‘Her abuse fractured my ability to trust’
These are excerpts from Hadassah (Dassi) Erlich’s victim impact statement, read by her in the County Court of Victoria on Wednesday, June 28, 2023.
“ ‘I LOVE you like a mother,’ [Malka Leifer] told me. There were no words I longed to hear more. She leaned on my desperation … The first time she touched me under my clothes, as she lured me into a twisted world disguised as the world that I would find the nurturing I longed for. I trusted her completely, a trust so profound, fuelled by the yearning of my teenage self that did not have anyone to trust.
“The insidious nature of her sexual abuse has fractured my ability to trust forever. The violation of my body, the vulnerability that she exploited, forever alters the way I’m able to give and receive trust. My relationships exist in a perpetual juggle between the desire for connection and the echoes of her trauma. Her sexual abuse, under the guise of love and care means I analyse every kind gesture, the signs of danger. I don’t trust my ability to know if it is deceit or truth. I believe that Malka Leifer would be a source of safety but instead she became an architect of my pain.
“The constant reminders of her sexual abuse means her world continues to intrude upon my life. During the day and in my sleep. … a world that is triggered by a smell, a thought, certain weather or time of year, and my body without warning is gripped by the memory of what she did. I’m stripped of the autonomy to choose what I want to remember, or what I wish I could forget.
“And then, in the middle of the car park, I’m standing there shaking with my head pounding, looking around and pulling myself back into the present, trying to remind myself that I’m saying, or struggling to break free of a terrifying sleep paralysis in the middle of the night, and walking around the house to distract myself from a minefield with pictures of the past.
“I feel shame at being unable to erase her memories, as if I’m allowing her sexual abuse to continue to haunt me, that I cannot simply will myself to move on and forget. Even in moments when I disassociate from the memories and try to remove them from my mind, her abuse still lives within my body. In some ways, her trauma will always live within my body.
“[There have been] years of working on myself in therapy, tried to calm my overactive nervous system and to teach her to discern between real danger in the present and the memory of danger. Yet a hyper-vigilance remains … There will always be a part of me that lives in the past.
“I’ve been forced to carry the shame of my younger self that ached for love and security in a world that only held abuse. The weight of that shame convinced me that my need for safety somehow invited the abuse. It fed me the belief that I was responsible for what she did. It labelled me as damaged, broken, worthless, a shame that for years whispered it was my fault, that I should have been different, less submissive, less broken, less dependent on the presence of a nurturing adult.
“[It was] a shame that has led me to self-harm, leaving permanent scars on my skin, forever, marking a time when emotions were too overwhelming to process, particularly around the time of giving my police statement.
“Malka Leifer stole my body, I was forced to sever the connection to my physical self in order to survive. I was set up for future harm as I entered abusive situations blinded because of her sexual abuse, I did not know how to protect myself, abuse became my norm. Boundaries did not exist and distorted my perception of safety. I do not recognise danger in reality.
“The impact of her actions re-wired neural pathways in my mind, and I’m left with this imprint on my brain for the rest of my life.”
“Malka Leifer trapped me in her sick world for many years. The protracted delays in Israel, the arduous trial process, is a legacy of her denial to admit her actions. Her refusal to acknowledge that what she has done put my life on a trajectory that continued her manipulation. Her efforts to evade justice has forced me to relive the trauma repeatedly, spanning my entire adult life.”
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