MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — The former principal of a Jewish girls school in Australia was found guilty Monday of sexually abusing 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 that related to a third student. The three former students are all sisters.
Leifer sat with her head tilted, watching the jury, and did not react as the verdicts were read. The two former students she was convicted of abusing were in court for the verdicts. Leifer had earlier pleaded not guilty to all 27 counts.
Prosecutors claimed Leifer had abused the students between 2003 and 2007 at the 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 at rural school camps.
After allegations were first raised against Leifer in 2008, she fled to Israel. When she was charged in 2014 it triggered a yearslong tussle over whether she would be extradited. She was brought back to Australia in 2021 following a lengthy extradition process.
Prosecutor Justin Lewis told jurors that Leifer tended to have a 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 activities with them and took advantage of their vulnerability, ignorance in sexual maters, and her own position of authority.
Defense lawyer Ian Hill argued the lengthy delay between the alleged offenses and the trial, which began in February, was a disadvantage to the defense and to jurors. He attacked the credibility of the sisters, including accusing one of telling “blatant lies” in her evidence.
The sisters had an isolated upbringing in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community and received no sexual education, the court heard. They were around 12, 14 and 16 when Leifer arrived at the school from Israel in 2001.
Lewis said the sisters had provided explicit evidence that they did not understand the sexual nature of what Leifer did to them.
Leifer allegedly abused the eldest sister while they shared a bed at a school camp as the middle sibling pretended to be asleep in the same room. Jurors were told the youngest sibling had walked into a room while Leifer was abusing the oldest sister.
“Mrs. Leifer was one of the most respected persons in the community. If Mrs. Leifer was doing something then it must be OK,” the youngest sibling testified about her reaction to what she saw happening to her sister.
The middle sister told the jury she had tried to form a relationship with another teacher to ask about what Leifer was doing, but Leifer discouraged her. Leifer “told me it wasn’t healthy for me to have a connection with another teacher, to have more than one mentor,” the middle sister testified.
The sisters gave evidence over two weeks behind closed doors, with the public and media excluded according to rules governing sexual assault trials in Victoria.
Other witnesses included those the sisters disclosed their allegations to.
The middle sister first spoke to social worker Chana Rabinowitz in early 2008 in Israel. 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 abuse by Leifer. Gordon told the court the sister claimed Leifer had explained the abuse was an attempt to overcome a lack of warmth and affection in the girls’ family life.
Hill told the jury the sisters had revered Leifer and writings from their school years showed them thanking her for being supportive. Hill said the middle sister’s story had changed several times since the allegations were made in 2008.
“Truth and reliability were lost in false accounts,” Hill said. “Perhaps even at times hardened into false imaginations and false memories of false realities.”
He criticized the youngest sister for changing the location of alleged incidents from the girls’ hometown of Melbourne to Israel.
“It’s the wrong memory combined with the detail that shows you just how dangerous some witnesses can be when recounting a narrative to you,” Hill said.
