He was the most popular in the region, the one whose family name was passed on, repeating that he was the best. For thirty years, Gabriel Assouline worked as a mohel, a Hebrew word designating a Jewish circumciser, enjoying a certain aura in the community: he alone then carried out 60% of circumcisions in Île-de-France.
But, in 2017, the state of grace ends. About twenty women recount having suffered intrusive gestures with a sexual connotation committed by the religious, under the guise of medical practices, around the brit milah, the ceremony organized on the eighth day following the birth of the baby.
From this Tuesday, the 62-year-old deposed mohel is tried by the criminal court of Val-d’Oise for sexual assault and rape against four women between 2010 and 2017, the rest of the complaints having been struck by prescription. This is the case of Sarah (name has been changed), cited as a witness at the trial among fifteen other prescribed victims. A quarter of a century later, it still costs him to recount this painful episode. Single mother “not at all practicing”, it was to please her father that she had decided to circumcise her son.
It targeted women “in a state of vulnerability”
After the brit milah, celebrated at Sarah’s parents’ house, Gabriel Assouline offers her to come and check on her son’s healing, but only when she has returned home, where he knows that she lives alone. “After dressing my baby again, he tells me to lie down on the bed and take my bra off to check if my breasts are engorged,” Sarah describes. Seeing my embarrassment, he made me understand that he was a doctor. »
The mohel feels his chest, then asks him to take a shower. “I refuse, but he insists, he takes an authoritarian tone, she recalls. I am terribly uncomfortable, I take it as soon as possible to get rid of him. When I come back to the room, everything happens in seconds. He lowers my panties and inserts his finger, he talks to me about the uterus without even looking at me, and I’m totally flabbergasted. Then he gets up and disappears. »
Although still in shock from childbirth, the 24-year-old mother knows that “nothing justifies this gesture”. And this, especially since she is still bleeding, a real foil for a religious. Traumatized, she cries for three weeks in a row, gains 17 kg. But she does not file a complaint, dissuaded by a relative on the grounds that this could call into question this practice, which is unregulated but tolerated by the authorities.
“He had a double ascendancy over the victims, both religious and medical, because he often presented himself as a dental surgeon, explains Me Elie Korchia, lawyer for the civil parties. It most often targeted women with little knowledge of this type of practice or those with non-Jewish spouses. They were in a state of vulnerability since they had just given birth, ”explains the lawyer, who is also current president of the Consistory, the main French Jewish institution.
Banned from some synagogues despite the silence of religious authorities
Father of eight children, exiled to Strasbourg where he lives under judicial supervision, Gabriel Assouline “denies having had the slightest inappropriate intention”, explains his defender, Me Francis Metzger. The lawyer points to the “9,000 to 10,000 circumcisions carried out without any problem”, as proof of this, pleading a problem of interpretation. He also denies having introduced himself as a dentist, a course he followed well, but without ever validating his diploma. “We were able to present it as such, but he himself never availed himself of this title”, specifies Me Metzger.
More annoying, as our newspaper revealed in 2017, long before its fall, rumors had already been circulating for several years all over Île-de-France. The mohel had thus been banned from certain synagogues, such as those of Sarcelles (Val-d’Oise), Raincy (Seine-Saint-Denis) or Tournelles (Paris IVe), without however ever being worried.
Sarah is thus terribly angry with the Consistory, which at the time had given her the name of Gabriel Assouline, and affirms that her father, without however going into details, had called the instance to complain about it. Ten years later, she claims to have called back, learning that he was still officiating.
Finally, she claims that, during a meeting of victims in 2017, one of the rabbis present had conceded having received confidences from a woman in the past. “Very religious, she did not want to go to court,” explains Sarah. But this same rabbi continued to advise this mohel to families! she gasps.
“The Consistory has no authority over the mohalim (the plural of mohel), which are independent, says Elie Korchia. His name circulated mainly by word of mouth. It was in 2017, once these women had the courage to denounce the facts to the police, that tongues were loosened. But no criminal complaint had been filed before,” he regrets.
Since then, at the instigation of the Consistory, an association of mohalim has been created to try to regulate this practice. Gabriel Assouline faces up to fifteen years in prison. The verdict is expected on Monday, June 5.
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