Benny Sela

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Billboard asking the public to help catch Benny Sela: "Let's catch him together"

Benny Sela (Hebrew: בני סלע) is an Israeli serial rapist.

Captured by police in 1999, he was convicted in 2000 of 14 counts of rape, and sentenced to 35 years imprisonment on a plea bargain. Sela's case entered the textbook of Israeli social work education as an example of severe failures in his foster care as a teenager. He came from an impoverished background, and had witnessed as a young boy his father's suicide. Since then, his emotional development was damaged, and there were repeated failures by various boarding schools, among them at the Alonei Itzhack School, in whose trust he was given.

On November 24, 2006, Sela escaped from police custody while being transferred to a court hearing. His escape launched a nationwide search, involving thousands of Israeli police officers. He was captured near Nahariya on December 8, 2006, two weeks after his escape.