Court finds Israeli headmistress Malka Leifer guilty of sexual assault
A court found former Israeli headmistress Malka Leifer guilty of sexually assaulting her former students in Australia's ultra-Orthodox Jewish girls school.
On Monday, the jury concluded that Malka Leifer was guilty of raping and indecently assaulting sisters Dassi Erlich and Elly Sapper between 2003 and 2007.
However, the jury did not find her guilty of sexually abusing a third sister, Nicole Meyer.
Leifer, aged 56, pleaded not guilty to more than two dozen charges against her and spent years battling extradition from Israel.
However, in 2021, her extradition to Australia was ordered by an Israeli judge.
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Victoria's County Court, during the six-week trial, heard evidence that Leifer was among the revered figures at Adass Israel School in Melbourne, where the three sisters were studying.
They stated that the sisters were abused by the former headmistress in the school's locked classrooms, in school camps, and at the home of the head teacher.
The jury said that the sexual abuse continued after the sisters graduated and came back to the school as student teachers.
"When we look back at the journey that it took, everything that happened in Israel, it was so unbelievable that we get to this time and we have: she's guilty, she's guilty; that can't be taken away, she is guilty," Erlich said while speaking to the reporters outside a Melbourne court, flanked by her sisters.
Prosecutor Justin Lewis argued that Malka Leifer had shown "a tendency to have a sexual interest in girls". He said that she misused her position and also that the sisters' "vulnerability (and) their ignorance in sexual matters".
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He stated that the sisters in their teenagehood, had little knowledge and understanding about sex because their upbringing was centred around their Jewish faith and community, which is ultra-conservative.
"Knowing that they were neglected at home, she pretended that she loved them and told them that she was helping them," Lewis argued.
Defence barrister Ian Hill said that the allegations against Leifer were false and questioned the witnesses' reliability.
(With inputs from agencies)
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