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The associated press
Rod Macguirk
Published June 29, 2023 • read for 3 minutes
FILE – Israeli-born Australian Malka Leifer, right, is taken to a courtroom in Jerusalem on Feb. 27, 2018. Two of Leifer’s victims, convicted of their childhood sexual abuse, told a court in Melbourne, Australia on Wednesday, June 6, 2023, of the pain she had caused them. Photo by Mahmoud Illean /THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
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CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A former principal of an Australian Jewish school faked mental illness in a seven-year battle to avoid extradition on charges of child sexual abuse, a prosecutor said Thursday.
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Malka Leifer fought her extradition in the Jerusalem courts from 2014 to 2021, when she was flown in from Israel with her ankles and wrists handcuffed.
Leifer appeared in Victoria State County Court on Thursday for a sentencing hearing after she was convicted in April of sexually assaulting two students between 2003 and 2007 while principal of Melbourne’s ultra-Orthodox Adass Israel School for girls.
Prosecutor Justin Lewis told Judge Mark Gamble that Leifer deserved less credit in her sentence for the time she spent in custody and under house arrest in her native Israel for “improperly frustrating and delaying the extradition process.”
The Jerusalem court ruled she was fit to stand trial and faked her mental illness to avoid extradition, he said, and three judges of Israel’s Supreme Court unanimously agreed she could be prosecuted.
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Two psychiatrists appointed by the District Psychiatrist of Jerusalem reported to the court in February 2018 that Leifer was not suffering from a mental illness in the legal sense and was feigning her psychiatric condition to avoid her extradition to Australia.
A second assessment, involving a third psychiatrist appointed by the Jerusalem district psychiatrist, also concluded that Leifer was feigning mental illness.
The district court then ordered the Tel Aviv district psychiatrist to appoint a panel of experts to review her. That panel unanimously concluded in January 2020 that she was mentally fit to stand trial and that she had “undoubtedly feigned inability to function and understand her situation,” Lewis said.
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Prior to a legal hearing, some psychiatric experts and Leifer’s lawyers said she had suffered a “psychotic breakdown” and that her hospitalizations were almost always a few days before her case was due in court.
“Three panels of psychiatrists conclude that the accused is feigning mental illness in circumstances where the mental illness essentially constitutes a kind of allergy to the judicial process itself,” Lewis said. “The proceedings had been prolonged by the actions of the accused feigning mental illness for that purpose.”
Leifer spent 608 days under house arrest and 51 days in Israeli custody before being extradited following a legal battle that strained relations between the Australian and Israeli governments while antagonizing Australia’s Jewish community.
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A native of Tel Aviv, Leifer came to Australia in 2000 as the school’s head of religion and became principal the following year.
She returned to Israel in 2008 when allegations against her first emerged.
Sisters Dassi Erlich and Elly Sapper told the court on Wednesday that sexual abuse by Leifer broke their ability to trust and was painful to remember.
The Associated Press does not usually identify victims of sexual abuse, but the sisters have chosen to self-identify in the media.
Leifer watched the proceedings via video link from a maximum security women’s prison in Melbourne.
She has been convicted of six rape charges, each carrying a prison term of up to 25 years. She was convicted of three charges of sexual penetration of a child, each carrying a possible 10-year prison sentence, and six charges of indecent assault, which also carry a 10-year prison sentence. She was convicted of three charges of committing an indecent act with a child, which carries a five-year prison sentence. There are no minimum penalties.
The hearing continued on Thursday. Gamble will sentence her at a later date.
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