In Australia’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish girls’ school, a judge found former Israeli headmistress; Malka Leifer guilty of s*xually abusing her former students.
The jury reached a verdict on Monday stating that Malka Leifer’l is guilty of raping and indecently assaulting Dassi Erlich and Elly Sapper between 2003 and 2007.
She was not found guilty by the jury for s*xually molesting Nicole Meyer, a third sister.
Leifer, 56, contested her extradition from Israel for years and entered a not-guilty plea to the more than two dozen accusations brought against her.
A judge in Israel did, however, order her extradition to Australia in 2021. Leifer was one of the esteemed figures at Melbourne’s Adass Israel School, where the three sisters were enrolled, according to testimony presented during the six-week trial in Victoria’s County Court.
They claimed that the former headmistress had abused the sisters in the residence of the head teacher, at school camps, and in sealed classrooms. The jury found that after the sisters graduated and returned to the school as student instructors, the s*xual assault persisted.
“When we look back at the journey that it took, everything that happened in Israel, it was so unbelievable that we get to this time and we have: she’s guilty, she’s guilty; that can’t be taken away, she is guilty,” Erlich said while speaking to the reporters outside a Melbourne court, flanked by her sisters.
Malka Leifer has demonstrated “a proclivity to have a sxual interest in girls,” according to prosecutor Justin Lewis. In addition to the sisters’ “vulnerability (and) their ignorance in sxual matters,” he said that she abused her position.
He claimed that because of their upbringing in their ultra-religious Jewish culture and beliefs, the sisters in their teenage years had limited knowledge and understanding of s*x.
“Knowing that they were neglected at home, she pretended that she loved them and told them that she was helping them,” Lewis argued.
Ian Hill, a defense attorney, said that Leifer was not guilty of the charges brought against Leifer and questioned the credibility of the witnesses.