MELBOURNE (AP) By Dr. Majid Khan– A former headmaster of an Australian Jewish girls’ school was convicted Monday of sexually abusing two schoolgirls, straining relations between the Australian and Israeli governments. A nine-year legal battle that has also affected the Australian government has come to an end.
Her Malka Leifer, 56, a Tel Aviv-born mother of eight, was found guilty of 18 charges, including rape, and her 5 on her oldest student, Nicole Meyer. She was acquitted of nine charges, including the Her three former students, Meyer, Dassi Erlich and Elly Sapper, are all sisters.
Trial Judge Mark Gamble said the media would report at the trial that she was fighting extradition to Australia when allegations against her first surfaced after Leifer returned to Israel in 2008,issued a restraining order. Her legal battle, which she had fought in a Jerusalem court since 2014, ended in 2021 when she boarded a flight to Melbourne from Ben Gurion Airport with her ankles and wrists tied. News of Leifer’s extradition was welcomed by Australian lawmakers and Jewish community leaders.
Leifer sat with her head bowed, looked at the jury, and did not respond when the verdict was read out.The two former students she was convicted of for molesting, Erlich and Sapper, were at the verdict. Leifer had previously pleaded not guilty to all 27 counts.
Erlich told her jury that she tried to get in touch with another teacher to ask what her Leifer was doing, but Leifer dissuaded her. “Having connections with other teachers, having multiple mentors,” Leifer said, “wasn’t healthy for me,” Erlich testified.
The sisters testified behind closed doors for more than two weeks under the rules governing sexual assault trials in Victoria, closed to the public and media.
Other witnesses were those to whom the sisters disclosed their allegations.
Erlich first spoke with her social worker Chana Rabinowitz in Israel in early 2008. She said that when Mr. Rabinowitz asked her sister who had hurt her, she replied that the young woman was “Mrs. Rabinowitz.” Lives.
Psychologist Vicky Gordon testified that she heard Sapper complaining of abuse by Leifer. Gordon said in court that her sisters alleged that Rafer described the abuse as an attempt to overcome the girls’ lack of warmth and affection in their family life.
Hill told jurors that her sisters loved Leifer and that letters from her school days showed that she appreciated her support, Hill said after the allegations were filed in 2008. , stated that Ehrlich’s story changed several times.
“The false reports robbed us of truth and credibility,” Hill said. “Perhaps at times it even hardens into false concepts and false memories of false realities.”
Meyer told reporters in court that her conviction was “everything we wanted.”
“She’s fought for years to hear the word ‘guilty,’ ever since we started this fight, since she made a statement to the police in 2011,” she called.
Waks said the trial process had been challenging for the sisters until the verdict was announced.
“The process the sisters went through is unique and arduous. I attended 75 court hearings in Israel to get her extradition,” Wax said.
Leifer will return to court on her April 26th to hear the sentencing.
