Roni Gonen, an Israeli woman who was abducted during the Oct. 7 terror attack in Israel, has opened up about the horrific sexual abuse and assault she suffered while in Hamas captivity.
Speaking with Israel’s Channel 12 news service, she recalled the abuse she suffered during the 471 days that she was held captive by Hamas after being kidnapped from the Nova music festival as a 23-year-old.
She wasn’t eventually released until the start of this year.
🚨 Former hostage Roni Gonen was released from Sheba Medical Center after about 5 months of rehabilitation. She said: “It’s hard to grasp how many events and experiences good or bad we go through here, while for them in the tunnels, time stands still.” pic.twitter.com/FSyJMxscET
— Shield of Truth (@ShieldOfTruth_) July 10, 2025
The abuse started right after her abduction, when she was taken to a hospital in Gaza to be treated for a gunshot wound to her arm, according to The Times of Israel.
As a female nurse was trying to find a vein in her arm, “a guy just started to tear off all my clothes,” Gonen said. “One of them took off my shoes. Another one took my earrings off my face, another one took the jewelry off my body.”
“I was just there, with some 15 people touching me, at the same time. Until it got to the point they were tearing off all my clothes, but I lay there naked. It was like an out-of-body experience, where you’re seeing everything from above,” she added.
She was then taken to a home in Gaza, where the abuse continued.
“I went through all kinds of assaults, from four different men, over the course of my captivity,” she said. “Different levels of severity.”
Today Romi Gonen turns 24.
But today she is unable to celebrate her birthday.
She is unable to see her family and friends.
Instead, Romi is spending the day facing fear, uncertainty and despair.
She has been held hostage for 316 days in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/MUAcvUMmcg
— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) August 18, 2024
The first major assault happened on the fourth day of her captivity, when an abuser who identified himself as a medical professional followed her into the shower to “help.”
“I was wounded, I had no power over them, and I was in a situation in which I couldn’t do anything,” she recalled. “He took everything from me. And I had to continue living with him in the house afterward.”
Two weeks later, she was moved to the house of a Hamas member named Mohammed. He too assaulted her, as did another man there named Ibrahim.
“On the first night in that house, she was made to stay alone with [Mohammed], on a mattress in the living room,” the Times notes. “He began touching her, she said, first on her back and then moving to her waist. That time, she batted him away, and was able to grab her mattress and take it to another room, where she slept that night.”
But the following night, Mohammed gave her an ultimatum.
“Yesterday, that was a one-time thing,” he said. “From now on, no more. You and I sleep on mattresses next to each other, up against each other. When you go to the bathroom, I go with you. Every night I’m going to handcuff you.”
Ibrahim was just as abusive.
“I’m sitting on the bed. Ibrahim comes and sits next to me, and harasses me,” Gonen recalled. “Everything happens in the room, in complete silence. I start crying insanely. Everything is quiet, and he says, ‘Be careful. If you don’t calm down, I’ll get angry.'”
“And that’s how the days pass: I go to the bathroom and Mohammed is with me, and he watches me. I pee, and with one hand, I pull down my pants. I sit on the toilet so that God forbid he won’t see anything of me. Ibrahim keeps bothering me endlessly. They grab my leg and move up to my thigh. I kick,” she added.
The worst assault occurred when Mohammed once followed her into the bathroom and then assaulted her for 30 minutes:
Romi Gonen says she cried nonstop while the Palestinian Hamas terrorist who abused her repeatedly “was having the time of his life.”
She feared she would be kept as a sex slave for the rest of her life.Romi is home after 471 days in Hamas captivity.
Rape is part of jihadi… pic.twitter.com/LktDHIweLZ
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) December 26, 2025
Gonen told Channel 12 that as he was assaulting her and having the time of his life, she was crying.
“I remember this one moment when I looked — there was a kind of window there, a small square like a picture frame — and I looked through the window and said to myself: ‘Wow. Blue skies, birds chirping, and this is the situation I’m in right now,'” she recalled.
“The dissonance between life outside, the beautiful, normal, clean life, and the filth and brutality and utter disgust that’s happening here inside the bathroom — It’s a moment I will never forget in my life,” she added.
As of Saturday, most of the global press was ignoring Gonen’s stunning testimony:
A few days ago, former Israeli hostage Romi Gonen spoke publicly about a string of horrific sexual assaults she endured during 471 days of captivity.
Among her attackers were “medical staff” in a hospital and a “journalist” – the very “Palestinian” professions routinely lionised…
— David Collier (@mishtal) December 27, 2025
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V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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