As she had done many times before, Dassi Erlich walked through the revolving glass doors of Melbourne’s County Court last August, arm in arm with her sisters, Nicole and Elly. She took a deep breath and steadied herself to speak to the jostling media pack as lights and cameras flashed furiously around her. Tears flowed freely at the emotionally-charged press conference, but this time they came from a place of sheer joy and almost disbelief. The battle these sisters had waged for more than a decade to bring their abuser to justice was finally over.
Malka Leifer, their former school principal and a woman they once considered a mother figure and trusted mentor, was convicted of multiple counts of sexual abuse and rape, and sentenced to 15 years’ jail. “The relief was overwhelming,” Dassi says. “In that moment, the weight of the world was lifted off my shoulders because at times, this point of the journey seemed so unbelievable and so far from our grasp.
“All the years of fighting were about getting to that moment where we had justice, and all of me went into it. I never imagined how I’d feel after, it was a whole new array of emotions for me, but mostly, this big black cloud that had covered my life for years had suddenly lifted,” she says.
In the middle of the night in March 2008, Malka Leifer, then a highly respected principal of the ultra-Orthodox Adass Israel School in Elsternwick, was rushed through the shadows of Melbourne Airport to board a 1.20am flight to Israel, after allegations were raised
