Israeli authorities extradited a woman to Australia this week, where she faces 74 charges of rape and child sexual abuse. Malka Leifer allegedly committed the crimes while a principal at a Jewish girls’ school in Melbourne between 2004 and 2008.
“Victims are absolutely relieved and ecstatic to achieve their goal,” Manny Waks, CEO of VoiCSA, an Israeli organization dedicated to combating child sexual abuse in the global Jewish community working with Leifer victims, told CBS News. “But let’s not forget that this is just the beginning. Now their case is really starting in Australia.”
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Leifer fought against his extradition for six years. The 54-year-old’s defense team said she was not healthy enough to stand trial. But last year, a group of Israeli psychiatric experts determined that Leifer was lying, which triggered her extradition.
Leifer’s long legal battle has included more than 70 court hearings, he says Waks. But on Monday, local media showed her boarding a plane in handcuffs at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport.
“Her extradition sends a strong message of hope and encouragement to survivors around the world,” Shana Aaronson, executive director of Magen for Jewish Communities, an Israeli organization that pursues American pedophiles and works to bring them to justice, told CBS News. “I think it’s so important for other victims to see this and be motivated and inspired to fight for their own rights and justice.”
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Israel has become a haven for Jewish sex offenders around the world. A CBS News investigation last year found that the problem is widespread. Prosecuting wanted men and women can be difficult, as it often exploits a process called the Law of Return, through which any Jew can move to Israel and automatically obtain citizenship.
Since Aaronson began pursuing the accused pedophiles, she says more than 60 people have fled the United States to Israel. She says that because her organization is small and has limited resources, the actual number is probably much higher.
“The same thing is happening in the Catholic Church right now around the world, exactly the same thing is happening in our (Jewish) community,” said Meyer Seewald, founder of Jewish Community Watch (JCW), an American organization that pursues pedophiles. CBS News during our investigation. “The coverings are the same, the stigma, the shame.”
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CBS News was there when JCW helped locate convicted pedophile Jimmy Julius Karow in Israel. He fled the United States after being accused of sexually assaulting a 9-year-old girl in Oregon. Once in Israel, he continued his abuse and in 2002 was convicted of child abuse. I was there when JCW confronted the Israeli police. In September, he pleaded guilty in an Israeli court and was convicted in other cases on multiple charges of rape, sodomy and indecent acts.
Karow is awaiting sentencing.
A few months after the investigation was released, Israel changed its procedures to require all Americans immigrating to the country to be subject to FBI control.
But activists like Aaronson, Waks and Seewald all say there is an endemic problem that helps these perpetrators get help from their communities to escape and then evade justice.
“There was a mechanism behind this campaign to prevent Malka Leifer from ever being extradited to Australia,” says Waks. “What I saw in her case is that many senior rabbis are going to fight for her.”
Aaronson says many difficult questions now need to be asked to ensure that this will never happen again.
“How did she manage to manipulate the judiciary by claiming mental illness?” Has anyone played a government role in protecting it, and if so, what kind of transparency and oversight is needed to ensure that this can never happen again? ? “What can be done to streamline this process so that victims are not required to wait so many years simply for the opportunity to confront their abuser and put this difficult chapter behind them?” she told CBS News. ? ”