We all struggle to acknowledge and face the reality of sexual violence. The tendency is to repress, minimize, and deny these horrific and inconceivable events. But the brutality of the terror attacks by Hamas on October 7 forced all of us to confront the cruel reality of sexual violence. The fact that the sexual violence on October 7 was part of a broader and shocking attack on the state, Israeli society, and the Jewish people has mobilized Israeli society to fight for recognition of the cruelty of these assaults in the face of global silence.

Yet even in this rare moment of societal consensus, there is still an invisible demographic within the realm of sexual violence—men who were assaulted at the Nova Festival, in the kibbutzim, and among the hostages. The fact that male victims are an invisible population within the world of sexual trauma stems from many and varied reasons, which we cannot detail fully here, but we will mention the main ones.