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Tag: statute of limitations

  • ARCCI marks 35 years amid legal gains, renewed scrutiny of sexual violence

    The Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel marked the anniversary by awarding the Sexual Violence Prevention Award to those whose work has advanced the rights and protection of survivors.

    The Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel (ARCCI) marked its 35th anniversary on Wednesday, celebrating hard-won milestones and a measurable shift in public discourse around sexual violence, although advocates stressed systemic gaps remain and there is still much progress to be made.

    “There has been a profound change in awareness,” ARCCI executive director Orit Sulitzeanu told The Jerusalem Post. “Not because sexual violence has disappeared – it hasn’t – but because survivors are increasingly willing to step forward, publicly, with names and faces.”

    The ARCCI marked the anniversary with a ceremony at which it awarded the Sexual Violence Prevention Award to people whose work has advanced the rights and protection of survivors, exposed injustices, and driven change in law enforcement, public institutions, and societal norms.

    The award recognized individuals who have influenced public discourse and helped reshape the way Israeli society confronts sexual violence and sexual offenders as well.

    Sulitzeanu, who has led ARCCI for more than a decade following years in feminist advocacy and communications, said the most significant shift she had witnessed was not in the prevalence of sexual violence, but in how it is spoken about.

    ARCCI CEO Orit Sulitzeanu at the Jerusalem Post 2025 Women Leaders Summit. (credit: Mark Israel Salem)

    “For years, the focus was on victims,” she said. “Today, the language is about survivors.”

    Legal, cultural struggles surrounding survivors

    That shift, she said, is inseparable from legal and cultural struggles still unfolding, particularly around notions of accountability and access to justice.

    Those tensions were underscored late last week when a new sexual assault complaint was filed against Israeli pop singer Eyal Golan – separate from the earlier, widely known case involving Taisia Zamolowski and other women who were minors at the time.

    The new complaint was submitted by a woman who alleges that roughly a decade ago, during a facial treatment at her clinic, Golan exposed himself to her without consent and later pressured her to send nude photos.

    This complaint was filed several months ago and is now under police investigation, including an examination of whether the statute of limitations applies. Golan has denied the allegations, stating they are part of an attempted extortion and that he possesses messages and recordings that refute them.

    The question of limitations is central not only to the new complaint but to Israel’s broader reckoning with sexual violence.

    Among this year’s award recipients were Zamolowski and “N,” two of the women whose testimonies brought renewed public attention to what has been dubbed “the social games affair.”

    The case refers to the 2013-2014 investigation into allegations that teenage girls were sexually exploited by powerful men in the entertainment industry, including Golan, through intermediaries who arranged for paid sexual encounters.

    While Golan was ultimately not indicted due to evidentiary difficulties, the case left a lasting public imprint after his father, Danny Biton, was convicted of offenses related to prostitution involving minors.

    Years later, the affair forcefully returned to the public sphere in 2022 when Zamolowski and N gave televised interviews describing their experiences, the power dynamics involved, and the long-term harm they say they suffered.

    Their testimonies helped catalyze Israel’s #MeToo-era conversation around celebrity, silence, and accountability – even in the absence of criminal convictions against the central public figure.

    At Wednesday’s ceremony, Zamolowski said, “I am not just fighting against him, but against the fan base and public that defends him. I knew the price of going public, but I also know that secrets don’t stay in the dark.”

    N said, “I believe this fight is beyond personal. I am here not only as someone who was violated, but as someone who chose to use that experience as a tool for change.”

    “When we filed the complaint,” she added, “I knew we were going up against an ancient power system designed to quiet us. But our fight was about truth, justice, and a society that refuses to turn a blind eye.”

    Sulitzeanu said watching the two women take the stage was emblematic of the shift she has witnessed over the years. “When the investigation began, I didn’t know them personally,” she said. “Today, you see them on stage – coherent, intelligent, strong. That’s the change.”

    Advancing legislative initiatives for survivors’ rights

    Despite the upheaval of Hamas’s October 7 massacre and the war that ensued, Sulitzeanu said the ARCCI continued to work quietly with lawmakers, contributing to or advancing 10 legislative initiatives aimed at strengthening survivors’ rights.

    Among the most significant was a recent amendment to the Legal Aid Law, approved by the Knesset, which allows survivors of sexual assault and violence to receive free, state-funded legal representation from the moment they file a police complaint. Previously, legal aid was generally available only at later stages of criminal proceedings.

    Under the reform, survivors can now be accompanied by an attorney already during the investigation phase, regardless of income – a move the Justice Ministry described as strengthening access to justice and improving the handling of sexual violence complaints.

    Still, Sulitzeanu said, the legal framework remains incomplete.

    Under current Israeli law, most sexual offenses are subject to a statute of limitations, with time limits varying based on offense severity and the victim’s age. In cases involving minors, the clock begins only once the survivor reaches adulthood, but limitations still apply.

    In recent years, survivors’ organizations, the Justice Ministry, and members of Knesset have pushed to abolish the statute of limitations entirely for sexual offenses, arguing that trauma, fear, and power imbalances often delay reporting for years or even decades.

    In June, a Knesset committee advanced legislation that would eliminate or significantly extend limitation periods for sexual crimes against minors. This marks a major policy shift acknowledged in official Knesset protocols. However, the bill has not yet completed the legislative process, and no final law has been enacted.

    “Any gain is good,” Sulitzeanu said. “Even extending limitations matters. But the fight is far from over. We will continue it wherever we can.”

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  • Supreme Court clears way for Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed to try to use DNA to prove innocence | CNN Politics

    Supreme Court clears way for Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed to try to use DNA to prove innocence | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    The Supreme Court cleared the way on Wednesday for Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed to seek post-conviction DNA evidence to try to prove his innocence.

    Reed claims an all-White jury wrongly convicted him of killing of Stacey Stites, a 19-year-old White woman, in Texas in 1998.

    Texas had argued that he had waited too long to bring his challenge to the state’s DNA procedures in federal court, but the Supreme Court disagreed. Now, he can go to a federal court to make his claim.

    The ruling was 6-3. Justice Brett Kavanaugh delivered the opinion of the court and was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

    Since Reed’s conviction, Texas courts had rejected his various appeals. Celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and Rihanna have expressed support, signing a petition asking the state to halt his eventual execution.

    The case puts a new focus on the testing of DNA crime-scene evidence and when an inmate can make a claim to access the technology in a plea of innocence. To date, 375 people in the United States have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 21 who served time on death row, according to the Innocence Project, a group that represents Reed and other clients seeking post-conviction DNA testing to prove their innocence.

    Kavanaugh, in his opinion Wednesday, said that the court agreed to hear the case because federal appeals courts have disagreed about when inmates can make such claims without running afoul of the statute of limitations. Kavanaugh said Reed could make the claim after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ultimately denied his request for rehearing, rejecting an earlier date set out by the appeals court.

    “Significant systemic benefits ensue from starting the statute of limitations clock when the state litigation in DNA testing cases like Reed’s has concluded,” Kavanaugh said.

    He noted that if any problems with a defendant’s right to due process “lurk in the DNA testing law” the case can proceed through the appellate process, which could ultimately render a federal lawsuit unnecessary.

    Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented.

    Alito, joined by Gorsuch in his dissent, said Reed should have acted more quickly to bring his appeal. “Instead,” Alito wrote, “he waited until an execution date was set.”

    Alito charged Reed with making the “basic mistake of missing a statute of limitations.”

    Reed has been on death row for the murder of Stites.

    A passerby found Stites’ body near a shirt and a torn piece of belt. Investigators targeted Reed because his sperm was found inside her. Reed acknowledged the two were having an affair, but says that her fiancé, a local police officer named Jimmy Fennell, was the last to see her alive.

    Reed claims that over the last two decades he has discovered a “considerable body of evidence” demonstrating his innocence. Reed claims that the DNA testing would point to Fennell as the murder suspect. Fennell was later jailed for sexually assaulting a woman in his custody and Reed claims that numerous witnesses said he had threatened to strangle Stites with a belt if he ever caught her cheating on him. Reed seeks to test the belt found at the scene that was used to strangle Stites.

    The Texas law at issue allows a convicted person to obtain post-conviction DNA testing of biological material if the court finds that certain conditions are met. Reed was denied. He came to the Supreme Court in 2018 and was denied again. Now he is challenging the constitutionality of the Texas law arguing that the denial of the DNA testing violates his due process rights. 

    But the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals held that he waited too long to bring the claim. “An injury accrues when a plaintiff first becomes aware, or should have become aware, that his right had been violated.” The court said that he became aware of that in 2014 and that his current claim is “time barred.” 

    Reed’s lawyers argued that he could only bring the claim once the state appeals court had ruled, at the end of state court litigation. In court, Parker Rider-Longmaid said that the “clock doesn’t start ticking” until state court proceedings come to an end. He said Texas’ reading of the law would mean that other procedures in the appellate process are “irrelevant.”

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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