Associated Press
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 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 cult-like harem of at least 17 women and 37 children. Ratzon, who's lived this way for two decades, denies any wrongdoing, his lawyer says.
How he managed to lure so many young women and live this way so long in full view of authorities remains a mystery.
Police, however, said they swooped down on Ratzon when the children were at school because they were afraid their mothers might hurt them if they were at home at the time.
According to police, his lawyer and testimony from the women, Ratzon kept tabs on his "extended family" through closed-circuit TV, and fined them for violating rules that included modest dress and a ban on unauthorized telephone calls.
Police broke up the harem on Jan. 12, taking the children and women to shelters. Police investigating him on suspicion of enslavement, rape and incest have until Friday to charge him or else his detention runs out.
In an Israeli television documentary aired last year, Ratzon said the women were drawn to him because he was "perfect" and had "all the qualities that a woman wants."
Asher Wizman, a private investigator who said his company was hired by two sets of parents to extricate their daughters from the clan, told The Associated Press that Ratzon preyed on troubled young women.
Another investigator, who spend a month inside the clan, reported to Wizman that the women "talked about Ratzon as if he were a god," he said.
Dvora Reichstein was taken into the fold four and a half years ago when she was 22, unmarried and pregnant with another man's child. From day one, she said, life with him was "like living in a prison" -- but she had nowhere else to go.
"Today, I'm free to wear jeans, talk to my parents, meet friends, buy myself a cup of coffee without getting Goel's permission," said Reichstein, who had a "Goel" tattoo peeking out over her black turtleneck in a photo published in the Yediot Ahronot daily.
