Haaretz
Jail and fines for abusive medical staff at Jerusalem psychiatric hospital
By Nir Hasson
Oct. 1, 2013

A nurse at the Eitanim psychiatric hospital outside Jerusalem was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment on Moncay and three other employees got suspended sentences and/or fines for abusing patients in the early 2000s. The four were convicted in December.

Dana Ben Meir, the nurse responsible for the care of autistic and brain-damaged patients and the one who initiated the abuse, was sentenced by the Jerusalem District Court to nine months in jail, 18-months suspended and a fine of NIS 15,000. The director of the department in which the abuse occurred, child psychiatrist Dr. Daniel Meir, was sentenced to six months’ community service, an 18-month suspended sentence and a fine of NIS 15,000.

Yaakov Margolin, the hospital director at the time who has since left the position, was convicted of two cases of neglecting patients. He was sentenced to 400 hours of community service and fined NIS 10,000. The hospital’s head nurse, Na’ama Dukshitzky, who was also convicted of neglecting patients, received a suspended sentence after a plea agreement. Three other hospital employees who confessed to the charges during the trial also reached plea agreements and were sentenced to six months’ community service. Two hospital aides were acquitted.

On assuming her post in 2002, Ben Meir introduced a new “treatment” method based on the assumption that patients could be trained to control their behavior by meting out various violent and humiliating punishments. The punishments included forbidding autistic patients from speaking for several hours a day, withholding treatment from an epileptic patient on the grounds that he was “faking,” withholding treatment from a patient who fell often and suffered bruises as a result, tying a patient’s hands during meals, leaving patients for hours in urine-soaked clothing, cutting up a patient’s clothing and forcing a patient to eat her meals under the table.

The abuse came to light in 2004, after complaints by hospital employees triggered a Health Ministry investigation.

The accused argued during the trial that their methods were legitimate forms of treatment. Judge Zvi Segal rejected this claim, but admitted that he had gone easy on the defendants. “The conviction of the defendants does not address all the components of the charges against them in the indictment,” he wrote, adding that, while the actions they were accused of were morally repugnant, not all of them met the legal definition of abuse.

Professor Eli Shamir, the Chairman of OZMA – The National Forum of Families of People with Mental Illness said the events at Eitanim were extreme, but occurred in many closed mental hospitals. He added that a decade ago he participated in a committee that examined the situation in mental hospitals and that the findings, which were severe, were never revealed or published, even within the Health Ministry. “The swamp should be dried, instead of fighting the mosquitoes every so often. This means incorporating the closed mental hospitals into the general hospitals, as is done in many countries.”

This would guarantee fewer such incidents, he said.

Attorney Rim Baransa of the Prosecutor’s Office Jerusalem District said as she left the courtroom: “The court has issued an important message: society must protect the helpless people living amongst it. All directors of hospitals where helpless people are held must know that they will face trial if such offenses occur.”

Attorney Ofer Bartal, representing the hospital director, said that Margolin was convicted for the misdeeds of his subordinates.

“This is a precedent since it determines that criminal law may punish honest, innocent people, who do not have a criminal soul, never meant any harm… Due to the precedent involved we are considering appealing to the Supreme Court of Justice,” he said.