ISRAEL • Sara and Yishai LEVY, 10 and 11 yo /Suspect: Father: Avi Levy ~ Yashresh, IL

Two children visiting from US murdered by father near Ramle   


By BEN HARTMAN, LIDAR GRAVÉ-LAZI


06/12/2014 08:31

Police say man came to police station and admitted to killing children, ages ten and 11, who lived with their mother in US.
Man holds knife Photo: Knife


Minutes after midnight, Shfela subdistrict police reported that a man had shown up at the Ramle police station and told officers that he had just murdered both of his children at his home on Yashresh, a moshav.

The two children, a 12-year old girl and a 10-year-old boy, were found at the house by paramedics at 11:58 p.m., lifeless with signs of brutal violence across their bodies. Both had been stabbed to death, though specific details of how they were killed have not been published.

The father, whose identity and that of his wife and children is covered under a gag order secured by his attorney, was ordered to be kept in custody until June 19, during a remand extension on Thursday afternoon.

The children only arrived in Israel on Wednesday from the US, where they lived with their mother who had recently divorced their father. Within hours they were both dead.

The Welfare and Social Services Ministry said that the mother had been located and was on her way to Israel.

Social Services will “accompany and assist the family, including the mother,” a statement said.

As the police investigation is underway, children’s rights activists are questioning whether this incident could have been prevented.

Naomi Schneiderman, executive director of Woman to Woman, the nonprofit agency that runs the shelter for battered women in Jerusalem told The Jerusalem Post that the mother and her two children had stayed at the shelter some four years ago.

“Usually women are referred to us through welfare clinics, hospitals or the police following a domestic violenJerusace incident,” she explained.

According to Schneiderman, the mother and her two children were in a therapeutic program at the shelter for nearly a year. Furthermore, she said that in this case there was a court ruling based on a professional expert’s opinion that determined that the father was fit to see the children.

She said that this was not the first time the children had visited their father in Israel.

“We knew that the mother was concerned, a lot of women live in the shadow of continued fear following domestic violence incidents – the aim is to reach some kind of normalization in a safe as possible environment,” she said, “and she actually did achieve this for her and for her children and she was a loving working mother and functioning woman and really did the best she could for her children.”

Schneiderman explained that, “domestic violence is a spectrum of phenomena and this is an extreme and pathological case.”

“There are other expressions of violence that can be addressed and can be helped and it is sometimes very difficult to know in advance. We need to be alert and provide the best services and safety that we can,” she added.

MK Orly Levy-Abecassis (Likud-Beytenu), chairwoman of the Knesset Committee for Children’s Rights said on Thursday, “This is an act of madness and evil that the mind is unable to comprehend.”

She called on Welfare and Social Services Minister Meir Cohen and Finance Minister Yair Lapid to take immediate action to implement the recommendations of the Vinter Committee to identify children at risk, which has been delayed due to disputes between the government agencies.

The Vinter Committee, headed by then Welfare and Social Service Ministry’s deputy director general, Moti Vinter, released its recommendations in 2010, among which included the need to identify children whose parents were going through a difficult divorce or were considered high-risk due to conflict between their parents.

In addition, the committee called for increased cooperation between all relevant public services in order to grant full access to information about a child at risk.

The interministerial committee was established following the murder of a four-year-old girl by her grandfather in 2008.

“We must ensure that the professionals will have the best options to act in this Sisyphean task and hard line of work, of identifying children at risk and preventing such tragic incidents in the future,” Levy-Abecassis said.

The National Council for the Child released figures that showed that since 2003 there have been a total of 71 children murdered or killed by family members.

In an open letter to parents, Dr. Yitzhak Kadman, executive director of the council wrote, “The children are not ‘yours.’ The children are not your property. The children are not an extension of your arms. The children are not a tool and instrument for vengeance.”

Adding that “no one appointed you God to take or give life, or as His messenger on earth.”

Regarding the child victims, Kadman said that the “mercy, understanding and compassion” should be given to these children “who did not sin, and did commit any offenses, and their most fundamental right – the right to live, was so cruelly denied.”


http://www.jpost.com/National-News/Two-children-visiting-from-US-murdered-by-father-near-Ramle-358073

Bodies of murdered children arrive in US for burial


By JPOST.COM STAFF
06/17/2014 16:21


The bodies of the two children murdered by their father last week were flown back to the US early Tuesday morning for burial.

On Wednesday morning, the funeral service for the children will be held in Columbus, Ohio, where the children were living with their mother.

The children arrived on June 11 to visit their father, who was recently divorced from their mother. They were murdered only hours after arriving in Israel. The father turned himself in to police.


http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Bodies-of-murdered-children-arrive-in-US-for-burial-359637

Two children murdered by father on Moshav Yishrash to be buried in Ohio Wednesday


By BEN HARTMAN
06/17/2014 19:43

The children were killed hours after arriving in Israel to visit their father, who had a history of domestic violence.

Man holds knife Photo: Knife
The two children murdered by their father on Moshav Yishrash last week will be buried Wednesday in a ceremony at a Columbus, Ohio, synagogue.

The ceremony will take place at the city’s Torat Emet synagogue and is expected to be a large community event, according to a Tuesday statement from the Rackman Center for the Advancement of Women, which has been assisting the mother since the tragedy happened last Wednesday night.

The girl, 12, and boy, 10, were killed just hours after arriving in Israel from the United States to visit their father, who is divorced from their mother. The father himself came to the Ramle police station after the murder to tell police that he had stabbed his children to death at his home on the moshav.

Due to a gag order, the father’s identity and that of the mother and children cannot be published in Israel.

Since the murder, questions have arisen about whether it could have been prevented.

The Jerusalem Post learned after the killing that the mother and her two children had been in a therapeutic program at a battered women’s shelter in Jerusalem for nearly a year following domestic violence against her by her husband. Many have questioned how a court awarded the father visitation rights allowing him to watch the children unsupervised.


http://www.jpost.com/National-News/Two-children-murdered-by-father-on-Moshav-Yishrash-to-be-buried-in-Ohio-Wednesday-359661

Father Confesses To Murder Of Two Columbus Children In Israel

7:41AM, June 13, 2014
by The Associated Press

Police in Israel say a man confessed to stabbing to death his two children while they visited him from the United States.

An Israeli police spokesman says the father was arrested late Wednesday after turning himself in.

The children, 10-year-old Sara Levy and her 11-year-old brother, Yishai, lived with their mother in central Ohio and attended Columbus Torah Academy on the east side of Columbus.

Authorities didn’t release the name of the father, who lives in Ramla, Israel.

The Israeli police sopkesman says the man and his ex-wife had been involved in a complicated divorce and that police there had received complaints of violence against the father before the couple split up.

The Columbus Torah Academy released a statement saying the entire school “community is heartbroken over the loss of our two precious students, Sara and Yishai Levy. Our thoughts and prayers are with the children’s grief-stricken mother. We ask that everyone respect the family’s privacy.”

The children’s mother is said to be comforted by local Jewish leaders.

The family was involved with the Beth Jacob Congregation on College Avenue. A representative of the synagogue tells WOSU that a funeral will be held for the children next week.

The Israeli website Ynet says the mother was an American immigrant who moved with the children to the U.S. after the divorce to be closer to her family.

http://wosu.org/2012/news/2014/06/13/father-confesses-murder-two-columbus-children-israel/

Horror as two Ohio children, ages 10 and 11, stabbed to death by their father just hours after landing in Israel to spend summer vacation with him

○ Sara Levy, 10, and Yishai Levy, 11, were found stabbed multiple times in their father's home in the town of Yashresh
○ Children's father turned himself in to police drenched in his kids' blood
○ Victims' parents were divorced, and Sara and Yishai were supposed to stay with their father in Israel twice a year as part of court settlement
○ Karen Levy, Sara and Yishai's mother, lives in Columbus, Ohio, where both kids went to school
○ Mrs Levy divorced her husband after she accused him of domestic violence against her
○ Israeli police seized suspect's journal from his home featuring 'obsessive' writings about his feelings towards his ex-wife

By SNEJANA FARBEROV
PUBLISHED: 17:27 EST, 12 June 2014
UPDATED: 17:38 EST, 13 June 2014

An Israeli father walked into a police station in the city of Ramla Wednesday night drenched in blood and confessed to stabbing to death his two children while they were visiting him from Ohio.

The man, who has not been named, then led officers to his apartment, where they discovered the brother and sister knifed to death.

The children, 10-year-old Sara Levy and her 11-year-old brother, Yishai, lived with their mother, Karen Levy, in Ohio and attended Columbus Torah Academy.

ust hours before their murders, the children arrived in Israel for their court-ordered bi-annual visit with their dad.

'The entire Columbus Torah Academy community is heartbroken over the loss of our two precious students,' headmaster Rabbi Zvi Kahn said in a statement. 'Our thoughts and prayers are with the children's grief-stricken mother. We ask that everyone respect the family's privacy.'

The children were full of life, had many friends and 'had a really deep loving relationship with their mother,' Gordon Hecker, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Columbus, said in an interview.

The man and his ex-wife, Mrs Levy, had been involved in a 'complicated' divorce and police had received complaints against the father of violence before the couple split up, Rosenfeld said.

The father has refused to cooperate with investigation since his confession, the police spokesman said, adding, 'Obviously he is the main suspect.'

The Israeli website Ynet said the mother was an American immigrant and spent time in a women's shelter before moving with the children to the U.S. to be closer to her family.

It quoted Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, director of a center that represented the woman, as saying that during divorce proceedings, the mother raised concerns that the father might harm the children.

In response to Karen Levy's petition to the Family Court in Petah Tikva, a judge Friday ruled that the bodies of Sara and Yishai will be sent back to the U.S. for burial no later than Monday following an autopsy.

Police in Israel said while the slain children's father does not have a criminal past, in 2005 and 2009 his then-wife filed domestic violence complaints accusing him of beating her.

On Wednesday morning, Sara and Yishai Levy arrived in Israel from Ohio and were picked up from the airport by their aunts, who then drove them to their father's home in the town of Yashresh, Ynet reported.

According to relatives, the father was happy and excited to have his kids with him. After the brother and sister arrived at the house, they had dinner with their extended family and played with their cousins.

At around 9.30pm, the father's relatives went home, leaving the three of them alone. Two hours later, the man turned up at a Ramla police station spattered with his children’s blood.

Police say the double murder suspect, who works as a computer programmer, stabbed his son and daughter in the upper body multiple times.

Responding officers described a horrific scene inside the suspect's apartment that left them in shock.

Police believe that the father may have murdered his children to punish his ex-wife for taking custody of them after their divorce and going to the U.S.

When police searched the man's home in the town of Yashresh after the slayings, they discovered a journal in which the suspect 'obsessively' documented his feelings and actions related to his ex-wife, Times of Israel reported.  

Osnat Azulai, the man's neighbor, told Ynet that the father took it very hard that his children were not with him full-time.

Other neighbors in the close-knit community recalled that in recent days, the man appeared especially depressed. A relative said that the father told him when his children were not with him, his soul was missing.

Speaking to the radio station Galei Zahal, Karen Levy's friend revealed that the couple had a rocky marriage punctuated by incidents of domestic abuse, which eventually drove the mother of two to file for divorce.

The couple met in Ohio more than a decade ago and fell in love. Karen Levy, who was not Jewish by birth, decided to follow her then-fiance to Israel, where she converted to Judaism so the two could get married.

But their relationship then allegedly took a violent turn, forcing Mrs Levy to stay in a battered women’s shelter for a time.

During their drawn-out divorce trial, the wife was able to secure main custody of their two children because her spouse could not provide child support.

Desperate to take her children to the U.S., the mother agreed to let them visit their father in Israel twice a year as part of a divorce settlement.

According to the friend, even after Karen Levy received official permission from a judge to leave Israel with her son and daughter, the father’s family attempted to take the children away from her in the airport.

The friend said that while Karen feared for her oww life during their marriage, she never suspected that her ex-husband would be capable of taking the children’s lives.

Her worst fear after their divorce was that her ex-husband might prevent Sara and Yishai from returning home after one of their bi-annual visits, said the friend.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2656646/Israeli-police-Father-killed-2-US-children.html#ixzz35877Ny00

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