Sisters honoured for the fight that changed the law

The three sisters whose campaign forced Malka Leifer’s extradition to Australia have been inducted into the Victorian Honour Roll of Women, recognised in the Change Agent category at a ceremony in Melbourne on Wednesday night.

Nicole Meyer, Dassi Erlich and Elly Sapper were nominated collectively and inducted together, joining more than 790 women recognised since the Honour Roll was established.

Deputy Premier and Minister for Women and Girls Gabrielle Williams, who formally inducted the 2026 cohort, told Erlich in a letter notifying her of the induction that the sisters shared the “leadership, tenacity, and unwavering determination” of previous inductees.

“You are rightly an inspiration for all Victorians,” Williams wrote.

The sisters were abused by Leifer while she was principal of the Adass Israel School in Melbourne. Leifer left Australia for Israel within hours of the school’s board becoming aware of the allegations in 2008. She was arrested in Israel in 2014.

In 2015, Erlich won a civil case in the Supreme Court of Victoria against Leifer and the Adass Israel School, receiving more than $1 million in damages. The school was found vicariously liable.

Leifer was extradited to Victoria on 25 January 2021 after 74 court hearings in Israel. Then Israeli health minister Yaakov Litzman later admitted wrongdoing over efforts to thwart the extradition, was fined and resigned from the Knesset.

Leifer was found guilty by a jury of 18 sexual offence charges on 3 March 2023 and sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment, with no parole until June 2029. The allegations brought by Meyer were not sustained.

Former premier Ted Baillieu, who met the sisters in 2018 and supported their nomination, wrote that they had endured being shunned by their parents, their school and their community while pursuing the case through two legal systems.

“In short, they held their ground,” he wrote. “Leifer was charged. Leifer was tried. Leifer was convicted.”

Baillieu said the sisters had lifted a veil on criminal conduct and on failures of governance in what he described as an otherwise opaque and secretive community.

“In simple terms, they have changed the world,” he wrote.

Danielle Newton, the former detective sergeant with the Bayside Sexual Offences and Child Abuse Investigation Team who was the lead Victoria Police investigator in the Leifer case, also supported the nomination.

She wrote that the sisters’ pursuit of justice stood out as among the most powerful examples of survivor courage she had encountered in her career, and required exceptional resilience against significant social, cultural and institutional barriers.

Leah Boulton, founder and chief executive of Pathways Melbourne, wrote that the sisters had done “what most people could not: step out of the closed, ultra-Orthodox world they were raised in and pursue justice across Australia and Israel”.

The nomination also credited the sisters with helping to shift Victorian law. In 2020, after reforms made it an offence to publish information likely to identify a victim-survivor of sexual offences, even with their consent, the sisters campaigned for change. The Victorian government announced amendments in October that year allowing survivors to identify themselves publicly without seeking court permission.

Their #bringleiferback campaign drew bipartisan political support, including from former premiers Baillieu and Daniel Andrews, federal MP Josh Burns, deputy state opposition leader David Southwick, senator Dave Sharma and former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull. In 2017, Southwick delivered a petition carrying 17,000 signatures to Israeli politicians urging Leifer’s extradition.

The sisters gave more than five years of access to the documentary Revealed: Surviving Malka Leifer, which trended at number one on Stan in its first week and won the Human Rights Award at the 26th Atlanta Jewish Film Festival.

Erlich is director of youth and family programs at Pathways Melbourne and the author of In Bad Faith, published in 2024. Meyer is studying law at Swinburne University and has built a substantial following as a survivor advocate on TikTok. Sapper works as a social worker.