A former school principal, who sexually assaulted two female students at a Jewish school in Australia and spent years fighting her deportation from Israel, was sentenced today to 15 years in prison.

Announcing the sentence, Melbourne magistrate Mark Gamble denounced it Malka Lifer for abusing her position within the city’s ultra-Orthodox community and said her “heinous crime” scarred the schoolgirls for life.

Her sentence was imposed after she was judged guilty of sexual assault against the Danny Ehrlich and Eli Saper and with it ends a legal battle for justice for the victims that lasted ten years.

Mother of eight children Lifer fled to Israel when rumors of her actions began to circulate in 2008 fighting tooth and nail against her extradition throughout more than 70 hearings.

Leifer, who holds dual citizenship – Israeli and Australian – was eventually extradited to Australia in 2021 and earlier in the year was found guilty of 18 charges.

A jury acquitted her of sexually abusing a third former student, Nicole Mayer.

The two ex-students who were vindicated welcomed today’s decision as a recognition of what they suffered and as a confirmation of the decision to “break the wall of silence” prevailing in the ultra-Orthodox community.

“We are here today because we did not lay down our arms. This fight was never just about us. We show that the voices of victims will never be silenced, no matter what obstacles are thrown their way,” Elrich said outside the courts.

“To all the other survivors of this nightmare (we say), you will never be alone, we are all with you,” he said.

Wearing it lifer’s blue prison uniform he watched the proceedings dispassionately via video link from a neighboring maximum security prison.

Judge Gamble said Lifer “committed a serious sexual offence” and showed “callousness and indifference” to the plight of her victims.

Lifer is not eligible for parole for the next 11 years.

Her offenses were committed between 2004 and 2007 when she was head of the Israel Adas School in Melbourne and both women were teenagers.

This school belongs to an isolated Jewish sect on the outskirts of the city.

“It was a life in which Jewish laws and customs were very strict and were followed faithfully,” Gamble said, explaining that this strict environment combined with Leifer’s high status in the Andas community made it extremely difficult for the girls. to denounce her.

According to the indictment, Leifer assaulted one of the girls in 2006 after inviting her to his home for “sleep over kallah lessons” — a type of premarital etiquette lesson that includes sex education.

On other occasions, Leifer told the students she was grooming them to be husbands, prosecutors said in court earlier this year.

“This will help you on your wedding night,” Leifer said after a sexual assault.

“That’s what’s good for you,” he allegedly said in another attack.

Leifer fled Australia in 2008 after one of the students told her therapist about the sexual assaults.

He eventually settled in the ultra-Orthodox settlement of Emmanuel in the occupied West Bank.

Australian police charged her in 2012 and sought her extradition from Israel two years later, sparking a lengthy legal battle.

Leifer claimed that she had become catatonic due to suffering from depression and that she was mentally incompetent to stand trial.

The extradition process was put on hold until a private investigator secretly videotaped her going about her daily business, apparently unaffected by the mental illness she claimed to have.