MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — The former principal of a Jewish girls’ school in Australia was found guilty Monday of sexually assaulting two students.
Malka Leifer, 56, a Tel Aviv-born mother of eight, was convicted on 18 counts and acquitted of nine other charges, including five involving a third student. The three former students are all sisters.
Leifer sat with her head tilted at the jury and did not respond as the verdicts were read. The two former students against whom she was convicted of abuse were in court for the verdicts. Leifer had previously pleaded not guilty to all 27 counts.
Prosecutors alleged that between 2003 and 2007, Leifer abused students at 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 rural school camps.
After accusations against Leifer were first leveled in 2008, she fled to Israel. When she was charged in 2014, it sparked a years-long battle over whether she should be extradited. She was returned to Australia in 2021 after a lengthy extradition process.
Prosecutor Justin Lewis told jurors that Leifer tended to have 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 activity with them, taking advantage of their vulnerability, ignorance of sexual matters and her own position of authority.
Defense attorney Ian Hill argued that the long delay between the alleged crimes and the trial, which began in February, was a detriment to the defense and jurors. He attacked the sisters’ credibility, including accusing one of telling “blatant lies” in her evidence.
The sisters grew up isolated in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community and received no sex education, the court ruled. They were around 12, 14 and 16 when Leifer came to the school from Israel in 2001.
Lewis said the sisters provided explicit evidence that they did not understand the sexual nature of what Leifer had done to them.
Leifer allegedly abused the eldest sister while they shared a bed at a school camp, while the middle sibling pretended to sleep in the same room. Jurors were told that the youngest sibling had walked into a room while Leifer was assaulting the oldest sister.
“Ms. Leifer was one of the most respected people in the community. If Mrs. Leifer was doing something, it must be right,” the youngest sibling testified about her reaction to what she saw happen to her sister.
The middle sister told the jury she had tried to form a relationship with another teacher to ask what Leifer was doing, but Leifer discouraged her. Leifer “told me it wasn’t healthy for me to bond with another teacher, to have more than one mentor,” the middle sister testified.
The sisters testified behind closed doors for two weeks, excluding the public and media under the rules governing sexual assault trials in Victoria.
Other witnesses included those to whom the sisters revealed their accusations.
The middle sister first spoke to social worker Chana Rabinowitz in Israel in early 2008. Rabinowitz said she asked the sister who hurt her and the young woman replied, “It was Mrs. Leifer.”
Psychologist Vicki Gordon testified that she heard the youngest sister claim to have been abused by Leifer. Gordon told the court that the sister claimed Leifer explained the abuse was an attempt to overcome a lack of warmth and affection in the girls’ home life.
Hill told the jury that the sisters had revered Leifer and writings from their school days show them thanking her for her support. Hill said the middle sister’s story had changed several times since the 2008 allegations.
“Truth and reliability were lost in bogus accounts,” Hill said. “Perhaps even sometimes hardened into false imaginations and false memories of false realities.”
He criticized the youngest sister for changing the location of alleged incidents from Melbourne, the girls’ hometown, to Israel.
“It’s the false memory combined with the details that show you how dangerous some witnesses can be when they tell you a story,” Hill said.
