After weeks of scraping by to feed her six children in Gaza , the 38-year-old woman thought she’d found a lifeline.

At a shelter, a friend told her about a man who could help with food , aid , maybe even a job. The woman — separated from her husband, and forced to shutter the business that once kept the family afloat — approached him.

It was about a month into the war in Gaza, she said, and he promised her work, a six-month contract with an aid agency. On the day she believed she'd sign the paperwork, he drove her not to an office but to an empty apartment. He complimented her, she said, and told her to remove her headscarf.

He told her he loved her and wouldn't force her, she said, but he also wouldn't let her leave. Eventually, they had a sexual encounter, she said. She declined

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