Malka Leifer, facing 74 counts of child sexual abuse, fit to be extradited from Israel
A judge in an Israeli court has ruled that Malka Leifer, a former school principal who has been accused of sexual abuse by former students, is fit to be extradited from Israel to Australia, where the alleged abuses occurred, after six years of extradition hearings.
Leifer, 53, is set to stand trial in Australia on 74 counts of child sex abuse.
Leifer and her defense team for years sought to portray Leifer as mentally unfit to be extradited. In January, a panel of psychiatrists concluded that her supposed mental illness was fake, and that Leifer was in fact fit to stand trial.
Judge Chana Miriam Lomp, ruling that Leifer could be extradited, noted that Leifer did not cooperate with the psychiatric panel “when asked questions related to the legal process, but on other issues she answered questions matter-of-factly in three different sessions.” Lomp said that though Leifer may suffer from some kind of mental illness, she does not have “problems of mental illness in the legal sense.”
Lomp’s ruling was celebrated by Leifer’s accusers.
“This abusive woman has been exploiting Israeli courts for 6 years! Intentionally creating obstacles, endless vexatious arguments – only lengthening our ongoing trauma!” one of Leifer’s alleged victims, Dassi Erlich, said in a statement to The Times of Israel. “Too many emotions to process!!! This is huge!”
Leifer, who was born in Israel, has been living in the country since 2008, when allegations of sexual abuse against her surfaced at the Melbourne girls’ school where she was the principal. In the town she settled in, she was allowed to continue teaching despite town leaders knowing of the allegations against her.
The ruling can be appealed by Leifer’s attorneys, and Leifer may not be extradited for at least a year.
Ari Feldman is a staff writer at the Forward. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @aefeldman
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO