On March 9, 2023, Nelly Katzman was killed. Not the manner in which her cause of death was narrated, quite explicitly, in both the obituary which can be found adjacent to this website, or story told at the ‘celebration’ of her life that occurred at the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center just under a week later. Both provide variations on the same theme. In the obituary, Nelly’s death occurred after a ‘battle’ with the mental health system, leaving everything else extremely vague. For the hundreds of attendees at the memorial, this would be less so. There, they would learn, Nelly had a promising early life followed by a troubled adolescence, and then, after leaving to college, even more trouble. She would eventually be diagnosed with a schizoaffective disorder, she would suffer, and realizing that it was incurable and degenerative, she would, according to the opening speaker, choose a course that ‘the elders may not understand, but must respect’, to end her life. In other words, after being diagnosed with schizophrenia, by all accounts, Nelly would choose to kill herself rather than face the enduring suffering she was now faced with.
Absolutely none of this is true.
Nelly did not have schizophrenia, or indeed, a ‘schizoaffective disorder’. She had absolutely no interest in death. The truth is far more horrific
Nelly was abused, violently, viciously, and with chronicity by Cindy Kane and Doron Katzman, her mother and father, from early childhood through to the very final day of her life. On the final day of her life, she was due to escape from their violence in one week. She had secured a safe haven after six months of extremely difficult and, at times, dangerous work. Her abusers learned of this almost perfectly one month and a week beforehand. One month later, and one week too soon, Nelly was pronounced dead.
Nelly’s abusers have gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal, prohibit, distort and warp, and, in general, to disappear the true story of her life. I should know. I have been abused by Cindy Kane and Doron Katzman, violently, viciously, and with chronicity from 2023 to the present, at which point I committed myself to telling her story. And, like her, I will, like her, I will not yield. Not ever.