Goel Ratzon

Goel Ratzon was born in 1950 in Hatikva Quarter

Ratzon was born in 1950 in the Hatikva Quarter of Tel Aviv. His parents had immigrated to Israel from Yemen. He worked at odd jobs, including home renovation and car repair.

In 1972 he married a woman with whom he had 5 children, and in the early 1980s he had 5 more children with another woman. From 1991 he became known as a spiritual healer and as an expert in Kabbalah, and he gathered many women around him. The women supported him with their wages and with welfare payments from the National Insurance Institute.

The group had 21 women and 49 children, many of whom had names based on his own. The women lived in several houses under a secret book of rules he wrote, and many had his name and face tattooed on their bodies. A television report exposed the group in February 2009.

Police arrested Ratzon in January 2010 after a former wife said he had raped her when she was 14. In 2014 the Tel Aviv District Court convicted him of most of the sexual offenses but acquitted him of holding people in slavery. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison, and the Supreme Court rejected his appeal in 2016.

He is classified as a prisoner at risk and is moved between prisons. His family cut ties with him, except his son Yigal.