Counsellor ‘feared legal action’
Extradited from Israel earlier this year, Leifer is facing 74 charges of child sexual abuse. She has claimed she is innocent of the charges.
A COUNSELLOR has told an online committal hearing at the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court that she declined to divulge her recollections of counselling sessions with alleged sexual abuse victims of former Adass Israel School principal Malka Leifer because she feared legal action from the women.
The hearing is testing evidence to determine whether Leifer will stand trial on child sexual abuse charges relating to her conduct from 2004 to 2008 while she was the Adass principal.
Extradited from Israel earlier this year, Leifer is facing 74 charges of child sexual abuse. She has claimed she is innocent of the charges.
Under a media suppression order, sisters Elly Sapper, Dassi Erlich and Nicole Meyer, who have consented to their identities being publicised, have testified in a closed court, with only lawyers, Magistrate Johanna Metcalf and Leifer present by video link.
In open court, testifying from Israel, social worker Chana Rabinowitz, a former Adass school counsellor, told Leifer’s barrister Ian Hill QC she was working as a Victorian Education Department counsellor in 2002-06 with children “from difficult, dysfunctional backgrounds” and also worked privately with Jewish schools.
Rabinowitz said she was invited by Adass to counsel for the school and coordinated with Leifer. Meanwhile, the complainants’ mother was referred to her for counselling. Rabinowitz held sessions with the woman’s son David, and in 2005 began counselling Sapper over a broken engagement.
After counselling Erlich when Erlich moved to Jerusalem, Rabinowitz said she was unsure when she lost contact with her but believed it was around mid-2008. Rabinowitz said her notes on all these sessions were lost when her computer broke down.
Rabinowitz said when Victoria Police approached her for information in 2011, she had emailed back that she was concerned about releasing it, as she believed two of the alleged victims had made statements because they had been trying to receive a victims-of-crime grant, and she feared she might be sued.
“I guess I am a bit suspect that when someone is in something for the possible payoff, then perhaps in the future they will think to get money from me as well if they could,” she had emailed in 2011.
Asked by Hill whether she had been warned to not go on the record because she could be pursued for money, Rabinowitz responded, “Yes.”
Rabinowitz only provided testimony to Victoria Police this year on events that Hill pointed out had occurred 13-15 years earlier, on which she had no notes.
The hearing also took evidence from Mario Toledo, a former cleaner at the school, who confirmed he saw Leifer there on some Sundays, with one, two or three girls. However, speaking through a Spanish interpreter, Toledo said he never heard conversations between any of them. “I never paid any attention,” he stated.
The hearing was adjourned on Monday until today (Thursday), when clinical psychologist Dr Vicki Gordon and former Adass Israel School teachers Esther Spigelman and Sharon Bromberg were among witnesses scheduled to be heard.
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