The former principal of a Jewish girl’s school in Australia was found guilty on Monday of sexually abusing two students, ending a nine-year legal battle that strained relations between the Australian and Israeli governments while antagonising Australia’s Jewish community.
Malka Leifer, 56, a Tel Aviv-born mother of eight, was convicted on 18 counts, including rape, and acquitted of nine other charges, including five that related to the eldest student, Nicole Meyer. The three former students—Meyer, Dassi Erlich, and Elly Sapper—are all sisters.
Trial judge Mark Gamble had issued a gag order preventing media reporting during the trial that Leifer had fought against her extradition to Australia following her return to Israel in 2008, as allegations against her first emerged.
The legal battle she waged in Jerusalem courts since 2014 ended in 2021, when she boarded a flight towards Melbourne at Ben Gurion Airport, her ankles and wrists shackled. The news of Leifer’s extradition was welcomed in Australia by lawmakers and Jewish community leaders.
Leifer sat with her head tilted, watching the jury, and did not react as the verdicts were read. The two former students she was convicted of abusing, Erlich and Sapper, were in court for the verdicts. Leifer had earlier pleaded not guilty to all 27 counts.
The Associated Press does not usually identify victims and alleged victims of sexual abuse, but the sisters have chosen to identify themselves in the media. Prosecutors claimed Leifer abused the students between 2003 and 2007 at the Adass Israel School, an ultra-Orthodox school in Melbourne where she was head of religion and later principal, as well as at her Melbourne home and at rural school camps.
Prosecutor Justin Lewis told jurors that Leifer tended to have a sexual interest in girls when they were teenage students at the school and when those same girls were student teachers. Lewis said Leifer engaged in sexual activities with them and took advantage of their vulnerability, ignorance of sexual matters, and her own position of authority.
Defence lawyer Ian Hill argued the lengthy delay between the alleged offences and the trial, which began in February, was a disadvantage to the defence and to jurors. He attacked the credibility of the sisters, including accusing one of telling “blatant lies” in her evidence. The sisters had an isolated upbringing in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community and received no sexual education, the court heard. They were around 12; 14; and 16 when Leifer arrived at the school from Israel in 2001.