No police probe for Adass Israel School over headmistress

Police will not investigate members of a Jewish school board for squirrelling a sex-abusing headmistress out of Australia.

Police will not investigate members of the Adass Israel School board for squirrelling headmistress and serial sex abuser Malka Leifer out of Australia to avoid ­investigators, despite law experts saying it is a clear case of criminal behaviour.

Victorian Supreme Court judge Jack Rush was scathing in a judgment delivered last week on the actions of some members of the board for their role in helping Leifer flee Australia, despite knowing she might have sexually ­abused more than eight female students at the ultra-orthodox school.

Police confirmed yesterday that they had not, or would not, ­investigate those members even though Justice Rush made it clear that board members helped and funded Leifer out of the country to avoid an investigation.

In one of the biggest payouts in Australian history for a sex-abuse case, Justice Rush awarded more than $1.2 million to a former ­student who was abused by Leifer.

Rob Melasecca, a former head of the criminal law section of the Victorian Law Institute and criminal law expert, said yesterday that at “a bare minimum” the actions of individual board members in helping Leifer out of the country in the middle of the night “warranted a serious investigation”.

Mr Melasecca, who has practised criminal law for more than 40 years and is principal of Mela­secca Kelly + Zayer, said individ­uals who helped a person escape an ­investigation and potential prosecution were “without doubt” under Victoria’s criminal code an accessory to a crime.

He also said that any individual who sat down with a person and agreed to help them escape a criminal investigation or prosecution was, under Victorian criminal law, a “conspirator”. If they were actively aware that a crime had been committed and were aware of the ­nature of that crime and still helped them escape, then they were “perverting the course of justice­”.

“Each and every one of these crimes depend on a prosecution being about to prove knowledge of the crime and they need to prove the individuals involved in helping the perpetrator escape justice were aware of the consequences of their actions — in other words, they were aware that person had committed a crime and were helping that person avoid prosecution,” he said.

“If you assist a person escape prosecution you are without a doubt an accessory to the crime.”

In his judgment, Justice Rush slammed former president of the Adass Israel School board Yitzhak Benedikt and board member Mark Ernst for arranging for ­Leifer and several of her eight children to fly to Israel via Hong Kong at 1.20am, only hours after sacking her as headmistress.

He said that, when arranging for Leifer to flee the country, ­representatives of the school board “appreciated” that she had a case to answer concerning allegations of serious criminal conduct and that Mr Benedikt specifically was aware that the headmistress was a “serial sexual abuser”.