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In 2008, allegations emerged that Malka Leifer, the headmistress of the girls’ campus of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish school in Melbourne’s inner south-east, had committed grievous crimes against three young students under her care, sisters Dassi Erlich, Nicole Meyer and Elly Sapper. It was the catalyst for a reckoning; but before police investigations could get underway, Leifer fled overseas under the cloak of darkness with the assistance of the school. Thus began an extradition battle that would last for the better part of a decade, and a broader quest for justice that revealed a web of international intrigue, legal loopholes and political corruption as well as a deeper culture of silence around sexual abuse.
