Addressing child sexual abuse inside Australian Jewish organisations

The Malka Leifer case, which involves the alleged sexual abuse of multiple female students by the headmistress at the ultra-orthodox Adass Israel School in Melbourne, Australia, has provoked global attention. In late January 2021, she was finally returned to Australia to stand trial after the Israeli Minister for Justice approved an order for her extradition.

That extradition order, following enormous legal delays, including 74 court hearings over more than six years, can be attributed at least in part to the actions of the high-profile Bring Leifer Back campaign orchestrated by three of her alleged victims – Dassi Erlich and her two sisters, Nicole Meyer and Elly Sapper.

The campaign attracted almost universal support from the Australian Jewish community, which was incensed by the procrastination of the Israeli justice system, and ardently committed to achieving legal justice for the victims.

Much of the Australian Jewish discourse was vigorously critical of both the Israeli legal and political systems for failing to expedite the case. For example, an October 2019 editorial in the Australian Jewish News robustly censored the Israeli judiciary and the Israeli government.

The frustration of the grassroots community was also reflected in public protest petitions and alleged threats to withhold charitable donations to Israel.

This frustration was shared, and further expressed by national community leadership bodies such as the Zionist Federation of Australia, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council, and state-based bodies such as the Jewish Community Council of Victoria, and the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies.

The first three groups forwarded a joint letter to Israel President Reuven Rivlin in March 2020, expressing outrage at what they labelled "notorious" aspects of the case.

Reference was made to allegations that the Israeli Deputy Health Minister had illegally intervened to block Leifer’s extradition; claims that Leifer had been fabricating an alleged mental illness; the strange reversals of testimony by the appointed court psychiatrist; and the never-ending round of psychiatric evaluations.

The letter demanded that the President personally communicate with the Chief Justice of Israel to advance a prompt legal resolution of the case and ensure justice for Leifer’s alleged victims.

What is the impact of the Leifer case on child safety standards within Australian Jewry?

By Philip Mendes and Marcia Pinskier

The evocative nature of the campaign, and indeed the overwhelming support it enjoyed among Australian Jews, did not occur in a vacuum. Rather, there's no doubt it was directly informed by the findings of the preceding Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual abuse (RCIRCSA).

The commission’s deliberations were widely reported within Australian Jewry, and seem to have significantly advanced Jewish communal understanding of factors underpinning institutional child sexual abuse, and generated a concern to prevent similar instances in the future.

The commission was established in January 2013 by the then Australian Labor government to investigate how public and private institutions such as schools, sporting associations, children’s services, and religious and cultural groups had responded to manifestations of child sexual abuse (CSA).

The public hearings included an examination of the abuse of boys within two ultra-orthodox Jewish organisations associated with the Chabad communities in Melbourne and Sydney (not connected), known as Yeshivah Melbourne and Yeshiva Bondi.

The final report, which was released in 2017, stated that 15 males had been subjected to CSA by males (mostly of adult age) within the two organisations. The majority of the perpetrators were teachers, but others responsible included rabbis and support staff or volunteers.

The commission presented four major findings pertaining to CSA within these Jewish organisations:

• The specific vulnerability of children in ultra-orthodox organisations due to an absence of sex education and associated patriarchal gender roles
• A reluctance to report CSA to secular authorities due to cultural and religious beliefs connected to elements of Halacha
• A failure to support survivors of CSA, and indeed a tendency to align with the abuser rather than the victim
• A lack of operational child protection policies and procedures for responding to complaints.

The royal commission proposed a set of child safety standards for all faith-based communities examined. Those standards have since been incorporated into the 10 National Principles for Child Safe Organisations.

To date, there's been no research-based interrogation of whether and/or how the wide range of Jewish organisations – educational, religious, cultural and sporting – that actively engage with children have operationalised these standards within their core policies and practices.

One of the ironies of the community response to the Malka Leifer case is that the advocacy campaign focused almost solely on events concerning the extradition hearings in Israel. In contrast, there were very few references to the implications for child safety standards within Australian Jewry, even though the abuse was alleged to have occurred inside a Melbourne Jewish school.

One notable exception was a missive from the Modern Orthodox Rabbi Ralph Genende, who urged religious Jews within and beyond Australia to “learn the lessons of the royal commission”, and actively address “the reality of child sexual abuse in our midst”.

The Malka Leifer case highlights a need to facilitate grassroots child safety education across the Jewish community spectrum. The community education program should use the 10 National Principles to enable an upgrade of child safety standards, including particularly:

• Ensuring that all Jewish organisations have effective measures for preventing and responding to CSA
• That any instances of CSA are promptly reported to secular authorities such as child protection and/or the police
• That survivors of CSA are supported rather than being ostracised
• That governance and leadership structures are reformed to facilitate effective child protection protocols and processes

The impact of the Leifer case on child safety standards in Israel

By Amitai Marmor, Efrat Lusky-Weisrose and Dafna Tener

The Malka Leifer case shocked Israeli society and raised urgent issues related to CSA in the ultra-orthodox, with emphasis on CSA perpetrated by authority figures in the community.

In a study we conducted on public perceptions in Israel towards the Leifer case (accepted by the journal Sexual Abuse and to be published in the coming weeks), we describe the massive public criticism towards all those involved in the affair: the ultra-orthodox community and its leaders, law enforcement agencies, and Leifer herself.

In fact, most criticism has been directed towards the law enforcement authorities (the State Attorney's office, the court, and the police), perceived as bureaucratic systems, cumbersome and foot-dragging in regard to the extradition process – and even corrupt.

Beyond the public aspect of the affair, it's worth examining Israel's policy towards sexual violence in institutions in general.

This policy is enshrined in section 368(d) of the 1977 Penal Law (Amendment no.108, 2010), which regulates mandatory reporting of offences against minors under the maximum penalty of three months’ imprisonment. Mandatory reporting by professionals, including educators, is not limited in time, and the violator can be sentenced to six months in prison.

Ministry of Education procedures regarding mandatory reporting and the actions to be taken when it's suspected that a minor has been molested were promulgated in 2008. Beyond that, the ministry promotes an environment that facilitates treatment, early detection, and prevention programs.

Due to political compromises within the ultra-orthodox community, only 2.5% of its children study in official education institutions, 74.5% study in an unofficial institution, and 23% in semi-official institutions, according to an Israel Democracy Institute report.

The unofficial institutions are bound by the mandatory reporting law, but their supervision is more limited and doesn't include the reporting protocols that exist in the general education system. Therefore, it may be assumed that many professionals don't always know how to report, assuming they've overcome cultural difficulties in reporting to secular authorities.

However, during the past few years this situation has been changing, and the trend is reflected in the emergence of community organisations dedicated to the issue, and in growing collaboration with law enforcement agencies.

Our conclusions can be summarised as follows:

• Professionals working with closed communities or with distinct cultural systems need to acquire sufficient knowledge and training, and to be aware of community members’ unique cultural and spiritual needs. This is in keeping with the call to move beyond cultural descriptions and stereotypes towards attending to the meanings clients assign to their lives and their experiences within their unique life contexts. Working together and creating culturally-appropriate materials is critical.
• In the State of Israel, many changes to the intervention process have been made in recent years, from which it's possible to further learn and develop. For example, many welfare bureaus that operate in ultra-orthodox areas have a rabbi or a team of rabbis who work with the welfare professionals to mediate decisions and to help practitioners understand certain situations in order to provide culturally-adapted interventions. Another example is the exemption committee, which is authorised to respond to cases of sexual assault without contacting the police, but still under the supervision of the welfare system, and provide treatment tailored to the family’s needs.
• The Leifer case highlights the urgent need for prevention programs to raise the awareness of leading authority figures in the ultra-orthodox community, and encourage supervision and protection of children from future harm. Raising awareness may be achieved by providing training that includes advanced theoretical knowledge and practical tools for dealing with this phenomenon among caregivers and educators within the ultra-orthodox community, as well as training for rabbis to raise awareness of CSA and the role of community involvement. In this context, programs written specifically for closed communities are delivered throughout the country. The Haruv Institute, for example, is a leader in disseminating culturally adapted knowledge to various communities.
• The issue of sexual abuse by female perpetrators is significant and in need of greater public awareness. According to our findings, the fact that Leifer was a woman made it difficult for the public to believe the complainants. The case has contributed to raising awareness and promoting discourse on this type of abuse – momentum that needs to be maintained.

Dafna Tener, Amitai Marmor and Efrat Lusky-Weisrose work at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.