A 15-year-old Israeli girl who accused three Egyptians of drugging her and attempting to rape her spoke out Wednesday about the incident.
The teen returned to Israel from a vacation in the Sinai Peninsula two weeks ago, after surviving attempts at rape and even attempts to force her to marry an Egyptian man.
Friends notice that the girl was not herself following the incident, and she claims a 20-year-old Egyptian man who befriended her at the Azure Lodge in Sinai, where the man worked, spiked a hooka she was using with mind-altering drugs, believed to be datura, in order to take advantage of her.
“I didn’t know that they had snuck in hallucinogenic drugs,” said the girl, according to Channel 12. “I thought it was a regular hooka.”
“The young employee tried to get close to be repeatedly, but I shoved him away. I realized that something wasn’t right, that he did something bad to me. He had said he was my best friend.”
“I trusted people, but after this incident I have no faith in them anymore.”
During her stay at Azure Lodge, the girl was reportedly pressured into marrying a 56-year-old Egyptian man. Two men dressed her in traditional Bedouin clothing, while trying to convince her to stay and marry the 56-year-old man.
Even after her return to Israel, one of the Egyptian men continued, via SMS messages, to urge her to return to Egypt to get married. “We’ll have lots of kids together,” he wrote in one message.
Still under the influence of the drugs when she first returned to Israel, the teen told her parents she planned to marry him and have 15 children with him.
Following her return to Israel, the girl’s mother realized she was under the influence of mind-altering drugs, and had the girl brought in for assessment. The teen was given medication and psychiatric treatment for the effects of the hallucinogenic drugs she had unwittingly taken.
Later, the girl’s parents filed a complaint with the Egyptian embassy in Israel, demanding the perpetrators be punished.
“I demand that those who hurt my daughter be punished to the full extent of the law,” the mother said. “This is an outrage, they could have killed her.
On Monday, Egyptian officials announced that they had arrested three suspects in connection with the case, including the 20-year-old lodge employee and the 56-year-old man whom the girl was pressured into marrying.
The case is just the latest in a recent series of claims by Israeli girls and women who say they were drugged and sexually assaulted during their stays at lodges in the Sinai.
In April, a number of Israeli women claimed they were drugged and raped by one of the managers at the Fayrouz Beach Camp and Yoga Studio in Nuweiba, Sinai.
The manager, Ahmed Sulieman, said that he had had consensual relations with “400 Israeli women”, but denied he had raped any of the lodge’s guests. “Do I look like I need to rape girls?” Sulieman said following the accusations.