(VINnews) — One of the victims of Chaim Walder who testified to police against him in 2008 has gone public on Israeli television and described her experience.
In an appallingly candid and jarring interview, Romi Schwartz, now a woman of 40, described how as a young woman of 17, distantly related to Walder by marriage, she was referred to him and subsequently repeatedly abused by him.
Romi was the only one of Walder’s victims to complain against him in the police. It took a few years for her to gather courage and complain against Walder, who was already a celebrity figure in the chareidi community. However despite testimonies which supported her version of events, police closed the case due to lack of evidence. Walder’s family later contacted her and paid her to sign a non-disclosure agreement which would prevent her from telling anyone, both private individuals or media of any complaints she might have had against Walder.
Bracha Walder tried to renew the agreement recently when stories began to emerge about her husband’s errant behavior. However Schwartz elected not to remain silent any longer and was apparently one of the women who referred to the Beis Din of Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu and told her story. In 2015 she had even contacted Channel 13’s Anat Goren but elected not to publicize her story, possibly after signing the non-disclosure agreement. On Tuesday her story was finally made public on Channel 13.
Schwartz had been referred to Walder after herself being a victim of abuse from her father (her parents divorced when she was a child) and having difficulties after a hurried marriage at age 17. Walder’s wife was a cousin of her husband, who thought that Chaim could provide therapy for her. However Walder instead developed a relationship with her, constantly trying to model himself as her protector, and constantly flattering her but at the same time exploiting her weakness and lack of self-worth to abuse her.
Walder continued the abuse and exploitation for an extended period, despite Schwartz being a married woman and mother of a child. Schwartz, who came from a hasidic background, said that at the time she did not understand that she had been raped and only later, in 2008, complained to police together with her former husband Yermi who also upheld her testimony. (He later divorced and recanted his testimony on her behalf). Schwartz later remarried but now lives a secular lifestyle with her five children- two from Yermi and three from her current husband Yuval.
Walder denied a relationship with Schwartz in the police interrogation, but still gave intimate details about her and could not explain why she knew about his office or had met him in a hotel and instead claimed that “she is angry with our family”. Despite the obvious warning signs, police closed the case without making any further investigation of her complaints.
Schwartz received a letter from Walder’s lawyers prior to the Channel 13 revelation. The lawyers said they will sue her to return 500,000 NIS, the sum she was paid to remain silent “forever”.
