tel aviv
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A recently released Israeli hostage has claimed that he was subjected to a “horrifying” and humiliating sexual assault while being held in Gaza.
Rom Braslavsky, who was working as a security guard when he was kidnapped from the Nova Music Festival on October 7, said in an interview with Channel 13’s Hajnoor that he was stripped and tied up while in the custody of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
He is the first male hostage to publicly claim that he was sexually assaulted while in captivity.
“They stripped me of my clothes, my underwear, everything. They tied me up…” Braslavsky, 21, said, but his voice trailed off before he could finish his sentence. “When I was completely naked. I was wiped out, I was dying without food. And I prayed to God – please save me, get me out of this situation already, and you just say to yourself… What the hell is going on?”
Blaslavsky said this was “unequivocally” a sexual assault.
“This was sexual violence, and its main purpose was to humiliate me. The purpose was to destroy my dignity, and that’s exactly what he did,” Braslavsky said in an interview filmed last week and shared with CNN. “It’s hard to talk specifically about that part. I don’t like talking about it.”
CNN has reached out to Palestinian Islamic Jihad for comment.
Braslavsky was one of the last 20 living hostages released last month after more than two years in captivity as part of a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. He is being held by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian militant group in Gaza allied with Hamas, which also held Israeli hostages during the war.
Earlier this year, militants released footage of Braslavsky looking emaciated, but his father said he did not recognize his son. The mother told Israeli media that she was pressured to convert to Islam in exchange for food.
“It’s terrible. It was horrifying,” Blaslavski said of his sexual assault allegations. “I just pray to God that it stops. And every day while I was there, every time I got hit, I said to myself, ‘I survived another day in hell.'”
“When I wake up tomorrow morning, I’m going to have another hell. And another hell. And another hell,” he said. “It won’t end.”
Other Israeli hostages have claimed that they were sexually assaulted and abused while in Hamas custody, but Hamas officials have repeatedly denied these claims. However, until now only female hostages have come forward.
Israeli hostage Amit Susana, who was released after nearly two months in captivity, claimed that he was sexually assaulted at gunpoint by Hamas guards. She is one of more than a dozen former hostages who have said they experienced or witnessed sexual violence while in captivity, according to a report compiled by the Dinar Project.
Pramila Patten, the UN special representative on sexual violence in conflict, also released a report last year claiming to have found “clear and convincing” information that hostages in Gaza were being sexually abused.
