Mia Schem, 22, was raped recently by her trainer at her own apartment in Israel, in a curious turn of events, after securing release without any harm from Hamas captivity in November 2023 under the first ceasefire deal of Gaza War.

"This [a sexual assault] was my biggest fear my whole life, before captivity, during captivity," Schem claimed, reports The Times of Israel.

"And it happened to me after captivity, in my safest place," she told Channel 12's Adva Dadon, describing the heinous crime, Haaretz and The Times of Israel cited the TV channel as quoting.

Schem sustained a gunshot wound to her hand during the Hamas incursion on 7 October 2023, but no further harm afterwards during her long 55-day captivity.

Her rape case was reported previously, but most details, including the identities of the parties, were under a “gag order.”

The trainer is reported to be a prominent figure on social media and has several celebrity clients, including, according to Channel 12, a former prime minister.

According to Shem, she met the trainer, reportedly a well-known fitness influencer from Tel Aviv with many celebrity clients, at a Purim party. After three sessions with him, she says he proposed introducing her to a Hollywood film producer, who he said was interested in possibly turning her story into a movie.

According to Schem's account, after that first meeting never materialized – the supposed producer failed to show up at a hotel lobby – a second meeting was scheduled, this time at Schem's home.

Schem recounted that on the day of the meeting, the trainer arrived two hours late. When he arrived, he told Schem's best friend, who was at her apartment, to leave, citing the sensitivity of the meeting with the supposed producer. Schem said her memory from that point on is fuzzy. "My body remembers; it feels everything," she described in the interview. But I don't know what happened."

"It took me three days to connect the physical sensations to consciousness," she added.

In the days following, family and friends, including the friend who was asked to leave Schem's house, noticed she wasn't acting like herself and began to worry. Her mother, Keren, who also spoke to Channel 12 described her daughter as "completely broken."

"My daughter came back from captivity in a very difficult physical and mental condition," Keren related. "And even then, she wasn't like this. Now I was seeing a kind of distress that really scared me."

Meanwhile, Schem was starting to have flashes of what happened that afternoon: the trainer entering her room while she was undressed and a second figure present in the apartment.

A friend suggested she may have been drugged. Schem said she went to the police, who referred her to a specialized center for sexual assault victims. According to the report, a medical examination revealed signs of sexual intercourse. Schem also said she had unexplained physical marks on her body after the alleged attack.

Based on the complaint she made to the police, the trainer was arrested in late March, which is when rumors about a released hostage being sexually assaulted began to swirl around social media, with many speculating about her identity and his. The trainer was later released by police but remains a suspect in the ongoing investigation.

He has vigorously denied any sexual contact with Schem, though his version of events has changed, and a polygraph test reportedly found him deceptive on multiple questions related to sexual contact.

Text messages he sent to Schem after their meeting have also raised suspicions: "What a night, wow," reads one of the messages, followed late by: "Yoel was really impressed by you. He's checking into it."

Since the story first broke, another woman has come forward to describe her experience with the same trainer acting inappropriately. The unnamed woman recently told Hebrew news outlet Ynet that he had sent her unsolicited sexually explicit messages.