AUSTRALIA/ISRAEL
The Times of Israel
For more than a year, the State Attorney’s Office has been trying without success to extradite an ultra-Orthodox woman who is wanted in Australia on 74 counts of sexual assault against Jewish girls who were her students in a Melbourne school.
The woman, Malka Leifer, allegedly assaulted the girls while she was principal of the Adass Israel School in Melbourne, Australia, until 2008.
Leifer today lives in Bnei Brak, a largely ultra-Orthodox city in central Israel where she is under house arrest. She fled Australia to Israel, allegedly with the help of school employees, on the night she got wind of the allegations against her in 2008.
The school psychologist told Leifer that she was facing arrest, and on the same day the school staff bought plane tickets for her and her family, according to evidence presented at a civil trial in Australia last year.
Most of Leifer’s alleged victims were 14-15 years old at the time of the assaults.
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