Published: 1 March 2018
Last updated: 4 March 2024
"I just wanted it to be civil, for us both to be able to start clean ... to be able to co-parent," Sara said recently, sitting in a cafe in Melbourne.Instead, an already fraught situation spiralled into a nightmare when her husband flatly refused to grant her a Jewish divorce known as a gett. She was trapped.
Outside Israel, Jewish couples can be civilly divorced, but if they do not also obtain a gett, they are considered still married in Orthodox law. The gett process, overseen by a tribunal of all-male rabbis, strictly requires that a husband must willingly give his wife the gett, which she must willingly accept.
Most of the time this happens quickly and amicably. But in what experts say is a growing number of cases, Jewish men in Australia are abusing their power in the divorce process to force women into giving up money, property and child custody. Some vengeful husbands — like Sara's — withhold divorce simply out of spite, others barter for financial advantage.
*Not her real name
FULL STORY Chained Women: The Jewish wives being held hostage in abusive marriages (ABC)
Illustration by Rocco Fazzari
