In a poignant revelation, a former Israeli hostage has courageously spoken about the harrowing ordeal she endured during her captivity. Romi Gonen, who was abducted from the Nova music festival by Hamas terrorists, has shared her distressing experiences, including the fear of becoming pregnant after being assaulted while unconscious. She also harbored a constant dread of dying as a “sex slave.”

Gonen’s release came after 471 days of captivity, during the second ceasefire in January. In her first interview since gaining freedom, she opened up about the sexual abuse she suffered, recounting the chilling moment when one of her attackers appeared “ecstatic” during a 30-minute assault as she was reduced to tears.

The nightmare began shortly after her abduction, when she was taken to Shifa Hospital. Gonen had been shot in the arm amidst the chaos of the Hamas-led attack. It was there that the first assault occurred.

Recalling the horrific experience on Channel 12’s ‘Uvda’ program with journalist Ben Shani, Gonen described how her clothes were violently torn from her body. She recounted the menacing atmosphere as one individual removed her shoes, another took earrings from her face, and yet another stripped jewelry from her body.

While a woman attempted to find a vein in her arm for medical attention, Gonen was subjected to invasive touching by those surrounding her hospital bed, adding to her trauma during those terrifying moments.

As a woman searched for the right vein in her arm, Gonen described being touched by a crowd of people while in the hospital bed. 

‘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,’ she said.

‘I was sure I was going to wake up without an arm.’ 

In an explosive interview on Israel’s Channel 12 on Thursday, former hostage Romi Gonen revealed the sexual abuse she suffered in Gaza

Romi Gonen, 25, was released during the second ceasefire in January, 471 days after she was kidnapped from the Nova music festival and taken as a hostage by Hamas terrorists

Romi Gonen embraces loved ones at Sheba Medical Centre in Ramat Gan, Israel, 471 days after she was kidnapped

Gonen said that, when she talks about her time as a hostage in Gaza, she imagines people around her 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,’ she said. 

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

Following the incident in the hospital bed, a doctor escorted her to a car, which transported her to an apartment in Gaza City, where a Palestinian medical professional tasked with caring for her wounds allegedly sexually assaulted her.

It happened on Gonen’s fourth day in captivity, when the ‘nurse’ followed her into a shower.

At this point, she was in so much pain that she had pleaded with him to take her to the hospital, so that she could have her arm amputated. 

‘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,’ she said. 

‘And I had to continue living with him in the house afterward.’

Immediately after the assault, Gonen was forced into recording a propaganda video for Hamas, which was never released by the terror group but has since been recovered by the IDF.

Romi Gonen said her captors sexually assaulted her at Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City, where she was treated for injuries

Romi Gonen pictured on February 28, 2025, three days post-surgery in recovery with her friend Emily Damari (R) who she met in captivity

Released hostage Romi Gonen (R) embracing her mother Merav (L) at a reception point near Kibbutz Reim, southern Israel, 19 January 2025

The cameraman, named Mohammed, also allegedly sexually assaulted her in his apartment, where she was moved to some two weeks into the war. 

On the first night in his house, she was forced to sleep next to him on a mattress in the living room. 

With only those two in the house, he began touching her, first on her back and then on her waist.

‘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,’ she said.

‘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.”‘

Gonen batted him away, quickly grabbed her mattress and took it to another room, where she slept that night.

But the next day, she recalled Mohammed telling 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.’

The next 16 days spent in captivity in that house, located in the Shati camp in northern Gaza, were the worst of her 471 days as a hostage, said Gonen. 

For many days, she said both Mohammed and another 20-year-old man called Ibrahim assaulted her. 

‘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?”‘

On another occasion, she was sitting on her bed when Ibrahim began sexually harassing her.

‘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.”‘ 

She continued: ‘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.’

Gonen said she lied to her captors and convinced them she had a husband, naming him after her older sister, Yarden. 

‘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,’ she recalled telling her guards. 

One night during her stay at the house, she missed her period, and ‘that terrified everyone,’ she said. 

‘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,’ she said, referring to her time in hospital which she’d lost consciousness due to the gunshot wound. 

‘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, and I explained to them it didn’t really happen. So one day he brought me a pregnancy test. And it came out negative,’ she said. 

Romi Gonen, centre, was released alongside hostages Emily Damari, left, and Doron Steinbracher

After 16 days in Mohammed’s apartment, Gonen said that Hamas ordered them to leave again.

‘I went to sleep in the afternoon, on the floor, in the living room. I woke up with Mohammed and Ibrahim talking above me. They knelt down and [Mohammed] told me: “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 said: “Go to the bathroom, wash yourself in the sink, because I don’t know when you’ll be able to shower again.”‘

That was the first time Gonen was allowed to go to the bathroom alone. 

After some time, however, ‘he came after me’, she said, before describing how Mohammed sexually assaulted her for 30 minutes in the bathroom.

‘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,’ she said.

Recalling how she cried ‘like crazy’, Gonen said Mohammed was ‘ecstatic’ throughout the assault.’ 

‘He got a gift for life,’ she said.

Gonen continued: ‘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.’

Following the assault, Gonen described how all that went through her head was a voice saying: ‘Romi, everyone in Israel thinks you’re dead, and you’re going to be his sex slave.’

She recalled her devastation following the traumatic attack. ‘I got to the living room, I sat on the chair, in pure shock – tears didn’t just roll down from my eyes, they poured, my legs were covered in water because of how the tears were flowing.’

Later, she said, Mohammed threatened her to keep her silence, recalling how he put a gun to her head and said: ‘If you tell anyone about this, I’ll kill you.’

Romi Gonen pictured ten days post surgery with her mother Meirav

Romi Gonen, left, pictured with Emily Damari in in Kfar Aza

Gonen was released alongside Doron Steinbrecher and Emily Damari during the second ceasefire between Israel and Hamas on January 19, 2025.

The 25-year-old is one of several former hostages who has spoken out about suffering sexual assault while in captivity.

Groups such as the United Nations and Amnesty International have confirmed that Hamas used sexual assault as a weapon of war on October 7 and against hostages during their captivity, alongside other forms of abuse and torture. 

The Dinah project, an independent group of leading Israeli lawyers, found that Hamas used sexual violence ‘as part of a genocidal scheme’ with the goal of terrorising and dehumanising Israeli society during the cross-border massacre.

About 1,200 people were killed and 251 abducted into Gaza during the attack on southern Israel.

Since then, more than 70,600 people have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.