Former Adass Israel School board president Yitzhak Benedikt says he is unable to recall his role in helping accused paedophile principal Malka Leifer flee Australia in the hours after she was sacked amid child sex abuse allegations almost 13 years ago.
His statement came as Ms Leifer was expected to arrive in Melbourne late on Wednesday, having been taken into Victoria Police custody in Israel on Monday after more than a decade of effort from alleged victims, advocates, prosecutors, sections of the Australian Jewish community, diplomats and politicians.
Mr Benedikt, who was found by a Victorian Supreme Court judge to have “appreciated” that Ms Leifer had a case to answer when the school board arranged for her to fly to Israel in 2008, told The Australian on Tuesday he had suffered “a stroke”.
“I don’t remember anything,” he said outside his Balaclava home in Melbourne’s southeast.
In awarding one of Ms Leifer’s alleged victims, Dassi Erlich, $1.2m in compensation in 2015, judge Jack Rush found Mr Benedikt and board member Mark Ernst had organised Ms Leifer’s 1:20am flight hours after she was sacked, despite being fully aware of her alleged crimes.
“At the time of her (Ms Leifer’s) departure, the president of the board, Mr Benedikt, was aware of at least eight separate allegations of sexual misconduct involving Leifer and the girls at the school, in addition to the initial complaints,” Justice Rush found in response to Ms Erlich’s civil case. “The allegations amounted to Leifer being a serial sexual abuser.”
Read the article by Remy Varga and Rachel Baxendale in The Australian.