Published: 10 September 2021
Last updated: 4 March 2024
Hearing will decide whether there is sufficient evidence to send Leifer to trial. The Jewish Independent will provide a special daily video coverage
THE MALKA LEIFER committal hearing, which begins on Monday, will be held online owing to Melbourne’s ongoing lockdown, thus ensuring that Leifer and her three principal accusers will not face each other in person.
The three sisters will give evidence via video from the premises of the Office of Public Prosecutions. Their former school principal at the Adass ultra-Orthodox girls school will attend via video from prison.
Leifer, who was extradited from Israel to Australia earlier this year, faces 74 charges relating to child sexual abuse allegedly committed between 2004-08. She has continued to maintain her innocence.
The hearing, which will assess whether the evidence is sufficient to take the case to trial, was scheduled to run for five days from September 13-17.
But The Jewish Independent understands it is now likely to run into a second week.
The hearing will coincide with the holiest day on the Jew calendar, Yom Kippur (September 16), which initially raised some eyebrows. However, The Jewish Independent has been told that only non-Jewish witnesses, or Jewish witnesses who have no objection to being in court on the day, will be asked to give evidence on that day.
When the hearing was announced earlier this year, Leifer’s defence team indicated that they would seek to examine details of the medical records of Dassi Erlich, one of Leifer’s alleged victims.
Last month, a magistrate imposed a nationwide media suppression order on reporting of this information.
In a special mention in early August, Magistrate Johanna Metcalf said the suppression order was justified due to “the nature of the information … sensitivity of it, in circumstances where there [are] allegations of sexual assault … this complainant [Erlich] has previously had proceedings in court before the Supreme Court where a finding was made, and she has indicated herself that she feels that the publication of these matters would be detrimental to her health and clearly there are some highly sensitive details contained in those records.”
