Gaza families say their children have been 'raped by Hamas-affiliated clerics', with the parents then intimidated into silence

By NATALIE LISBONA - MIDDLE EAST CORRESPONDENT Published: 10:36, 26 April 2026 | Updated: 10:43, 26 April 2026 Children in Gaza are being raped and then blackmailed into joining Hamas or having their sexual abuse made public, investigators in the enclave say. The Daily Mail has obtained filmed testimony from Jusoor News in Gaza showing the children's disturbing allegations. In the video, two boys aged just nine and ten anonymously describe every parent's worst nightmare. 'I went to pray at the mosque that day, it was before the 'asr prayer, I was studying the Quran,' says the nine-year-old before naming the Sheikh that was there. 'We were studying the Qur'an together. He said to me, "come with me, I want to give you something nice". 'He took me to the restrooms and undressed me, took off my pants and had his way with me. I started to scream and then I cried.'  The man then warned him not to tell his father. In another testimony, a ten-year-old described how he used to be the first child to arrive at the mosque until one day a Sheikh asked to follow him upstairs.  'He took me to the restrooms and undressed me, took off my pants and had his way with me. I started to scream and then I cried,' the boy recounted 'I stopped going to the mosque but I heard he was doing filthy things with lots of kids,' the ten-year-old said 'So I went upstairs, he pulled down my pants and started to do filthy things to me,' the boy said. The abuse allegedly only ended when one of the mosque attendants came in and disturbed them. 'He got scared. So I pulled my pants up and ran away,' the child said, adding: 'I stopped going to the mosque but I heard he was doing filthy things with lots of kids.' A 42-year-old father of a third victim who was raped in a Mosque in Khan Younes, recalls how his hysterical wife called him at work to say: 'Your son is bleeding and has bruises all over his body.' He rushed home and asked his son where the injuries had come from, and was told that the head Imam at the mosque had caused them. 'I was shocked, I went crazy. I lost it,' he said, describing how he went to the mosque to confront the paedophile.  'How could you do this to my son?' he asked the Imam, who immediately denied the claim despite the child identifying him as the perpetrator. During the confrontation, the father recounts how the Imam started threatening him, saying: 'I'll send Al-Qassam Brigades to you and they'll shoot you. A shooting like you've never seen in your life. We'll just say you were an Israeli collaborator.' The following day after the showdown, Qassam members arrived at his home at night and further threatened him, warning: 'If you utter another word, we'll shoot you in the legs and beat you to death – you and your family – we'll wipe you off the face of the earth.'  'They have no morals,' said the father in disbelief, 'I still don't know what to do.'  Another father, a 39-year-old resident of Deir al-Balah, testified that his son was molested by an Imam. The Imam was purportedly educating his son while harassing him and other children. 'The stuff is disgusting, I don't want to repeat it more than is necessary,' he said in an audio recording.  When he presented his proof to Hamas security, they forced him to withdraw the charges by threatening to frame him as an Israeli collaborator if he didn't back down. 'There isn't a single Hamas-run mosque they haven't ruined from top to bottom. They have corrupted the mosques in an unbelievable way.  'And not just corruption in terms of sexual immorality – every kind of awfulness has happened. 'This is also true of the charities and welfare organisations that belong to Hamas. The nine-year-old was studying the Quran when he says he was abused by a Sheikh The abuse allegedly only ended when one of the mosque attendants came in and disturbed them, the ten-year-old boy said A former Palestinian authority security officer, whose name we can not publish, claims Hamas clerics use rape as a tactic to coerce young boys and their families to remain 'obedient and submissive' to Hamas. 'It's a method used to bind them… so you can't leave them,' he said, adding that he knows of 'maybe four or five such cases. People I know well.' The former security officer added: 'It's not just sexual abuse, it's rape,' describing how afterwards they go after the children's families to prevent them from speaking. 'If you open your mouth they will destroy you and your entire household,' he stated, adding that Hamas always 'stands by [the accused] – there's no disciplinary action.'  A spokesman from Jusoor told the Daily Mail: 'In Gaza, it's a tactic used by Hamas to instill fear in young boys and pressure them into joining later. 'In our reporting from Gaza, we found that orphaned children and unmarried women are being subjected to harassment and exploitation by Hamas. Unfortunately, we have heard far too many of these stories. 'For people in Gaza, these stories are not new. They are widely known to locals. But conservative social norms and the stigmas of a shame culture have made their mention in the media taboo.  'We commend the courageous fathers of child victims who have spoken out and exposed Hamas complicity in cases of child abuse. These fathers took a brave stand, and their voices should matter.' Hamza Abu Howidy, an author who fled Gaza, said this type of abuse is so rife amongst Hamas run institutions that there is actually a term for it in Arabic called 'Tennis players or Mosque Tennis players', adding that it is a well known phenomenon. 'We use it to refer to such people who mislead children into thinking they're going to learn religious texts.  'The child gets sexually abused but stays close to the Imam or mosque in the hope no one ever finds out what's happened, but step by step he finds himself dragged into the Hamas movement,' he said. These testimonies are only just beginning to reach the international media, Jusoor says, due to threats by Hamas over reporting such abuses. The Jusoor spokeman said: 'Our team of journalists is constantly subjected to harassment and pressure by Hamas because of this type of coverage. Nevertheless, Jusoor News has become a platform for breaking old taboos against truth-telling, driven by the people of Gaza themselves. The public wants this reporting to continue. That is why we persist.' Jusoor News is a pan-Arab non-governmental news outlet with a staff of more than 70 full-time journalists and editors in the Middle East and North Africa, led by editor-in-chief Hadeel Oueis.  Jusoor has garnered popularity throughout the Levant and Iran's Arab orbit, with significant readership in Syria as well as Gaza. In 2025, there were 577 million views of Jusoor’s video content.  Jusoor reporters have been featured on BBC Arabiya, France 24, Deutsche Welle, The Free Press, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Washington Post. The comments below have not been moderated. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. 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