https://www.jpost.com/opinion/the-welcome-extradition-of-malka-leifer-opinion-652483
It appears that the extremely lengthy extradition saga of Malka Leifer is finally coming to an end. On Tuesday, Israel’s Supreme Court rejected an appeal by the accused pedophile against sending her packing to Australia, where she is wanted on 74 counts of rape and sexual abuse.
Though she still has another chance to appeal after Justice Minister Avi Nissenkorn signed off on her extradition, there is little chance that such a move would bear fruit at this point. By now, Leifer’s lawyers have exhausted every avenue and used any lame excuse to keep their client from being sent back to the scene of her “alleged” crimes.
The reason that “alleged” should be in quotation marks here is that one of her defense team’s arguments over the past six years was that her sexual relations with the girls in the Adass Israel School in Melbourne – where she served as principal – were consensual. In other words, she acknowledges that the sex took place.
Adding insult to injury, one of her attorneys, Nick Kaufman, said, “It is simply unreasonable that [the alleged victims] did not know what those sexual acts were, and that they were not able to refuse.”
To lend credence to his argument, he peculiarly quoted one witness who stated, “I was afraid to say no. [Leifer] had a powerful personality. If I hadn’t done what she wanted, she would have become angry with me.”
Kaufman argued – ridiculously – that this meant her fear had been “subjective,” as opposed to the result of an actual threat.
Not only is the assertion of the students’ “consent” preposterous, but it’s completely different from what Leifer claimed when the first complaint surfaced in 2008. At the time, she not only denied the accusation, but got huffy about how it would ruin her reputation.
Well, she was right about that. But any damage to her name is well-deserved. Someone who takes advantage of his or her position of authority to pray on subordinates for sexual gratification warrants no sympathy.
Leifer’s conduct – if an Australian court deems her guilty – was particularly heinous, however. As headmistress of a religious school, which keeps girls and boys completely separate and teaches the strictest interpretation of Orthodox Judaism, she would have been able to groom her victims without raising suspicion.