It was the drawn-out legal battle kept hidden from jurors as a 15-year battle to bring a principal to justice reached its final weeks.
Three sisters’ fight to hold Malka Leifer accountable may never have come to fruition if not for video taken by private investigators who tracked her to the West Bank settlement of Immanuel in late 2017.
The former principal of the Adass Israel School – a religious school catering to Melbourne’s ultra-orthodox Jewish community – had fled back to her home country in 2008 after allegations of the sexual abuse of students first began swirling.
Details about Leifer’s extradition from Israel are only now able to be published after a gag order expired as a Melbourne jury handed down their verdicts last week.
Victoria Police had initiated extradition proceedings in 2014 but the case stalled when an Israeli court found she was mentally unfit to stand trial.
A social worker, Chana Rabinowitz, had contacted the school board days earlier to report her client’s whispered admission that she had been sexually abused.
“She was hunched over into herself and she could only whisper what it was,” Rabinowitz told a Melbourne court last month.
“She told me she had been hurt sexually by Malka Leifer. She described some of what happened.”
Leifer had fled Melbourne with her family in the middle of the night on March 6, 2008, after receiving a warning from members of the insular community.
On Monday, a jury found the 56-year-old guilty of sexually abusing Dassi Elrich, 35, and her sister Elly Sapper, 34, while they were students and later as junior religious teachers.
She was acquitted on allegations of abusing their older sister, Nicole Meyer, 37.
The mother-of-eight had been recruited to lead religious studies at the all-girls school in 2001, to great excitement in the school.
“She came to the community and became this person that was revered as much as a rabbi, and I had never seen a woman that people looked up to like this,” Ms Erlich told the trial.
“She made me feel loved when I spent time with her … I was hoping that she would love me like a mother. I wanted to feel loved,” Ms Sapper said of their relationship.
The sisters first filed police complaints in 2011, sparking a decade-long legal battle fought through two countries’ court systems.
Leifer was arrested by Israeli police in August 2014 at the request of Australian authorities and placed on house arrest as she challenged the extradition process.
For close to two years, she avoided scheduled hearings in an Israeli court, claiming she faced panic attacks and was too unwell to attend.
Then, in June 2016, the sisters were undoubtedly shocked when news broke that Leifer had been found mentally unfit by a court-appointed psychiatrist and her extradition hearings would be delayed indefinitely while she received treatment.
Her lawyer, Yehuda Fried, told news outlets at the time she struggled to get clear instructions throughout the proceedings.
Leifer’s house arrest was lifted and she quietly continued on with her life.
Appeals from Australian government officials – including then-prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews – to re-examine the case failed to gain traction in Israel.
More than 200 hours of video proof showing Leifer out-and-about doing mundane tasks such as shopping and catching public transport, spectacularly captured national and international news headlines in 2018.
The sisters had travelled to Israel and met with the anti-child abuse organisation Jewish Community Watch, which arranged for a private investigator to track her down in the gated community.
It was then they launched the Bring Leifer Back campaign to fight for her return.
The footage galvanised Israel’s police force, who launched a fresh investigation and rearrested Leifer the same year amid suspicion she was feigning her mental illness.
A new assessment found she was able to stand trial and, by 2019, she was being held in the country’s only female prison awaiting extradition proceedings.
Israel’s former health minister Yaakov Litzman was placed under investigation the same year over allegations he had tried to pressure psychiatrists to find Leifer unfit to stand trial.
He stood down from the Israeli legislature, the Knesset, in 2022 and was sentenced to eight months jail after taking a plea deal for breach of trust.
A panel of psychiatrists engaged by the Jerusalem District Court found in 2020 that Leifer had faked her mental illness to avoid returning to Australia.
More than six years after Victoria Police first filed the request, Israel signed the extradition order in December 2020.
A female officer from Victoria Police travelled to Israel in early 2021 and Leifer was taken into Australian custody, touching down in the country on January 25.
During the following two years she faced a series of hearings across Melbourne courts before the case was eventually set down for a trial in February 2023.
Over seven weeks a jury heard evidence from the three sisters, police investigators, Adass Israel school staff, and psychologists and psychiatrists.
Leifer remained expressionless through the trial, sitting in adock at the back of a courtroom and was often seen reading a small gold and white coloured prayer book while silently mouthing words.
After more than 31 hours of deliberations spanning nine days, the jury re-entered the courtroom to a thick silence shortly after 3.45pm on Monday April 3.
Beyond reasonable doubt, they found Leifer guilty on five counts of rape, one count of rape by compelled sexual penetration, four counts of indecent act with a 16 or 17 year-old child, five counts of indecent assault and three counts of sexual penetration of a 16 or 17 year-old child.
The verdicts relate to incidents that occurred between 2004 and 2007 on school trips, during private education sessions at Leifer’s Elsternwick home, and backstage of a school play being performed at the Phoenix Theatre.
She was acquitted of five charges of rape and four charges of indecent assault, which were alleged to have occurred on school grounds or a June 2016 school camp in Blampied.
In their testimony before the jury, the sisters said their mother had been violent and abusive growing up, and school had felt like a safe haven.
Leifer, they said, had begun to show them a “warmth and care” they were not receiving at home.
Prosecutors argued the evidence proved the former principal had targeted the girls for their vulnerability, manipulating them with her affection.
“In each instance, she started with lesser acts so she could see the reaction and escalated over time,” crown prosecutor Justin Lewis told the jury.
“As far as the accused was concerned, they were ripe for the picking.”
Leifer has vigorously maintained her innocence, with her barrister Ian Hill KC telling the jury from the outset her interactions were “proper and professional”.
Outside of court on Monday, he told reporters he had “nothing to say at this time”.
The sisters, however, held hands as they faced TV cameras and a throng of journalists to proclaim; “the whole world will know that now, she is guilty”.
“Today we can start to take the power back that she stole from us as children,” Ms Sapper said.
“We have sat in this court for going on nine weeks now, every day listening to our truth and having people try to tear that apart and tear us apart.”
Ms Meyer, whose allegations the jury acquitted Lefier on, described the feeling as “bittersweet”.
“Yes it’s bittersweet, but she is guilty,” she said.
“I turned around and looked at her … if she doesn't want to look at me, so be it.”
Ms Erlich said the abuse had held them hostage for so many years but it was now “time to start looking forward”.
“This is the beginning of our future now, throwing off how the abuse has impacted us for so many years and it’s time to start our lives,” she said.
Shortly after the verdict was handed down, Adass Israel School principal Aaron Strasser issued a statement on behalf of the school.
“On behalf of Adass Israel School, we apologise to the survivors abused by Mrs Malka Leifer while they were students here,” he said.
“We are sorry for the distress they have suffered and the impact of that abuse on their lives and families.
“We commend the survivors’ bravery in coming forward.
“Adass Israel School complies fully with all child safety standards and regulations, and we have zero tolerance for abuse of any kind.”
Leifer will return to court for sentencing at a later date.
