A FORMER Israeli hostage has broken her silence on the rape hell she endured in Hamas captivity.

Romi Gonen, 25, revealed she feared she was pregnant after being assaulted while unconscious and believed she would die a “sex slave”.

Gonen was kidnapped from the Nova music festival during Hamas’ October 7 terror attack, spent 471 days in captivity before being released during the second ceasefire in January.

In an explosive interview aired on Channel 12’s Uvda, Gonen described for the first time the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of multiple men – including a Hamas “nurse” and a cameraman -during what she called the darkest days of her life.

Her ordeal began shortly after her abduction, when she was taken to Al Shifa Hospital after being shot in the arm.

Gonen recalled: “A guy just started to tear off all my clothes. One of them took off my shoes. Another one took my earrings off my face, another one took the jewellery off my body.”

Lying wounded wounded on a hospital bed, she was surrounded by a crowd.

She said: “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. I was sure I was going to wake up without an arm.”

She later reflected on the silence surrounding sexual abuse endured by hostages.

“When I talk about my time as a hostage in Gaza, I imagine people around me all wonder: ‘Did they harass you?’ And people don’t ask that question.

“I also wouldn’t ask, if I were you. But also, I think no one asks because no one wants to hear the answer.

“I went through all kinds of assaults, from four different men, over the course of my captivity. Different levels of severity.”

After leaving the hospital, a doctor escorted her to car that took her to an apartment in Gaza city, where a Palestinian medical professional assigned to treat her wounds allegedly raped her.

It happened on her fourth day of captivity, when the man followed her into the shower.

Inside GRIM Hamas TERROR TUNNELS buried deep below Gaza where hostages were held captive

Inside GRIM Hamas TERROR TUNNELS buried deep below Gaza where hostages were held captive

Video Player is loading.

Current Time 0:00

Duration 2:12

Loaded: 1.44%

Remaining Time 2:12

1x

• 2x
• 1.75x
• 1.5x
• 1.25x
• 1x, selected
• 0.75x
• 0.5x

Up Next

-

Shock theory over missing fishermen's final moments on boat & 'running engine' riddle - as ex-wife reveals last text

“I went in to shower and he allowed himself to enter the shower with me -because he is a nurse and he’ll help me in the shower.

“I was wounded and I had no power over them. And I was in a situation where there was nothing I could do; he took everything from me.

“And I had to continue living with him in the house afterward.”

Immediately after the assault, Gonen was forced to record a Hamas propaganda video.

Though never released by the terror group, it was later recovered by the IDF.

The cameraman, named Mohammed, later took her to his apartment in the Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza – where she said the abuse escalated.

On her first night there, she was made to sleep behind him on a mattress.

She said: “I suddenly felt him approaching me and he started giving me a back massage. And then he started moving down to my waist – and that’s where I stopped him.

“At first I told him: ‘Stop touching me, stop touching me.’ I moved his hand away and then, when I moved his hand, he moved to my waist, and that’s when I got angry.

“I stood up and told him: ‘Don’t touch me any more.’”

But the next morning, Mohammed laid down new rules.

He allegedly told her: “Yesterday was a one-time thing. 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.”

For the next 16 days – the worst of her captivity – Gonen said she was sexually assaulted by Mohammed and another man, Ibrahim.

“Every night [Mohammed] slept with me with a gun under the pillow and an AK-47 next to the bed. He would ask me all the time: ‘Who have you slept with? When did you sleep with them?’”

She described relentless harassment.

“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.”

Terrified, Gonen lied to her captors, telling them she had a husband.

She told them: “He’s a year older than me, we met at the restaurant we both work at, we got married a year and a half ago, and he’s the love of my life.”

When she missed her period, panic set in.

“For me, the greatest fear in my life was that they’d done something to me in those first three days, or in the hospital, and I didn’t know.”

“They were sure that I’d slept with ‘Yarden’ the night before the [Nova] party, and so I didn’t get my period because I’m pregnant.”

“So one day he brought me a pregnancy test. And it came out negative.”

After Hamas ordered them to leave the apartment, Mohammed delivered a chilling threat.

“Listen, Hamas just called me and they told me to kill you. I asked if there’s an option to keep you alive, for myself, and they said yes, but we have to leave this house.”

He told her: “Go to the bathroom, wash yourself in the sink, because I don’t know when you’ll be able to shower again.”

It was the first time she was allowed to go alone.

Then, he followed her in – and raped her for 30 minutes

“Until you are in that situation, you cannot understand what happens to the body – and fear is sometimes paralysing. And I became paralysed.”

“I don’t think much went through my mind in those seconds except that I am really afraid, I am really disgusted.”

As she cried “like crazy”, she said Mohammed was “ecstatic”.

Gonen said: “He got a gift for life.”

She described staring through a small window during the assault.

“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: ‘ow. Blue skies, birds chirping, and this is the situation I’m in right now.’”

“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.”

Afterwards, a single thought echoed in her head.

“Romi, everyone in Israel thinks you’re dead, and you’re going to be his sex slave.”

Later, she said Mohammed threatened her into silence, putting a gun to her head and warning: “If you tell anyone about this, I’ll kill you.”

Gonen was released on January 19, 2025, alongside Doron Steinbrecher and Emily Damari.

She is one of the several former Israeli hostages to speak publicly about sexual abuse in captivity.

International bodies including the United Nations and Amnesty International have confirmed Hamas used sexual assault as a weapon of war.

The Dinah Project, an independent group of Israeli legal experts, concluded Hamas used sexual violence “as part of a genocidal scheme” to terrorise and dehumanise Israeli society.

Around 1,200 people were killed and 251 abducted during the October 7 attack.

Since then, more than 70,600 people have been killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.