Case of Itai Leibovich
(AKA: Itay Leibovich)
Kindergarten Security Guard - Tel Aviv, Israel
Teacher / Computer Instructor - Tel Aviv, ISrael
Itali Leibovich was convicted on two counts of rape and other counts of sodomy, attempted rape and indecent assault of four girls aged six to eleven. He was sentanced to 24 years in prison (January 11, 2004) for the rape of two girls and the sexual abuse of several others. Some of these crimes were committed while he was working as a security guard at a kindergarten in the Ramat Aviv neighborhood of north Tel Aviv. Leibovitch was also sentenced on several charges of sexual abuse, which he committed while working as a computers instructor in June 2002. His victims included two five-year-old girls, a four-year-old and a six-year-old. He also abused five girls at a home for children from broken homes.
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Table of Contents:
2002
- 24-year-old found guilty of sexually assaulting young girls (11/02/2002)
2003
- Behind the Ordinary Face 03/28/2003)
2004
- Pedophile sentenced to 24 years (01/11/2004)
- Tel Aviv pedophile sentenced to 24 years (01/11/2004)
24-year-old found guilty of sexually assaulting young girls
By Zvi Harel, Haaretz Correspondent
Ha'Aretz - November 2, 2003
Tel Aviv District Court on Sunday convicted a 24-year-old man on two counts of rape and other counts of sodomy, attempted rape and indecent assault of four girls aged six to eleven.
Itai Leibovich, a Tel Aviv resident, had admitted committing the acts.
The indictment stated that Leibovich, who was employed as a courier at the time, would follow the girls as they walked home from school.
In a previous court hearing, Leibovich expressed remorse for the mental anguish he had caused to his victims.
Sentencing in the case is due to take place in one month's time.
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Pedophile sentenced to 24 years
By Zvi Harel, Haaretz Correspondent
Haaretz - Sun., January 11, 2004 (Tevet 17, 5764)
The Tel Aviv District Court on Sunday sentenced convicted pedophile Itay Leibovitch to 24 years in prison for the rape of two girls and the sexual abuse of several others.
Leibovitch was convicted three months ago, after confessing to the charges against him. He was convicted with raping a nine-year-old and an eleven-year-old girl.
The judges rejected Leibovitch's claims that his actions were a direct result of the sexual abuse he suffered as a child. Leibovitch claimed that through his actions, he was punishing the girls for the pain, suffering and social injustice he suffered. Judge Saviona Rothlevy responded by saying that revenge is not an uncontrollable instinct, and that he did not deserve clemency.
The judges also noted that Leibovitch's actions involved trickery and guile. The jobs he applied for, a computer instructor, a security guard at a kindergarten, and an instructor at a center for children from troubled homes, would enable him close access to young girls.
In one case, he approached his victim's house and pretended to be a messenger with a letter for her parents. The girl wanted to call her mother before letting him in, but he insisted she open the door, telling her he was in a rush. When the girl opened the door, Leibovitch entered the home, attacked her and threatened her, telling her that if she screamed he would hurt her. When the girl asked what he wanted, he responded "sex."
Leibovitch also followed his victims on their way home from school, and picked girls that he saw unlocking the door, assuming their parents were not at home.
During both rapes, Leibovitch also caused his victims serious bodily harm.
Leibovitch was also sentenced on several charges of sexual abuse, which he committed while working as a computers instructor in June 2002. His victims included two five-year-old girls, a four-year-old and a six-year-old. He also abused five girls at a home for children from broken homes.
According to the charge sheet, while working as a security guard at a kindergarten in the Ramat Aviv neighborhood of north Tel Aviv, Leibovitch took a six-year-old child aside, undressed her, and instructed her not to tell anyone.
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Tel Aviv pedophile sentenced to 24 years
By Etgar Lefkovits
Jerusalem Post - Jan. 11, 2004
A Tel Aviv pedophile who raped or otherwise sexually molested at least seven girls from the age of four to 11 was sentenced Sunday by the Tel Aviv district court to 24 years in prison.
Itai Leibovitch, 24, was convicted in the same court three months ago, after confessing to raping two of his young victims, aged nine and eleven, who he had followed home from school, and sexually molesting the five others.
The judges rejected Leibovitch's claims that his actions were a direct result of the sexual abuse he suffered as a child.
In their ruling, the three-justice panel noted that Leibovitch used trickery and guile to carry out his attacks, gaining employment at places such as a Ramat Gan kindergarten and a center for troubled children that would put him in close proximity to his young victims.
In one case, Leibovitch knocked on the door of his nine year old victim's house and pretending to be a messenger with a letter for her parents. The girl wanted to call her mother before letting him in, but he insisted she open the door, telling her he was "in a rush," and it was just "a small letter." When the girl opened the door, Leibovitch entered the home, attacked and threatened her, telling the girl that if she screamed he would hurt her. When the girl asked what he wanted, he responded "sex," and then went on to rape her.
The prosecution had asked the court to sentence Leibovitch to 35 years in prison.
Although sympathetic to such a request, the court ruled that legislation - allowing consecutive sentences to be handed down in sexual abuse cases as they commonly are in murder cases - would be needed in order to impose the more severe sentence, a move they recommended.
"Is the murder of the souls of innocent young girls of a lesser measure than murder?" Justice Judge Saviona Rothlevy wrote in the ruling.
With a third of his sentence reduced for good behavior, the 24-year-old pedophile could be freed at age 40.
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Behind the Ordinary Face
By: Mariana Oletski, Yaron Frost
Tel-Aviv Magazine, the weekly edition - March 28, 2003
(Translated from Hebrew to English by Na'ama Yehuda - Original Hebrew article below)
Behind the ordinary face of Itai Leibovitch (24), the pony tail and ring in eyebrow, hid two people. The first: a graduate of a high school for the arts, a talented musician in an orchestra, a combat solider who finished basic training in Excellence. The second: a lost teen, eaten by rage-bursts, with weird sexual preferences, violent and shunned, who tried to put an end to his life.
"It is important to understand," says, Y., a good friend of Itai Leibovitch, "Itay isn't crazy and not mentally ill. Really not. He is just a narcissist. Looked for fame. In my opinion, he wanted to take the place of Benny Sela. He wanted people to say "he is a serial rapist" and think about him and not Benny Sela for these reasons, it is hard for me to believe that he will get to trial. It is my opinion that he will kill himself first. He loves himself too much to end up as just a rapist who was caught."
The first rape Leibovitch admitted to took place on February the 12th this year (2003--translator). It happened when he was working as messenger. During his shift he started following a nine year old girl who was on her way home from school. He knocked on the door and identified himself as a mailman. After the child opened the door, he pushed her inside and raped her cruelly, and with showing severe violence.
Even when the police investigators heard the initial description of the rapist, they realized that this it not a regular profile.
According to the child's description, the assailant was young, with long hair, a pony tail and a ring in his eyebrow. When he was caught and his picture was broadcast on TV, the whole country went into shock: on the bench in the court room sat someone who was partially man partially teenagers, with long hair and a fashionable pierced eyebrow. Nothing to cue for the horrible things he did.
Even the biographical details brought up many questions: How can it be that a son from a good family, who graduated from a select high school in Tel-Aviv, who enjoyed playing the Tuba, who served a time in a combat unit--could rape little girls not even ten years old in such horrible brutality?
Ironi Alef (Urban school #1-translator) "Nothing that would hint..."
Those were the same questions asked this week by friends and family. Itai Leibovitch, 24, was never an ordinary person. But whoever knew him well knew that his life course and his complex personality would have brought him--sooner or later--to a point of explosion. He grew up on Tel-Aviv, and lived with his parents in Eben-Gevirol Street. According to relatives, he always found it difficult to get used to boundaries and mingle with his environment. Already in kindergarten he'd come home complaining about bullying and teasing by other children. He completed his Elementary schooling in Grats School. "I. Leibovitch" is written under the smiling portrait in the year book. Few of the students who studied with him could remember him. The writing in the year book also spared details to testify for his character: "Itai wasn't a bad sportsman, each jump he did was really good? He loved to call kids by nicknames, and liked to make up strange names." In Middle school, he learned in Ironi Dalet (Urban school #4--translator) and in tenth grade he moved to the music program in Ironi Alef. He didn't have many friends there, either. Yafit Bar, who was in his class: "He was an unusual character. Very introverted. He would dress unkemptly and looked strange. I can definitely tell that he didn't have many friends in school. He didn't stand up in music, either. In spite of all this I remember that he seemed like a pretty nice person to me, I even went to his home and to work on a project with him."
Motty Label, who studied in the music program with him: "I didn't know him well, but he wasn't strange to me. Rebellious like every high-schooler. Nothing that would hint to what he'd become today."
Outside school Leibovitch had quite a few friends, boys and girls, and he led a lively life. One of his friends told about a crisis he had at 17, when he found that one of his girlfriends was unfaithful to him. The friend: "This incident, I think, caused him for the first but not the last time, to be on the brink of suicide. He would cry to me a lot. I think this is the reason why after that time he was unfaithful to almost every girlfriend he had, and caused trauma to each one who was with him."
Even during his crises, Leibovitch never gave up music. His affection to the subject started already at age ten, and he learned to play the Tuba. He took lessons from Ya'akov Kling in Givatayim, from evolved from a teacher to some sort of a friend.
Klings descriptions paint a picture of a child with problematic and extreme behavior, but also talented and sensitive. Kling: "Itai has a very complex personality, complicated. He was pretty attached to me for a period of time, we would talk. We would smoke together and talk. He wasn't one of those dark fellows. In my opinion, at a certain point he simply lost control, probably due to things that happened to him along the way."
Between the end of high-school and his starting his military service, Leibovitch lived with two of his friends in is grandmother's apartment. One of them says: "That whole period we drank and went wild. Itai didn't quite know if he wanted to go to the army. It was a very difficult period for him and he was confused. It got worse and worse and came to a point where we were afraid that he'd hurt himself."
The Military Band: "Something in his eyes, sort of scary.."
Closer to his starting the military service, Leibovitch got a low medical index. When he started his service in August of 1997, he became part of the Military band. The Army period probably increased his sense of distance from society. Already in the beginning of his time with the band, where he'd spent more than a year, Leibovitch distanced himself from his environment. His friends in the band remember him as a quiet and distanced person, who tended to changing moods. "There was something in his eyes, sort of scary," says V., who served in the band with him. "He wasn't a social person and never one of the guys, outsider."
Another of his band friends: "I remember that he would get excited easily. You could say to him one word out of place, and it would get to screaming and cursing, real extreme moods. Sometime, if he was given tasks that called for responsibility, he would try to prove himself, but we never got along with him. He wasn't a good player, either. When we read in the papers that he was called 'a talented musician' we died laughing."
On top of the fact that he didn't connect with anyone in the band, Leibovitch's friends tell that he had discipline problems. "Before every ceremony with the band there is a military-style-performance, and everything needs to be tip top, but Itai would come unkempt, with his hair too long and his clothing rumpled," says a friend at the band.
A solider who served as a shift lieutenant in one of the guard-duties that Leibovitch did, remembers that he caught him taking apart bullets and spreading the powder on the ammunition. When he asked him what he was doing, Leibovitch replied that he was performing an experiment to check if it is possible to ignite the plastic part of the rifle. Other players in the band remember that Itai was a motorcycle freak and would arrive for rehearsal on his motorcycle.
A player in the band: "The man would go crazy on his motorcycle in a way that I never saw in my life. He would do flips and jumps on stairs. He'd drive without a helmet and did dangerous things. Beyond that, he had an amazing technical understanding of engines and motorcycles."
Leibovitch's path with the Military band ended about a year after he joined the army, following an incident that happened during a performance of the band in a stage arts' building in Tel-Aviv. The performance was with the singer Yehoram Ga'on. In the middle of the performance, while he sings, Ga'on saw one of the band players talking on his cellular phone. The instrument he played was the Tuba, and the player was Leibovitch.
Ga'on: "I remember singing, and all of a sudden I see him very involved with a personal call. I stopped singing, stopped the performance, and said to him--in front of the audience--that I understand I am disturbing him and to let me know when he finished his conversation. The conductor, Ziko Gratsiani, approached him, and he closed the phone and the performance went on."
The brother, Asaf: "Itai made it into the band on his own. In general, he was very talented in music, an auto-deduct who taught himself from young age to play the piano, guitar, and drums. He also wrote a lot. His natural tendency was toward Heavy Metal. In the band he was perfectly okay until that incident with Ga'on, after which he was thrown in jail for two weeks."
According to Asaf and several others of Leibovitch's friends, the first stay in jail was one of significant breaking points Leibovitch had during his military service.
Gdud Charuv (Charuv Battalion--translator)- Quarrels.
Leibovitch was thrown out of the band. In spite of that he tried, and succeeded, in bringing up his medical military profile. He joined the class #2 of the forth unit of the battalion. Although it was initially clear that he was truly attempting to get involved in the unit, he soon enough started to adopt the same behavior patterns that characterized his time in the band.
"Even though that in the beginning he tried, we could all see that something wasn't right with him. He would get crazy, promise all of us a bullet in the head, would load his gun without a reason," says, T., a friend in the unit. "In a combat unit, you need a minimum of solidarity and mutual help, and he would start fights with people, didn't help us service the vehicles, didn't want to do guard-duty, and one day he tossed someone out of his bed because he didn't want to go up to guard duty."
Soon enough Leibovitch has a nickname in the unit: "Otoati" which means "fierce" in Amhari. One of the Ethyopian soldiers in the unit gave him the nickname, partly because of the French beard on his chin. Many of the unit remember that Itai had a girlfriend who was still in high-school, who would once in a while arrive at the base to be with him. He never introduced her by name to anyone. Members of the unit tell that sometimes Itai would start quarrels with his friends, which resulted in him "getting some" from his friends in revenge.
One incident that they remember happened during a week where the unit was in open-air training.
When soldiers sleep in tents at night, they usually put their shoes outside. When he woke, Leibovitch found out that his friends in the unit filled his shoes with mud. During morning calls, the head of the unit started to investigate the incident and held back from going home several soldiers who were involved for hours.
Leibovitch continued to serve time behind bars, and especially because of rage bursts. The total time he spent in jail was two months. "In effect," said one of the members of his unit, "in spite of everything, I feel some form of sadness for the collective resentment we showed him."
T.: "There's no doubt about it. He got lots of hits from others. Real hits. Many hit him because he'd skip guard-duty and cause others to be stuck there. On the other hand, he was also a source for laughter, because he has stories from here to no end. He told us that one time he put his girlfriend in the trunk on the way to Eilat, and similar stories. Another time, in the end of a training trail, he decided to take from everyone the stuff they were carrying--personal sacks, water jugs, weapons--everything--he took onto himself and walked with it like a nutcase."
Not only Leibovitch's unit members had confrontations with him. The head of the unit describes a problematic solider. "Although he really tried in the beginning to be a good solider, he slowly started getting into problematic situation," says G, the head of the unit. "He would get mad and out of control. The soldiers fought once right in front on my eyes. He and another solider started hitting each other, and we of course stopped it. As faculty, it was hard to protect him from the teasing and tricks of his friends. It was hard to prove things. He and I had many talks, and he opened up to me considerably and told me that he had problems with the rest of the unit. In the end, at the end of the term, we sat and talked with the soldiers, and found out that there were many things that the unit did to him that we didn't even know about. He wasn't always the bad one."
The commander of the unit tells that he was aware of Leibovitch's relationships with his unit members. "He loved to tease and provoke people, there were times he was targeted, but many times he would lose his head. In the end, we decided to get rid of him."
The brother Asaf: "He told us what he was going through and we thought it was part of his general problem with boundaries. He actually finished basic training with excellence, even won two tickets for a Maccabi game. Only in the advanced training the problems started. During one of our phone calls, he told me something that sounds like horrible things he was asked to do while serving in the occupied territories, stuff he even found hard to discuss with me over the phone. He said, 'listen, I am doing things here that I can't deal with.'"
Although Leibovitch actually didn't finish the training, he has a full page in his unit's section of the final album made by the forth battalion, called, "the page of Otoati". In the page there are quotes of sentences he said and laughable situations he was part of.
Among them. "Itai, or Otoati as his name in Amhary, came to us at the end of the basic training, and taught all of us what a real "jobnik" (an army slang for someone who does the minimum needed and tries to get away from doing stuff) until he got thrown out of the training"; "When no one wanted to relieve him from guard duty, he entered the tent, and rose A. in 'get-up' orders until the latter got mad and through a shoe at his back. Otoati moved to another tent and there he tries to hit A. on his head with the gun until Ch. and R. calmed him down"; "Otoati came out of dinner and insisted on looking for food in the garbage cans"; "(Otoati--Translator) Is proud of how he took his girlfriend for a ride with her in the trunk"; "Otoati tries the strength of the 'Tsolevet' (a piece of ammunition-translator) on this guy's head..."
A few weeks after the beginning of the army's work project, Itai was moved to the command unit for a short interim period. Idan, a solider from the battalion who was with him for that period, says that he met a strange and sickly man. According to Idan, "he brought all kind of movies where he took pictures of his girlfriend in freakish X-rated way. He showed me the movies even though I'd never asked to. I told him, 'you are nuts, you are simply nuts.' I was in shock from it."
After a short period with the command unit, Leibovitch was transferred to be a security guy in Sirkin Base near Petach Tikva. There he didn't have to mingle with the other soldiers and was a loner. Soldiers who served with him through that time found it hard to remember him or even his name. He completed his military service in Sirkin,
Intimate Relationships. "Strange ideas in bed."
Upon his release from the service, Leibovitch started working in temporary handy jobs. He volunteered to guide children on computers as part of a nonprofit to help children in distress, worked as a messenger, sometimes even serves as a security guard in a kindergarten in Ramat-Aviv Gimel. The police is looking into additional complaints that were reported against him from those work places (see below).
Leibovitch would party a lot. Especially in Azimoot and Lilenbloom 25. He went out with many girls. Many of them 16-17 years old. This was when he started to collect used condoms that had the names of the girls he slept with. One of them is Osnat (pseudonym), who was Leibovitch's friend for several months.
"I met Itai about two years ago through other friends," tells Osnat. "In the beginning we couldn't stand each other. I thought he was a disgusting man, he was very cynical and hurt people's feelings a lot. After a year or so we went out on a Saturday someplace and he gave the impression of a nice and open man. This is where it started between us. He always thought that he was smarter of everyone else and knew better. Even in bed. He had a box under the bed with all kinds of sex toys in it, all kind of cuffs and other more abnormal things.
"On one hand he was a very sane man in my eyes, on the other hand he had stuff that normal people don't have. He just didn't know how to satisfy himself. He would tell his friends that he likes young ones or virgins. He had all kinds of strange ideas in bed. He would tell me about his fantasies, like tying someone up so that he has complete control. He wanted me to take part in this fantasy, but I refused."
How did the friends you had together react when they found out about him being arrested?
"We sat together a few friends, and talked. I couldn't believe it. He also hard-core pornography pictures on his computer, but he would hide those in a file that only he could access. But it's not that he didn't show it to people, he did, and was very proud of it."
How do you explain it that he was proud of all these things?
"He has a lot of self-esteem. He would show off everything he did, good or bad. I am not at all sure that he even discriminated between the things. If Itai wouldn't tell people something, in his view it would be as if it never happened. So back then I also heard about the tapes he filmed of his previous girlfriend. I never saw them, but I didn't think that he would put a camera someplace and video us."
And you think it happened to you?
"I hope not."
And did you hear about the used condoms with the names?
"I knew about it. I knew he kept them. I didn't know if he kept the condoms from the time I was with him, because we split. After two months or so I began to feel that he was controlling. and I wrote him a letter with everything I felt. He read the letter, laughed at me, and treated me with a lot of belittling. It was why we split, actually.
"A friend of mine told me that after we split, when we went out the three of us, he tries to pick her up. A few months ago he tried to contact me through a friend and she asked why I am not in touch with him, but I refused to talk with him since. When what he did became known even my parents were in shock. They knew him pretty well."
And how do you feel about it being known, personally?
"I find it hard to believe that I went out with someone like that. The feeling today, after I know what he'd done, is disgust. I am asking myself how I could have been with him."
Will you come to his trial?
"I am considering it, because I want to see regret in his eyes. When they showed his arrest on TV, he behaved as usual, full of self-esteem. He is a very sane man. It is not true that he can't control his urges, he controls all the time. He ruined the lives of these girls and also ours, his friends."
The investigation. "This, this is the man."
Leibovitch did the first rape associated with him, as claimed, about a month and a half ago. The second case happened about three weeks ago. This time it was a 10 year old girl, a daughter of foreign workers. Only when the investigators came across a similar description to the one the first girl who was raped gave them, they realized that it is about a serial rapist.
From then on there was a branched-out investigation. The investigators got into some difficulties, because according to their assessment it was about a new sexual offender. This was why existing registries of sexual offenders were useless. What helped the investigation was the description from the victims, and the similar sketch.
Master Sergeant Guy Cohen was the cop who detected Leibovitch last Thursday, and decided to follow him. "We were a team of three cops. About twenty to ten in the morning we saw a guy on a motorcycle in the corner of Eben Gevirol and Shaul Hamelech. What got my attention was the long pony tail sticking out of his helmet. That moment I knew that it is worth checking out.
"We decided to take him into follow up. We rode behind him about five minutes or so, until he stopped at the corner of Kaplan and De-Vinchy. He got off to do a delivery, and we just waited. When he got down, he was without a helmet, and we saw his face. Somewhere I felt that it this was it, he was the person. We saw the piercing in the eyebrow, like the victims described.
"We asked him to come with us. He was very calm, so calm that it made us even more suspicious. When he got into the car he started to say strange utterances, like 'I am living inside a movie, I don't know what you want from me.' We told him it is just a ten minute questioning. To give a sample, give his version, and go back to work."
Immediately following his release, Leibovitch understood that he has limited time. He came to his mother's place of work, confessed to her about all that happened, and told her he was going to kill himself. His mother, not knowing what else to do, gave him a silent approval to do so.
"He convinced me," she told in interviews she gave this week. "This kid was miserable all his life and I didn't want him to suffer anymore."
The brother Asaf, who was updated about the situation, called, M. one of Itai's best friends, and asked him to prevent the suicide. M. tells: "I was present in other times when Itai threatened to kill himself and this was why they called me this time, too. I got there, Itai's dad opened the door, Itai was already at home. He showed me the article with the sketch and told me, 'it's me.' I told him, 'no chance that's you.' He told me again, 'that's me.' I started arguing with him until I realized that he was serious. I was sure he was pulling my leg.
"And then he told me that he raped to girls. Didn't tell me any details, but that he was tested by the police and that they took DNA from him. I was raging, absolutely raging. I told him, what do you want to do with this, asked if he wants to give himself up to the police. He said that he didn't know and wants to sleep on it. Later I called Itai and told him that he has to come to my house, no questions asked. He came and together we decided to give him up to the police. He said to me: "I want to close this. I was wring, and I want to pay."
In an investigation that happened that day, Leibovitch admitted before the police investigators. He said that even when he was 18, he started to fantasize about little girls. It started from surfing the net in pedophile sites, to touching girls on the street. According to a source in the investigation, Leibovitch claimed that only two weeks ago the urge became uncontrollable and brought to actualization.
With the developments in the investigation and it's broadcast in the media, there were (at the time of closing for this magazine) there more complaints to the police regarding the period when Leibovitch was a computer guide for teens, as well as a security guard in the Ramat-Aviv kindergarten. "All the time, we are trying to figure out what caused that," says the brother, Asaf, "but it is hard to point at a specific turning point in a person's life, which were so miserable."
Y. an old friend of Leibovitch: "Only a few days ago, we sat with a few more friends. There was no strange behavior in him, everything was as usual. We sat and talked politics. I don't want to see Itai anymore, it is a man a counted on and it came like a Boom onto me, not something I anticipated. He doesn't deserve a prize, he deserves punishment. He needs treatment but also punishment. I don't think that I would have been able to be at his side and help him with this situation."
Asaf: "In the recent weeks we didn't feel anything from him. I asked myself how could it be that he'd come in, eat, play with the dog, and talk to me as in nothing happened. I don't read anything that is written about the case. I can't read about the things my brother did, and beyond the fact that it is about two rapes I don't know anything. I asked my friends not to tell me any details about those who were raped, because it would be too hard for me to deal with it. I see what he did as a horrid thing, and I can't connect it to him although it looks like I don't have a choice."
M: "I love Itai, but I am ashamed to say today that I am his friend. I will never forgive him for what he did. I would bless anyone with a friend like him, but today I know that someplace he is a monster."
Not Only Girls.
During the school year of 2001-2002, Leibovitch started working as a security guard in a kindergarten in Ramat-Aviv. In the kindergarten there are about 75b children, aged four to six. According to complaints to the police since Leibovitch was arrested, there is a suspicion that he molested children while he was working there.
To the "TEl AVIV" paper came a testimony from a mother of one of the children, who claims that Leibovitch came to her with obscene suggestions several times, when she collected her child from kindergarten.
The mother, K: "In the beginning he gave me the good impression of a responsible man. He would walk around, do rounds. He knew the children by name, all the parents' names and the siblings. During the year he addressed one of the mothers with all kinds of propositions. He recommended himself as a paid person not through the company, in the afternoon in the afterschool. Several times he was found asleep. Among his oddities to responsibilities it was hard for us to understand who he really was. One of the mothers when to the teacher and told her that he should be looked at because he is strange. "He addressed me, personally, with some propositions. Lude propositions for meetings. He also brought a girlfriend of his and tried to persuade us to take her as a baby-sitter. To this day I still have her number in my calendar. He brought her especially in the time I get to the school so that we'd meet. Next to me he started playing macho games with her, and burnt her hand with the lighter while playing."
Do you know other mothers whom he proposed lude propositions to?
"I know of others, but they don't want to be exposed.
K: "I wrote a letter to the head supervisor in the municipality, and told him what happened. They promised me there that this man won't ever guard in kindergartens again."
Did you go to the police?
"No."
K, a friend of Leibovitch, tells a story that would arise many wonders. "One time, about a year ago, we were in the room in his home, and he offered a plan to me in a level of 'let's go and to it'. He proposed to me a details plan of rape. Showed me all the stuff we'd need for it, he had it in his room, in a box under the bed, equipment for tying up and cuffing.
"I remember that I laughed at him, because I wasn't aware at the time to how serious the man was on the subject. A few days ago, when I saw the articles on his arrest, I wasn't at all surprised, only interested to know how he got caught, what he did that took him down."
Did you ever tell this to anyone?
"No I never told this to anyone until now."
Responses
* Lawyer Ze-ev Alony, from Leibovitch's attorneys: "Right now the things are still being investigated by the police, and soon will also be in the medical-psychiatrical domain, which in our opinion, is acute in a case of this kind. One day it will teach us why these things happened, if indeed they happened. We will learn what brings a good man with a lot of feelings to do all of a sudden such an abnormal thing."
* Lawyer Menachem Rubinstein, one of Leibovitch's attorneys: "In one way the case is clear. What will need to be clarified is the insides of his soul and how he comes to do such things, while it seems like his behavior is very normative, like any guy his age from North Tel Aviv. If someone will dive into the depths of his soul and the difficult circumstances of his life, he would probably come to some difficult conclusions. One of the questions that is asked he how did it happen that until now, in all the places he was in, in his life, no one paid attention to it."
* From Tel Aviv's municipality is was told: "We had complaints about Leibovitch, in the time he worked as a security guard for the municipality, among them a complain to the head supervisor about a mother who complained about sexual harassment. Not all the complaints were sexual. He was suspected of other things, at first was reprimanded as warning, and then fired from his job."
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