The State Prosecutor’s Office on Sunday asked the Supreme Court to increase the one-year prison sentence given to a Jerusalem father convicted of severely abusing his infant son. According to the conviction, beginning when the baby was just one month old, the father repeatedly choked him until he passed out, as a way of getting him to sleep.
The Jerusalem District Court set a sentencing range of two to four years. It then went below that range, citing the father’s rehabilitation and the time that had passed, and sentenced him to 12 months in prison. Prosecutors had sought five years.
Over several months, the father pinched, bit and shook his son. When the baby cried in the evening, he would press two fingers against his neck until the infant lost consciousness for a few seconds and went quiet. The court found that he did this repeatedly.
In the appeal, attorney Yitzchak Perdman of the prosecution’s Criminal Division argues that the lower court got it wrong twice: first in setting the range, and again in deciding to go below it. These were extreme acts of abuse, repeated against a helpless baby, and they put his life in real danger, the appeal says. Time after time, the father chose to stop his son’s crying by choking him unconscious.
The prosecution also says rehabilitation was no reason for leniency. The father denied the abuse throughout the proceedings, and some of the professionals treating him didn’t know how serious it was. No probation report was submitted, and the court itself expressed doubt about whether he had come to grips with what he had done.
The appeal says the baby faced a mortal danger that “only by miracle was not realized.” A one-year sentence for such severe and repeated abuse “constitutes real contempt” for crimes against children by their caregivers, prosecutors wrote, and fails to protect minors who cannot protect themselves.
The case was handled in the district court by attorneys Nati Ben Chamo and Hadar Rubinstein of the Jerusalem District Prosecutor’s Office.
This case is one of several child abuse cases to surface recently. About two weeks ago, three suspects were arrested on suspicion of abusing children at a daycare center in Ariel, after investigators reviewed security camera footage. Earlier this month, a kindergarten aide in Hod Hasharon was sentenced to 10 years in prison for abusing eight toddlers over a three months period.
