Editor’s note: The report contains details of sexual assault and violence.
A landmark new report concludes that Hamas militants and their allies raped, assaulted and sexually tortured victims “to maximize pain and suffering” during and after the October 7, 2023 terror attack in southern Israel.
The report, first shared with CNN, provides the most comprehensive evidence yet of sexual and gender-based violence against women, men and children, which it calls “systemic, widespread and integral.”
“The most important finding is that the sexual violence against imprisoned hostages on October 7 was a carefully planned strategy by Hamas,” lead author and human rights expert Cochav Elkayam-Levy told CNN.
The report includes first-hand testimonies from more than 10 survivors who suffered extreme sexual violence and abuse during attacks, abductions or detention in Gaza.
Some of them, including former hostages Romy Gonen, Rom Braslavski, Abel Yehud, Amit Susana, Ilana Grizewski and others, have spoken publicly about their ordeal. Other victims have only shared their experiences confidentially with experts, investigators and medical staff.
But the report also includes previously unknown allegations, including that two minors held hostage in Gaza said they were sexually abused and forced by their captors to perform sex acts on each other.
Some of the details emerged after previous reports were published, including after the release of hostages in Gaza. Some come from testimony given directly to researchers, while others come from multiple meetings with medical experts, lawyers representing some victims and others.
In one particularly harrowing example, the report details three separate rapes at the Nova music festival site around Gaza, citing a survivor who hid near the attacks.
“As they were passing her, I heard a rape. She was probably hurt, judging by her screams – screams you’ve never heard anywhere,” the survivor said. Their account was corroborated by another survivor who also spoke of hearing about the rape and of others who later saw the victim’s body, with her clothes torn, legs spread and private parts mutilated, the report said.
The report also outlines at least six other incidents in which people directly witnessed rapes and gang rapes, all of which described how the victims were shot. In one case, a witness said she saw a young woman raped, mutilated and shot to death by several men.
Elkayam-Levi said the goal of the report, as well as a digital archive containing all the evidence collected by the team, is to ensure that the suffering suffered by victims is not “denied, erased or forgotten.” As with other such archives, the material will not be made available to the public for a period of time to protect the privacy of the victims. CNN was unable to verify all of the dossier’s contents but has seen much of the visual material it contains.
The report has received public support from many high-profile experts and activists, including Sheryl Sandberg and Hillary Clinton.
Houses were destroyed during a Hamas attack on Kibbutz Kfar Azhar in southern Israel on 7 October. – Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
The team spent more than two years painstakingly collecting, reviewing and cataloging evidence of the attack. They said they conducted hundreds of interviews and meetings with survivors, first responders, forensic examiners and medical experts and spent about 1,800 hours analyzing more than 10,000 photos and video footage from the attack, including hours of horrific material recorded by the perpetrators.
Elkayam-Levi established the Civilian Commission, which describes itself as an independent non-governmental organization to record and preserve evidence of the attacks. The report identified what the authors called “clear and convincing evidence” of a “pattern” of sexual and gender-based abuse that occurred on multiple occasions across multiple locations.
They said the repetitive nature of the violence – including sexual torture, killing after sexual violence, forced nudity, restraint of victims, threats of forced marriage and the filming and dissemination of images of sexual violence – suggested it was an integral part of attacks on women and men and their aftermath.
The report stated that on October 7, the bodies of many victims were dismembered, and the attackers often targeted women’s faces and private parts. The researchers reviewed photos of many of the bodies and interviewed forensic experts and those who conducted identifications at the IDF Shula base where most of the bodies were transported. Dozens of people were shot or burned in the chest and groin areas, and they were often mutilated after death, they said.
Elkayam-Levi said she believed it was a deliberate attack.
“Sexual violence means torture, humiliation. They mutilate (victims’) private organs, burn their genital areas, causing pain and suffering that will be remembered for generations to come,” she said.
“The victims are emblematic of a nation. It’s the collective impact of it, the collective trauma it causes, the collective pain.”
Amit Soussana, who was kidnapped and held hostage by Hamas, speaks near the ruins of her home in Kfar Aza, Israel. – Amir Levy/Getty Images
fighting denial
The issue of sexual and gender-based violence became heavily politicized in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 incident, in part because some of the horrific accounts of violence shared by officials in the immediate aftermath of the attack were later found to be false.
To counter potential deniers, Elkayam-Levi said every piece of evidence contained in the report was carefully cross-referenced and fact-checked.
Each case cited was corroborated by eyewitnesses, including first responders who attended the scene. The team behind the report, made up of about 25 experts and contributors, also worked with a team of researchers to geolocate photos and videos from the scene, pinpoint the location of each victim and cross-reference it with other evidence, she said.
The authors said they decided not to rely on any information obtained through state interrogations – which is standard practice in preparing such reports and is intended to preserve the independence of the work. Hamas has repeatedly denied sexual and gender-based violence during attacks or against captives.
The denials continued despite Pramila Patten, the UN special representative on sexual violence in conflict, concluding after a fact-finding mission that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, has occurred”. Patten said she was unable to meet any survivors during her visit, but her team visited the site of the attack and interviewed dozens of witnesses and officials.
Pramila Patten, Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, addresses a Security Council meeting on the report on sexual violence during the conflict between Israel and Hamas at United Nations Headquarters. – Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket/Getty Images
The Israeli Association of Rape Crisis Centers, the Dinah Project, an independent group of Israeli researchers, and various national and international media investigations have also concluded that rape and sexual abuse were part of the attack. The new report goes further, saying the violence was systematic and planned.
Hamas has previously denied that its militants committed rape in the October 7 attack.
The International Criminal Court is seeking arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders, accusing them of war crimes including rape and other forms of sexual violence. However, all three were killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza, so the court ended the proceedings.
Some Israeli officials have criticized international agencies for not paying enough attention to the issue of sexual and gender-based violence, which they say is due to anti-Semitism.
Meanwhile, some Israeli critics deny that the incident took place and accuse Israel of using the accusations as a pretext for its brutal war in Gaza. According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, more than 72,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the war began two and a half years ago.
Those who have challenged the accusations point to the fact that the victims did not provide first-hand testimony immediately after the attack. Israeli authorities said this was because many of them were murdered on 7 October.
Only when forensic experts examined their bodies and viewed photos and videos of the attacks and saw clear signs of sexual violence were researchers able to piece together what had happened.
Freed Israeli hostage Rom Braslavski gestures in a van as he arrives at Sheba Hospital in Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv, Israel, on October 13, 2025. – Atef Sadafi/EPA/Shutterstock
Another factor was that as fighting continued to rage in the area after the initial attack, some first responders violated law enforcement protocols by failing to collect forensic evidence and examine victims at the scene. There were almost no records or photos when the crime scene was discovered.
In the days after the attack, as emergency workers were still recovering bodies, Israeli authorities took reporters, including CNN, to a number of locations. Access was virtually unrestricted and dozens of people were allowed to walk through the crime scene in private homes.
When asked previously by CNN about the evidence collection, Israeli authorities and emergency responders pointed to the security constraints of working in an active war zone and the need to identify and bury victims.
Elkayam-Levi said this is not unusual in cases of sexual violence. What is unusual is the weaponization of a lack of forensic evidence to discredit the accusations.
“Anyone who has ever represented a victim of sexual violence knows that doubts and denials come almost immediately. But what pains me most is actually not the public’s hesitation but the experts saying, ‘Show me the evidence,'” Elkayam-Levi said.
“In my 20 years of experience, I don’t recall ever having a feminist scholar come up to me and say, show me evidence of victims of sexual violence,” she added.
Some first responders were volunteers with no formal training in how to handle evidence. Many were overwhelmed and traumatized, and some told stories of things they had seen that turned out to be wrong—but not before they were widely disseminated by the media, Israeli officials, and Elkayam-Levi himself.
She has been publicly criticized by some colleagues as well as anonymous government officials who have been quoted in Israeli and international media as questioning her motives.
These incidents were later used by some critics to discredit other claims, even though the evidence was clear and corroborated by multiple sources.
Elkayam-Levi quickly became one of the victims’ most outspoken advocates. She was awarded the 2024 Israel Prize, widely considered the country’s highest civilian honor.
Like many advocates for victims of sexual violence, Elkayam-Levi has received threats, including death threats, related to her work — work she believes is worth it.
“These men and women, victims of sexual violence, are silenced in the worst and most cruel way. Hopefully what we do is put an end to that.”
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