The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected Malka Leifer’s appeal against a lower court’s ruling that the alleged serial pedophile is mentally fit to be extradited to Australia, where she is wanted on 74 charges of child sex abuse.
This means Leifer’s extradition itself will be decided on September 21 by the Jerusalem District Court, after 70 court hearings over six years that dealt with the question of her mental fitness.
A panel of three Supreme Court justices unanimously rejected Leifer’s appeal, saying none of the arguments presented by her lawyers point to her being mentally unfit to stand trial and be extradited.
The head of the panel, Justice Yitzhak Amit, ruled that there was no reason to intervene in the lower court’s decision.
He rejected the claim that Leifer enters a “psychotic state” before each hearing and therefore her mental state fluctuates with the legal proceedings. He cited six psychiatrists determining that she is feigning mental illness.
Justice Ofer Grosskopf said there was no reason to discuss any issues related to Israel’s criminal law, noting that the criteria for being unfit to be extradited to another country were higher than the criteria for being unfit to stand trial in Israel. He said it was up to an Australian court to determine whether she is fit to stand trial.
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Justice Anat Baron echoed Grosskopf’s arguments and similarly rejected the appeal.
One of Leifer’s accusers, Dassi Erlich, tweeted that she was “beyond excited.”
“6 years and 70 court hearings regarding Leifer’s mental fitness! We are exhilarated, finally an end in sight!” she said. “During this tumultuous journey there were moments that this did not seem possible! Bring on Sept 21 and an extradition decision!”
If Jerusalem District Court Judge Chana Miriam Lomp approves Leifer’s extradition on September 21, Justice Minister Avi Nissenkorn will have to sign off on the order. However, both the court decision and Nissenkorn’s stamp of approval can be appealed to the Supreme Court as well.
At the first hearing on the extradition in July, the defense team of the former school principal sought to argue that those who accuse their client of sexual abuse had effectively consented to it.
Defense attorney Nick Kaufman argued that the three sisters accusing his client were around or even over the consenting age of 18 when the alleged abuse took place. He did not state specifically that the allegations were true, but argued that even if they were, there were holes in their stories, which should prevent Leifer from being extradited.
Dismissing the alleged power differential between the then-teenage students and their former principal at the Adass Israel ultra-Orthodox all-girls high school, Kaufman asserted that Dassi Erlich, Nicole Meyer and Elie Sapper continued meeting Leifer privately and that two of them never tried to resist the alleged abuse.
(From L-R) Dassi Erlich, Ellie Sapper and Nicole Meyer pose for a photo in Jerusalem on November 29, 2018. (Jacob Magid/Time of Israel)
State prosecutor Matan Akiva flatly rejected the claims, saying the alleged victims were in no place to say “no” to Leifer and that their principal had total control over them. Moreover, he argued, the nature of their ultra-Orthodox community in Melbourne left the girls without the tools to be able to cope with such abuse.
In 2000, Leifer left Israel to take a job at Adass Israel ultra-Orthodox all-girls high school. When the allegations of sexual abuse against her began to surface eight years later, members of the school board purchased the mother of eight a plane ticket back to Israel, allowing her to avoid being charged.
She was arrested in Israel in 2014 after Australia filed for extradition, but a Jerusalem court suspended the proceedings in 2016, deeming her mentally unfit to stand trial. She was rearrested in 2018 after being filmed apparently leading a fully functional life.
Leifer was allegedly aided by former health minister Yaakov Litzman, who police last year recommended be indicted for pressuring psychiatrists in his office to change the medical opinions submitted to the court to deem her unfit for trial.
After over a year’s worth of additional hearings, Lomp concluded that the evidence regarding Leifer’s health was still inconclusive and ordered a board of psychiatric experts to determine whether the former principal has been faking mental incompetence. In February, the panel filed its conclusion that Leifer has been faking, leading Lomp to make the same determination in May.
The nature of the delays in the Leifer case have been a source of strain in Israel’s relations with both Australia’s government and the Jewish community there.
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2 comments:
Time to take lesbian abusers seriously. This is the last remaining real prejudice, to think that male homosexual predators are worse than female. Not true. We should be supportive of the victims, and asking why the very pious and righteous religious authorities covered up for a pediphile rebetzen
I don't believe that guilty people have a right to a fair trial. That's liberal nonsense. The guilty are entitled to nothing. But if we don't try the guilty according to the rule of law, then someday an innocent person who does have a right to a fair trial will face grave injustice.
As much as we would wish to deny heinous criminals any defense, nonetheless the justice system demands that we do just that. Unless we allow every criminal to put up a vigorous defense we all lose, because any of us can be accuse of a horrible crime. The only protection an innocent person has against false accusations is if we allow everyone to put up a defense even the truly guilty ones.
Over one hundred years ago Mendel Beilis, a Jew living in Tsarist Russia was accused of the brutal murder of a Christian child. The evidence was "overwhelming", claimed the prosecution. There were 3 pieces of evidence produced at trial: 1. It was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the child was murdered. 2. Mendel Beilis was a Jew; himself admitted it. On the stand the prosecutor asked Beilis if he was a Hassid and he responded that he wasn't a Hassid; he was just a simple Jew. 3. Although, he lived more than 20 miles away from where the child was found near his home, there was no other Jew in the immediate vicinity.
That was the only "evidence" produced at trial. The prosecutor's argument was as follows: No one other than a Jew could have committed such a brutal act; Beilis was the nearest Jew to be found, therefore he is guilty beyond reasonable doubt.
If you think that no one could be convinced by this "logic", than welcome to the world of Trumpian logic. Trump is a racist, therefore he must be guilty of horrible crimes. How do know that Trump is a racist? Well, since he has committed horrible crimes therefore he must be a racist.
How can we provide justice in the wake of the "logic" of the mob? The answer is that we must insist on offering all the rights due to innocent people also to the most reprehensible of defendants, even the Malka Leifers of the world. Malka Leifer is not entitled to these rights, but we must offer them to her anyway. We must offer her the right to an attorney, the right to face the witnesses against her, and the right to cross examine them. Otherwise, there may come a time when these rights are denied to the innocent Beilises of the world, who if not for being able to be defended by the most able attorneys would have surely been convicted.
Bringing Leifer to justice in Australia would necessarily require that her attorneys will be allowed to cross examine all witnesses that testify against her. Those witnesses will be required to recount in excruciating detail what Leifer did to them and what they were forced to do to her. It would be the job of her attorneys to challenge the credibility of those witnesses, by any and all means available. The trial will be reported on by the media in Australia and perhaps throughout the world. It will most certainly be picked up by the anti-Semitic social media. And who knows, the trial might even be televised if the details are lurid enough.
Malka Leifer is done. She has been defanged and cannot ever hurt another person. What we must ask ourselves is whether it is worth bringing her to trial in Australia to face justice. Is it worth exposing our darkest side to the satisfaction of the anti-Semites? Do the victims of Malka Leifer realize what will be demanded from them; to be further victimized by Leifer's defense team? Are those clamoring for justice reaching out to these victims and offering them moral and financial support? These are questions that we must ask ourselves before we can applaud her extradition.
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