GIRL IN CHICKEN COOP

Grey River Argus, 24 April 1937, Page 12

GIRL IN CHICKEN COOP

IMPRISONED FOR EIGHT MONTHS Mental specialist- Dr. Abraham Litvak was sentenced in Jerusalem to a year’s -imprisonment for detaining a twenty.two-year-old Jewess Haya Rubin in a chicken coop for eight months. His 82-ycar.old father-in-law, Henry Feldman, an Australian Jew, was sentenced to three months in the second' division for aiding him. British Judge Shaw re-fused the police request to revoke Dr. Litvak's [licence. Both the accused are to ap. peal. The trial lasted 14 days at Telaviv.

The prosecutiion ease was that Haya who is mentaly deficient, was taken to Palestine by her American parentwho died leaving £2OOO for her keep. Dr. Litvak said he could cure Inland make her sane. She disappeared. HALF-STARVED. Eight months later the police and Mrs.' Friedman, a (15-year-old Jewess, who had promised Mils. Rubin she would care for the girl, found her, half-clad, half-starved, in a. tiny chicken coop on Dr. Litvak’s farm in a Jewish village o n the Alediterranean.

She had been given scraps of food and a bottle of wafer every second day, had been beaten and id-tranied', and had developed epileptic fits. During the hearing she was debared, from giving evidence, but had to sit in court, Mrs. Friedina.l by her side. She kept, he-n eyes fixed on Dr. Litvak', -occasionally gest-’eauhi ling towards him —she had fallen in love I with him during her “imprisonment.”.