EMMANUEL, West Bank — The last time the Sapper sisters saw Yisroel Aron Leifer, they had been responsible for taking him to school in Melbourne, Australia.
Over ten years had passed and the ladies were now confronting him under starkly different circumstances.
The young boy was now a teen living in Israel, where his family had fled amid accusations that his mother Malka Leifer molested students — among them sisters Nicole, Dassi and Elly — at the Adass Israel ultra-Orthodox girls’ school where she served as headmaster.
The Sappers say Leifer offered to privately tutor vulnerable students aged 14-15 and would exploit the private time in her office and at her home to abuse the young girls.
Leifer, an Israeli citizen, booked a red-eye flight with her family to Tel Aviv in 2008, following a heads-up from Adass officials days before the allegations against her surfaced.
Last February, the 51-year-old mother of eight was arrested by authorities who seek to extradite her back to Australia where she faces 74 charges of child sexual abuse.
Nicole (33), Dassi (31) and Elly (29) were in Israel last week to attend the 42nd court date connected to Leifer’s extradition — a process that has faced repeated delay due to appeals by her defense team, who have argued that she is mentally unfit to stand trial.
The sisters used their time in Israel to retrace the steps of their former principal, who after spending several years in the ultra-Orthodox town of Bnei Brak, had moved to the Emmanuel settlement.
