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Crime
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Jewish school principal in Australia found guilty of sexual abuse after 9-year legal battle

  • The verdict ends a nine-year legal battle that strained relations between Australia and Israel while antagonising Australia’s Jewish community
  • Malka Leifer, 56, a Tel Aviv-born mother of eight, was convicted on 18 counts, including rape, and acquitted of nine other charges

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Sisters Elly Sapper (left), Nicole Meyer (middle) and Dassi Erlich (right) speak to the media outside the County Court in Melbourne on April 3, 2023 after the trial of former school principal Malka Leifer. Photo: AFP
Associated Press
The former principal of a Jewish girls school in Australia was found guilty on Monday of sexually abusing two students, ending a nine-year legal battle that strained relations between the Australian and Israeli governments while antagonising Australia’s Jewish community.
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Malka Leifer, 56, a Tel Aviv-born mother of eight, was convicted on 18 counts, including rape, and acquitted of nine other charges, including five that related to the eldest student, Nicole Meyer. The three former students – Meyer, Dassi Erlich and Elly Sapper – are all sisters.

Trial judge Mark Gamble had issued a gag order preventing media reporting during the trial that Leifer had fought against her extradition to Australia following her return to Israel in 2008 as allegations against her first emerged. The legal battle she waged in Jerusalem courts since 2014 ended in 2021 when she boarded a flight toward Melbourne at Ben Gurion Airport, her ankles and wrists shackled.
Malka Leifer is brought to a courtroom in Jerusalem on February 27, 2018. Leifer, a former principal of a Jewish girls school, was found guilty on April 3, 2023, of sexually abusing two students. Photo: AP
Malka Leifer is brought to a courtroom in Jerusalem on February 27, 2018. Leifer, a former principal of a Jewish girls school, was found guilty on April 3, 2023, of sexually abusing two students. Photo: AP

The news of Leifer’s extradition was welcomed in Australia by lawmakers and Jewish community leaders.

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, Erlich and Sapper, were in court for the verdicts. Leifer had earlier pleaded not guilty to all 27 counts.

The Associated Press does not usually identify victims and alleged victims of sexual abuse, but the sisters have chosen to identify themselves in the media.

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Prosecutors claimed Leifer 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.

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