There’s a moment in every rehabilitation story that doesn’t make it into the inspirational quotes. It’s not the first day sober, or the first job interview, or even the first night of safe sleep. It’s the moment a person realizes the past hasn’t just hurt them, it’s still billing them.
For one woman, a survivor of the sex trade, that bill came in the form of 77 fines totaling about 100,000 shekels. Not a “mistake,” not a single misstep—an accumulated record of survival under conditions most of us are lucky never to face. A teenager subjected to severe sexual assault. A descent into prostitution, drug dependence, and life on the street. And then, against the odds, a decision to climb out.
She did what we demand people do when we speak about “responsibility.” She sought help. With the support of a mobile clinic operated through the Haifa Health Bureau, she got clean. She started looking for work. She began the slow, grinding work of rebuilding a life.
And then she hit a wall made of paperwork.
A six-figure debt doesn’t just punish. It paralyzes. It restricts movement, employment, stability—everything rehabilitation requires. It becomes an anchor disguised as accountability: a millstone around the neck of someone trying to swim to shore.
That is why the decision by Israel’s Enforcement and Collection Authority to erase the full amount is more than a compassionate gesture. It’s a statement—rare, and therefore revealing—about what real rehabilitation actually needs.
Attorney Tamar Stachel-Devor of the Jerusalem Institute of Justice, which provides free legal aid to marginalized populations, described the case as exceptional. It was referred to JIJ’s free legal aid department by social worker Noga Shiloh from the mobile clinic, and it succeeded because the system was persuaded to see what the numbers usually hide: this wasn’t a “serial offender.” This was a person who had been failed repeatedly—and was still trying.
We should pause on that word: exceptional.
Why should it be exceptional to recognize that fines piled on vulnerable people often function less like deterrence and more like lifelong barriers? Why should the state need a rare, hard-won intervention to do what’s plainly rational: remove obstacles that make recovery less likely, not more?
Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: debt is one of the quietest ways we keep people trapped. It is the bureaucracy’s version of a closed door. And when it’s applied to survivors of exploitation, it starts to resemble a second punishment—this time for daring to survive in the first place.
Canceling 100,000 shekels doesn’t erase the harm she endured. But it does something almost as important: it restores the possibility of a future that isn’t permanently hostage to her past.
“It gives her hope,” said her attorney, Tamar.
Hope isn’t a slogan. It’s infrastructure. And sometimes, the most effective rehabilitation program begins with the simplest policy decision of all: stop charging people for their trauma.