Just over a day after the exposure of the intimate video scandal at a gym in Yavne in central Israel, the city is still reeling from the shock. "I can't sleep at night," says a close friend of one of the women who appeared in the videos. "She won't leave her house, refuses to answer calls. Yesterday, she told me, 'My life is over.'"
The leaked videos, which depict a fitness trainer engaging in sexual activity with female clients at the gym, some of them married, were unlawfully shared on social media.
The fitness trainer at the center of the scandal has gone into hiding. His close associates say he is in a secure location and fears for his life. "Everyone here is against him, including husbands who don't know whether he was involved with their wives," says an acquaintance. "He knows that in Yavne, a small city, he won't be able to show his face again. This could end very badly."
From a legal standpoint, the trainer's situation is also becoming more complicated. According to the Privacy Protection Authority, installing security cameras requires explicit notification to those being recorded, as well as securing the footage in accordance with the law. "If it turns out he did not comply with legal requirements," the authority's statement read, "he could find himself in serious trouble."
"This city will never be the same," says a local shop owner. "I know two of these women. They are good women, and they're divorced. Their lives have been ruined. I don't think they will stay in Yavne. And I can't stop thinking about what their children are going through."
Meanwhile, despite legal prohibitions and the desperate pleas of the families, the videos continue to circulate on social media. "Every 'send' click destroys another family," says a friend of the women exposed in the footage. "People don't realize that behind every video, there's a woman, there are children, there's an entire family whose life has been shattered. The problem is that there's no way to undo this damage. Even if the videos disappear from the internet, which we all know won't happen, the scars will stay."
