UN special representative on sexual violence in conflict Pramila Patten (center) meets with First Lady Michal Herzog (left) and President Isaac Herzog in Jerusalem on January 29, 2024. (Amos Ben-Gershom / GPO.)
President Isaac Herzog and First Lady Michal Herzog meet in Jerusalem with Pramila Patten, the UN special representative on sexual violence in conflict, who is in Israel to probe a wave of allegations of Hamas sexual violence on October 7.
Pramila Patten arrived in Israel with a team to investigate the many charges of rape and sexual assault against Israeli women that day. She calls on victims, survivors, and witnesses to come forward and speak with her about their experience.
“I have a message for survivors, I have a message for families of victims, and another message for witnesses: Please come forward, please break your silence,” she says in a video statement released by the President’s Office.
“My team and I, we are here to listen to you in all safety and confidentiality,” she says. “I’m here for a week, I’m prepared to meet you in a safe and enabling environment and to listen to your stories, the world needs to know what really happened on October 7.”
Patten says that survivors should not feel any stigma, but rather “the stigma, the shame, is on the perpetrators.” She says that the world owes them “more than solidarity. We really want to ensure that you have justice at the end of the day, and that we put an end to this to this heinous crime.”