Police have closed their investigation into members of the Jewish ultra-Orthodox community who allegedly helped their former school principal and convicted sex abuser Malka Leifer to flee Australia and avoid justice for more than a decade.
Police confirmed to The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald that they had looked at a number of people connected to the Adass Israel School in Elsternwick, but that the probe ended in 2018 because there was “insufficient evidence to proceed with any charges at this time”.
“Any new information received will be thoroughly assessed,” Victoria Police said in a statement.
Advocates are angry about the closure of the probe, saying the lack of accountability is hurtful and infuriating, given the strong evidence already heard in court of the school board’s role in helping Leifer escape.
“Many people are going to be confused about the lack of accountability,” said Manny Waks, an activist against child sexual abuse. “It’s more than disappointing, it’s infuriating, and it sends the wrong message. It doesn’t make any sense.”
Waks, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse in a Jewish ultra-Orthodox community and now head of VoiCSA, an organisation combating child sexual abuse within Jewish communities, said the actions of the board may have potentially placed Israeli children in harm’s way.
Read the article by David Estcourt in The Age.