Katya Sukhova's Testimony (katia.soukhova@gmail.com): Sexual Exploitation in Bnei Baruch
Where you are in the dossier: Harm and testimonies Testimony
Bnei Baruch Investigation · Entry point · Part 1 of 4
Katya Sukhova signed her testimony about sexual abuse by Michael Laitman under her own name. Her email katia.soukhova@gmail.com and phone +33652447883 are publicly available; her activity in her public Google Maps profile is easily traceable. Israeli police never reached out to her.
Katya set this testimony down in writing and signed it in the presence of a lawyer. It never reached a courtroom: by her own account, information about her was passed to people who threatened her and her family, and in the end she refused to testify against Laitman. Everything that follows is therefore drawn from her signed testimony: her documented words, not a later retelling.
2011. France. The Douiev Coordinators
Katya’s path into the group began in 2011 in France through Bnei Baruch’s media channels. Distance courses and online broadcasts carried the central doctrine: connection with the Creator was impossible without complete submission to the leader. Critical thought was treated as spiritual decline.
The coordinators of the European network, husband and wife Jacques Douiev and Noam Douiev, drew Katya into constant service work: translating books, filling websites, handling daily logistics. The more unpaid hours she gave, the more dependent she became on the organization. The broader route into that dependency is covered in the article on the path inside the system; in Katya’s case it ran through the French group, translation work, and personal access to the leader.
The 2014 Congress. Mineral Water and Special Status
In 2014, at a congress in Israel, Katya found herself next to Laitman. By then she had absorbed statements such as: “I am the only one who will lead you to the Creator.”
During a visit to his apartment in Petah Tikva, Laitman called her out of the crowd for a group photograph. Afterward, she was appointed as a temporary personal assistant at the next European congress. Her duties included direct service: purchasing a special mineral water, pouring tea, on-site logistics. Physical access and routine assignments taught her to understand closeness to the leader as exceptional status, and to stay ready for what he asked.
On the photo, Laitman is looking at Katya’s chest while she holds her friend’s hand in support. This is exactly what Katya described in her lawsuit—she told her friend about it, but the friend didn’t believe it was even possible.
Arye Makarevich Explains the Rules
During the European congress, after an evening lecture, Laitman invited her to his room. She did not come. The following morning, when she tried to approach him and hand him coffee, Laitman reacted aggressively. The instruction to “not let her near him anymore” spread instantly through the inner circle.
Then the entourage stepped in. Bodyguard and assistant Arye Makarevich calmly explained to her that the married leader “had the right” to such a choice. He added that Laitman had specifically chosen her from a photograph and that he preferred blondes. Inside the inner circle, the episode was treated as normal: assistants removed barriers and framed the leader’s demand as acceptable. Katya found herself trapped: refusal meant losing the only connection to the Creator.
In her signed testimony, that conversation is set down in her own words. Makarevich began with himself: he was married, but “sometimes he sees a woman he likes, and that’s fine,” a thinly veiled hint that sleeping with the married leader would be “fine” for her too. He spoke of the photograph and of Laitman’s taste for “blondes” as a matter already settled. And when she told him she was married, he simply gave no answer.
Mona describes a related role played by intermediaries in a different biography. Katya’s chronology remains narrower: refusal, immediate loss of access, and then an assistant explaining that the leader’s choice had to be accepted as a spiritual norm.
In the photo from Laitman’s circle is Arie Makarevich—his bodyguard and assistant, who rented him an expensive room with a huge bed during the congress “for spiritual rituals” 🙂
Petah Tikva. Night Calls. Fever
The final stage unfolded at the headquarters in Petah Tikva. Laitman intensified the pressure through a series of video calls and invitations to Israel, moving between intense attention and complete silence.
According to Katya’s signed testimony, in his study inside the apartment Laitman told her outright that he wanted to sleep with her. Hoping to please him without going that far, she offered to give him a massage, and he shot back: “Do you think I have a problem with women?” His wife, he added, had not lived with him for twenty years. When Katya objected that she was married and that intimacy outside marriage was forbidden to her, Laitman only laughed: “we’re not going to get married.”
He obtained her consent through pressure, not persuasion. After she refused, she says, Laitman withdrew into silence again, alternating it with sudden shows of warmth, until she could no longer bear the mere thought that he was angry with her. “In the end, because of the psychological state I was in, I agreed,” the testimony reads.
The act itself she describes without euphemism: “we had intercourse… for me it was revolting; I just waited for it to be over.” Laitman talked her out of using a condom: “don’t worry, you won’t get pregnant.” The next morning he called her back, but by her account he could not get an erection; he demanded oral sex, and when she refused he grew furious and threw her out of the apartment. Afterward Katya’s temperature and blood pressure spiked, and she lay in bed for two days. Laitman never contacted her again.
She delivers her own verdict on what happened: “looking back, I feel that he coerced me into it using psychological manipulation, and that he exploited the trust I had placed in him.”
Aftermath. Threats. Silence
Upon returning home, a group representative she had turned to for help advised her not to focus on what had happened and simply to “continue studying,” treating the contact as a spiritual obstacle. Later, Laitman attempted to bring her back through correspondence, suggesting they “move on” as though nothing had occurred. The response offered a continuation of her studies rather than protection.
The break came only after Katya found criticism of the movement on Facebook (the person is identified as M.). For the first time she received an external, non-indoctrinated perspective that showed her a spiritual path separate from Laitman.
Once she was out of the group, Katya understood what it had all been for: “I wasn’t working for the Creator at all, but for a self-interested organization that tries to control people, and above all for Laitman, who used my spiritual aspirations to satisfy his carnal desires.”
When Katya prepared to bring her story into the public domain (in the course of working with journalist Raviv Drucker), the information was leaked to the group. Threats were directed at Katya and her family. Fearing for her safety, she was forced to request that the case not be brought to Israeli court.
After that, the question was no longer only Katya’s relationship to the group; it was whether anyone outside the group would review the complaint. How complaints and testimony failed to become a full investigation is covered in the separate investigation into silenced testimonies. Mona’s testimony gives a neighboring but different scale: sixteen years of dependency and pressure after leaving the group.
Katya was prepared to confirm this signed testimony in court as well. But according to her account, the confidential details about her were handed to people who wanted to keep her from testifying; after threats against her life and her family’s, she declared that she would give no testimony against Laitman.
The procedural result remained the same: Israeli police never reached out to her.