JERUSALEM — The women tattooed his name and portrait on their bodies and gave their children his name — Savior. They spoon-fed the bearded, one-time healer as if he were royalty, brushed his shoulder-length white locks, sent him text messages when they were ovulating and slept with him at his bidding.
They turned over wages and welfare payments to him and lived in cramped, rundown Tel Aviv apartments with the children they bore him. According to police, he fathered some of his own daughters’ children.
The man, 60-year-old Goel Ratzon — whose first name is Hebrew for “Savior” — is now sitting in a Tel Aviv jail, suspected by police of enslaving a cultlike harem of at least 17 women and 37 children. Ratzon, who has lived this way for two decades, denies any wrongdoing, his lawyer says.
Ratzon’s alleged crimes and unconventional lifestyle have gripped Israel and become newspaper and talk-show fodder.
How he managed to lure so many young women and live this way so long in full view of authorities remains a mystery.
“I’m not their messiah, I’m not their savior. I’m just good to them,” he said in a rare interview to Israel television last year.
Police broke up the harem on Jan. 12, taking the children and women to various shelters. Police have until Friday to charge him.
