Elly Sapper, Dassi Erlich and Nicole Meyer are no strangers to the cameras but as their walks from Melbourne’s County Court were captured on Thursday, the lenses were reflecting smiles.
Also in this moment, a feeling of overwhelming emotion as the woman who cast a shadow over their young lives was finally sentenced, her fate sealed with a 15-year jail term.
“We feel overwhelmed and grateful the legal system has recognised and validated the extreme impact of abuse from female perpetrators… Malka Leifer has finally been held accountable,” Sapper announced to the waiting press.
“This marks the end of this chapter of our lives and opens the chapter of us healing,” Erlich added.
It’s been 22 years since Leifer arrived in Australia to teach at Elsternwick’s Adass Israel School, in Melbourne’s south-eastern suburbs.
As principal, she was the most revered member of the close-knit, ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.
She was the sisters’ teacher, their mentor and then their boss as student teachers.
During a six-week trial, every aspect of their allegations of sexual abuse were examined and their credibility called into question by Leifer’s defence team.
In total, 29 sexual abuse charges were put before a jury, the judge dismissing two before they began deliberations.
In April, Leifer was found guilty on eight charges relating to Sapper and 10 linked to Erlich.
But the verdict was not guilty for all charges relating to their eldest sister.
“Her evilness has permeated all of our lives,” Meyer told 9News.
“(It’s been) 12 years since we walked into the police station and broke the walls of silence in our community and found a voice we didn’t know we had.”
When the Adass Israel school first heard of Leifer’s abuse in 2008, she was stood down.
Within hours, she and her family were on a plane.
The flight that spirited them out of Australia in the middle of the night was paid for by Adass community members.
They were reimbursed by the school.
Leifer continued living with her family back in her homeland, Israel.
It started a fight for justice that would stretch more than a decade.
Once Victorian police laid charges, work began to formally request the former principal’s extradition.
But Leifer and her supporters were determined she continue to live outside the Australian justice system.
It was claimed Leifer was mentally unfit to stand trial, but surveillance videos showed her living an apparently normal life.
Israel’s deputy health minister was forced to resign over allegations he attempted to obtain a fake psychiatric report to prevent her extradition.
After more than seventy hearings, an Israeli judge found Leifer had been faking her mental illness.
In 2021 she was put on a plane, the first Israeli citizen to be sent to Australia to stand trial.
In sentencing her in Melbourne, the judge noted she had exaggerated or intensified her mental health problems to delay, even frustrate, the extradition proceedings.
“We wondered if this day would ever come,” Erlich said.
“This fight was never just for us.
“The voice of survivors cannot be silenced no matter the obstacle.”
In a three-hour sentencing hearing, Judge Mark Gamble raked over every aspect of the case.
He noted Leifer had groomed Sapper and Erlich, preying on their vulnerability.
He called the mother-of-eight callous in the way she manipulated and exploited the schoolgirls, who have to live with the devastating impact.
“They were completely innocent victims of the predatory behaviour of Mrs Leifer, and it is she and she alone who should feel guilty,” Gamble said.
But Leifer still maintains her innocence.
She appeared via video link from prison and sat emotionless, aside from one solitary tear.
“She has no insight and no remorse, to date she has not sought or received any professional treatment or counselling in relation to her offending,” Gamble told the court.
He noted Leifer had high moral culpability, offending over an extended period of time and exploiting a significant power imbalance.
She was sentenced as a serious sexual offender.
Gamble believes through the publicity of the case, she will not have the chance to offend again.
“That statement actually scared us – she had shown no remorse for the entire process,” Meyer said.
“I do not believe for a minute she will not re-offend if she has the opportunity to.”
It will be up to the parole board to decide if Leifer can be released after her non-parole period of 11.5 years.
She’s already served more than five years in custody in Melbourne and in Israel.
As she no longer holds an Australian visa, whenever she does leave prison it will be to go into immigration detention.
Then she’ll be deported back to Israel.
She’ll be in her 60s by then.
But, if she serves the full term, it’ll be another nine years before she sees the outside world.
The sisters call themselves survivors and now they’re moving forward.
“We’re just really looking forward to a time in our lives when Malka Leifer is not one of the things we’re thinking about all the time,” Erlich said.
Meyer is already working toward a career in the legal system to support others.
For Sapper, healing looks like continuing to add to her family and letting go of stress.
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