Israeli authorities extradited a woman to Australia this week, where she is facing 74 cases of rape and child sexual abuse. Malka Leifer is said to have committed the crimes while she was director of a Jewish girls’ school in Melbourne between 2004 and 2008.
“The victims are absolutely relieved and ecstatic to reach their goal,” said Manny Waks, CEO of VoiCSA, an Israel-based organization dedicated to combating child sexual abuse in the global Jewish community that works with the Jewish community. victims of Leifer, to CBS News. “But let’s not forget that this is just the beginning. Now their case is only really starting in Australia.”
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Leifer fought her extradition for six years. The 54-year-old’s defense team claimed she was not healthy enough to endure a trial. But last year, an expert panel of Israeli psychiatrists determined that Leifer was lying, leading to her extradition.
Leifer’s long legal battle included more than 70 hearings, he says Waks. But on Monday, local media showed her aboard a buoyed plane at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport.
“Her rendition is a strong message of hope and encouragement to survivors around the world,” Shana Aaronson, executive director at Magen for Jewish Communities, an Israeli organization that tracks down American pedophiles and works to bring them to justice, told CBS. News. “I think it is so important that other victims see that and are motivated and inspired to fight for their own rights and justice.”
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Israel has become a haven for Jewish sex offenders all over the world. A CBS News investigation found last year that the problem is widespread. It can be difficult to bring the wanted men and women to justice, as they often use a process called the law of return, whereby any Jewish person can move to Israel and automatically acquire citizenship.
Since Aaronson started tracking accused pedophiles, she says more than 60 people have fled to Israel from the United States. She says that because her organization is small and has limited resources, the actual number is likely much greater.
“The same thing that is going on in the Catholic Church right now around the world, exactly the same thing is happening in our (Jewish) community,” Meyer Seewald, the founder of Jewish Community Watch (JCW), an American organization that targets pedophiles, told CBS News during our investigation. “The covers are the same, the stigma, the shame.”
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CBS News was in attendance when JCW helped track down convicted pedophile Jimmy Julius Karow in Israel. He fled the United States after being charged with sexually assaulting a 9-year-old girl in Oregon. Once in Israel, he continued his abuse and was convicted of child abuse in 2002. We were there when JCW confronted him with the Israeli police. In September, he pleaded guilty to an Israeli court and was convicted in other cases on multiple charges of rape, sodomy and indecent acts.
Karow is awaiting sentencing.
Months after the investigation aired, Israel changed its procedures to require all Americans who emigrate to the country to undergo a background check from the FBI.
But activists such as Aaronson, Waks and Seewald all say there is an endemic problem helping these perpetrators get help from their communities to flee and then evade justice.
“There was a mechanism behind this campaign to prevent Malka Leifer from ever being extradited to Australia,” said Waks. “What we’ve seen in her case is that a lot of older rabbis start beating for her.”
Aaronson says there are now a lot of difficult questions to be asked to make sure this never happens again.
How could she manipulate the legal system by claiming mental illness? Has anyone in a government role played a role in protecting her and, if so, what kind of transparency and oversight is needed to ensure that nothing like this can ever happen again ? ”she told CBS News. “What can be done to streamline this process so that victims don’t have to wait so many years for the opportunity to face their abuser and move on from this difficult chapter?”