Gabbay allegedly raped a 14-year-old girl, who resides in a government-funded hostel for at-risk teens, for pay, and coerced her to gang rape.
Israel Police have released a statement on Saturday night, saying a thorough investigation was conducted based on a complaint received on behalf of the 14-year-old girl. The investigation led them to the suspicion Gabbay was also in contact with several at-risk minors.
Recent reports of multiple gang rapes of minors have brought public attention to gang sexual assault in Israel, where the rate of violent sexual offenses is approximately 10% higher than the average for OECD countries, according to the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel (ARCCI), which cited information published by Israel’s Public Security Ministry.
Between 2014 and 2017, approximately 40% of the victims of gang sexual offenses were youth (aged 13 to 18). In 2018, they made up 60% of the victims of gang sexual assault – a 50% increase.
In 2018 and 2019, the proportion of the nearly 25,000 sexual offenses reported to ARCCI classified as “gang sexual offenses” was approximately 3%. In 2018 the proportion stood at 3.3% and in 2019 it was 3.5%.
In Israel’s most infamous case in recent years, 11 suspects were arrested in September in relation to the alleged gang rape of a 16-year-old at the Red Sea Hotel in Eilat. In nearly all of these cases, those arrested and indicted were in their teens or early 20s.
Eve Young contributed to this article.