sukhova’s testimony, and Olesya’s story, the coercive setting appears from different sides: years of dependency, unpaid labor, spiritual language, and an inner circle where refusal becomes disobedience. Their biographies are documented separately. The question here is what happened when their words tried to reach external review.

Victim “A” put the problem in one sentence in a Channel 12 interview: “He built individual relationships with each woman in order to achieve spiritual enlightenment.” In ordinary legal terms, that formulation does not sound coercive. That is exactly the problem for the investigation.

A Structure with Political Cover

Kabbalah La'Am is not a local group. Its international infrastructure - media production, translation, financial demands, and external political ties - created an environment in which a complaint ran into an organized line of defense.

Police inaction stands out against this background: complaints were filed against a movement with media resources, internal discipline, and representatives in parliament.

Vinokur adds an external badge of trust to the story: publications linked a person with academic and managerial status to possible pressure on a victim. That meant the movement’s legal defense reached from the inner community toward external institutions.

August 11, 2022. Omri Maniv. Testimony of “A”

On August 11, 2022, Channel 12 journalist Omri Maniv publicly recorded that, according to victim “A” and Rafaeli, Milwidsky instructed a witness to give false testimony in court, while the organization he had legally accompanied had enlisted thousands of party members for political influence. A month later, on September 5, 2022, Bnei Baruch sued Rafaeli, Laitman’s former bodyguard, for 2.87 million shekels after he confirmed her version on air. It did not sue A., Maniv, or News 12.

The testimony of victim “A,” passed to Maniv, gave the investigation new momentum. In the summer of 2024, a delegation of LAHAV 433 investigators went to Moscow and took her statement. In the summer of 2025, Milwidsky, attorney Tzvi Galman, and Eli Vinokur were questioned - people linked to pressure on witnesses and to the legal management of the movement’s crises.

Laitman was not interrogated.

Several victims named him directly, some in public. The official police position: old materials were reviewed and closed, and new information is being checked separately.

Milwidsky, Galman, and Vinokur were questioned; the line around the leader remained without comparable procedural movement. Olesya’s story and the questioning line around Galman and Vinokur matter because they show how a complaint enters, or does not enter, the legal process.

At least three people publicly named Laitman: Katya, Mona, and Olesya. Together with witnesses whose testimony appeared in criminal proceedings or journalistic investigations - “R,” the clinical specialist, and others - the documented cases reach at least five.

In the official police response given to TheMarker, police said the 2018 investigation had been completed, the materials had been transferred to prosecutors, and prosecutors had decided to close the case. A “check” is being conducted on the new information. Police did not initiate contact with any of the five women.

This investigation continues. If you have information relevant to these events, or if you were yourself a participant or witness, you can contact us.