Benny Sela

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Billboard asking the public to help catch Benny Sela: "Let's catch him together, call: 100" (Police emergency number).

Benny Sela (Hebrew: בני סלע; born 1971 in Tel Aviv) 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. Police believe Sela committed at least 24, and perhaps as many as 34, rapes, sexual assaults, and sexual molestations of women and girls over the course of five years.^[1]

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 grew up in a seedy neighborhood near the Hatikva market of Tel Aviv, and as a young boy had witnessed his alcoholic father's suicide.^[1]

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.