A Jerusalem court has acquitted a 46-year-old man accused of sexually assaulting a woman aboard the city's light rail system, ruling that although the complainant gave credible and convincing testimony, prosecutors failed to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was the perpetrator.
Jerusalem Magistrate's Court Judge David Shaul Gabai Richter said the woman had endured a deeply distressing experience and praised her courage in reporting the incident. However, he found significant inconsistencies in the identification process, as well as cellphone location data and medical evidence supporting the defendant's account.
The Jerusalem light rail
(Photo: Alex Kolomoisky)
According to the indictment, the alleged assault occurred in August 2023, at approximately 5:30 p.m., aboard a crowded light rail carriage in Jerusalem.
Prosecutors alleged that the defendant reached beneath the woman's skirt and touched her buttocks over her underwear. She pushed his hand away and shouted, drawing the attention of nearby passengers.
The woman testified that the man denied touching her intentionally and attributed the contact to overcrowding inside the carriage. When the train stopped at Davidka Square, a central Jerusalem transit stop, he allegedly exited and fled on foot.
Later that day, the complainant spotted a man at Safra Square, near Jerusalem City Hall, whom she believed to be her attacker. She alerted security guards, who subsequently located the suspect at Jerusalem's central bus station and detained him.
The defendant, a father of three, denied the allegations. Although he acknowledged being in Jerusalem and using the light rail that day, he maintained that he had not traveled in the carriage described by the complainant and had not assaulted her.
He told investigators that he had traveled to Jerusalem for a medical appointment at Shaare Zedek Medical Center and to attend to other personal matters.
Prosecutors sought a conviction based primarily on the complainant's testimony, arguing that she had identified the defendant on several occasions.
The defense challenged the reliability of those identifications, particularly because a photograph of the defendant had been sent to the complainant before she identified him at the central bus station.
In his ruling, Gabai Richter emphasized that he believed the complainant's account of the assault itself.
Nevertheless, he said the evidence did not establish that the man standing trial was responsible.
Among the discrepancies cited by the judge was the complainant's failure to mention the defendant's pronounced Arabic accent, despite testifying that she had spoken with the attacker.
She had also described a scar on the attacker's face, but the defendant had no such scar.
The judge expressed particular concern about the photograph sent to the complainant before the identification, concluding that it had substantially undermined the reliability of the procedure.
"This significantly contaminated the identification and its quality," the judge wrote, explaining that the photograph could have caused the complainant to fix her belief about the suspect's identity before seeing him at the location where he had been detained, surrounded by security guards.
"Therefore, it is very difficult to attach weight to an identification conducted under such circumstances," he added.
Attorney Ga SartovPhoto: David FrattyCellphone location records emerged as a central piece of evidence in the case.
The court found that the records were consistent with the defendant's account of visiting the hospital and did not support placing him in the Davidka Square area during the day of the alleged assault.
Medical documents also showed that the defendant suffered from serious orthopedic problems, which the court found incompatible with the complainant's description of the attacker fleeing at a run.
The judge also criticized investigators for waiting more than a month after the incident to question the defendant, noting that no reasonable explanation had been provided for the delay.
Taken together, the judge found that the defendant had presented a plausible account supported by independent evidence, leaving sufficient reasonable doubt to require an acquittal.
The defendant had originally faced an additional charge of committing an indecent act against another female light rail passenger. That charge was withdrawn after the second complainant declined to testify, and he was fully acquitted of that allegation.
The court's ruling distinguished between accepting the complainant's testimony that she had been assaulted and establishing the identity of the person responsible, concluding that the prosecution had failed to meet the burden of proof required for a criminal conviction.