Israel has become a magnet for sex offenders due to a lack of an official sex offenders registry
The classis example is of Malka Leifer. Malka Leifer, born in 1966, is an Israeli citizen and mother of eight children, who was involved in a high-profile legal case concerning sexual abuse allegations. In 2000, she was invited to lead the Adass Israel School, a Hasidic girls’ school in Elsternwick, a suburb in southeastern Melbourne, Australia. The school had about 500 students, half of them girls.
The case against Leifer was brought to light by Dassi Erlich, a former student of the school, who sought psychological treatment for recurring nightmares related to incidents she experienced at the hands of Leifer. Erlich accused Leifer of inappropriate conduct and sexual abuse that began as Torah lessons and escalated to sexual assault and rape over several years.
Following the allegations, Leifer was confronted by the school’s administration in March 2008 but denied the claims. The administration did not file a police complaint but instructed her to leave Australia. The next day, Leifer left Australia with four of her children, and her husband joined them in Israel later.
In September 2015, the Supreme Court of Victoria criticized the school’s decision not to report the allegations to the police and for allowing Leifer to flee the country. The court ordered the school to pay Erlich compensation of 1.27 million Australian dollars, and Leifer was ordered to pay punitive damages of 150,000 dollars. Erlich’s sisters, who also accused Leifer of sexual abuse, reached a settlement with the school outside of court and received compensation.
Leifer faced 27 charges in Australia, including sexual offenses and rape, and was convicted on 18 of them. She was accused of committing these acts between 2003 and 2007 when the students were teenagers. She fled to Israel in 2008 and was extradited back to Australia in 2021 after lengthy legal proceedings. In April, she was sentenced to 15 years in prison, considering the time she already spent in custody in Israel and Australia. The judge also slightly reduced the planned sentence, considering the 608 days Leifer spent under house arrest.
Is Malka Leifer Alone? Meet Yona Weinberger
Yona Weinberger the convicted sex offender from NYC fled to Israel for anonymity. granted by generous Israel.
Yonah Weinberg, was involved in a defamation lawsuit in Israel with Rabbi Yakov Horowitz. Weinberg, a convicted sex offender, filed a lawsuit against Rabbi Horowitz for defamation. This case centered around a tweet from Rabbi Horowitz in 2015, in which he warned parents in Jerusalem’s Har Nof area about Weinberg and advised them to treat Weinberg “like a terrorist with a machete.”
The Jerusalem Magistrate Court, led by Justice Michal Hirschfeld, found that the main warning issued by Rabbi Horowitz against Weinberg was both true and expressed in good faith. The court ruled that Rabbi Horowitz’s reference to Weinberg as a “terrorist with a machete” was justified, considering the existential danger posed by child sex abuse. However, Rabbi Horowitz was found liable for two false statements: that Weinberg gave his victims non-kosher candies and that he was a fugitive from the U.S. Consequently, Horowitz was ordered to pay Weinberg a sum of 3,000 ILS for these false claims, in addition to some of Weinberg’s legal expenses.
Weinberg is a convicted pedophile who served a prison sentence for sexually abusing minors and is listed as a level-3 sex offender in New York. Rabbi Horowitz, an advocate for child safety, has been recognized for his contributions to Jewish education and child abuse prevention. This lawsuit gained attention due to the implications it held for the discussion around child safety and the responsibilities of community leaders in such matters.
