Girls in Distress Division

Elem has initiated and developed programs for teenage girls at –risk and provides protection and therapy for those who have been abused or are alienated.

Adi Center – is an open community outpatient service, treating alienated girls, victims of violence or those demonstrating destructive behaviors. The girls come to a day enter where they are involved in various activities including vocational training, the development of life skills, or become integrated into occupational or educational programs. The Center, located in Rehovot opened in 2004.

Real Home is a therapeutic-community-friendly address for girls and young women who are victims of incest and/or sexual assault and need treatment, but are not able to take advantage of the therapy services offered by the community. The therapy available in the community and the services focusing on this work are frequently short term and stigmatized. As a result, they do not meet the needs of young women, who simply stay away.

Real Home offers a holistic solution. The young women are full partners in the therapeutic process. They come there not only for conventional treatment, but also for rest, as well as social and enrichment activities. Formal and informal professional services are offered by professionals and female volunteers. The girls receive individual and group therapy, psycho-educational activity coupled with art therapy, treatment through medication based on psychiatric evaluation, and work with the community and family.

A Personal Story:

Anat, 17, was a victim of long-term incest and gang rape.

“When I woke up in the morning, the bed was drenched again. It wasn’t pee; it didn’t smell like pee, it was that again.

“I was embarrassed to tell mom, and I didn’t understand how she couldn’t tell the difference between the smell of pee and this smell.

“It went on like this for years. My good, strong, wonderful and successful father would come to love me at night in his own way. He really did love me, he bought me present, CDs, balloons on my birthday, but he also hurt me so much . . . “I wrote a diary, on a pad, but I had the feeling that nobody wanted to know. “I had a really hard time at school. My body ached and my heart was broken. I would cry for no reason, have angry outbursts, shout and play hooky. I couldn’t stand being any where. What I really wanted was to be nowhere, to fade away, to become smaller and smaller, and then disappear.

I was 14 when Yonatan started flirting with me, and I was in seventh heaven. I finally had a normal boyfriend. At first it was fantastic, we’d go out, talk, kiss. I was so excited by it all and felt special. I started relaxing and then he started feeling me up, and I know about that. Here, I already knew what to do. So I went for a walk while he touched me, played with me, and I don’t remember what else . . .

“Then came Dor, Aviv, Oz and other boyfriends. They also felt me up, touched me, but I didn’t feel anything, I just cried, cried all the time . . .

“In the end, I lost it—I flipped, ran away, broke things, didn’t go to school. I stopped being a good girl . . .and then they hospitalized me, because they needed to protect me from myself . . . .”If it weren’t so sad, I’d laugh.

Anat and thousands of other young women like her suffer from repeated sexual assaults at home and outside. Without getting the support they need to help with their distress, their psychological defense systems collapse, and they end up in psychiatric hospitals, where they are branded as mentally ill.

ELEM and the Herzliya Women’s Circle, a non-profit organization that adopts social projects that help children and youth, decided to open an eclectic treatment center for them called Real Home.