The Malka Leifer Verdict - Guilty!...or not?

 

The jury in the Malka Leifer case has reached its verdict. She was “found” guilty on 18 counts of sexual offenses.

The mesira and gonev nefesh are now complete and, as I see it, irreversible. Of course, the chillul Hashem is unending.

Before I discuss this, two personal notes related to my previous post.

The first is a note of caution. When I discussed the segulah of Rabi Matya ben Charash, I neglected to add one proviso – aside from keeping this apparatus out of reach of children, be certain to place this on a heat resistant surface. I learned this "the hard way"!

In my previous post, I advocated for the segulah of Rabi Matya ben Charash, which I implemented for my own “salvation”. As the Leifer case went to deliberations, I figured that what can it hurt if I undertake another session and daven for Mrs. Leifer for a favorable verdict? What would it cost me, 20 minutes and 18 candles? And so, I took the candles and an aluminum pan and carried out another session. 

Whoops. 

I explained that a simple method is to take 18 tea candles and place them inside one of those thin disposable aluminum baking pans. Then, to light them one after the next. As you can imagine (but I didn’t), all of those paraffin candles which are encased in aluminum shells and are then burning in an aluminum baking pan are bound to make the pan very, very hot.

I put the pan on the buffet table where I keep my Shabbos candles, but the candles are in a leichter and these were put straight on top of the 8 mm sheet glass that protects the buffet. Thank G-d nothing happened to the buffet (or to anybody) but the sheet glass shattered. That wound up costing me an extra 200 shekels.

The second note, or disclaimer, is that, despite my boastful rhetoric that this is guaranteed to work (or your money back…), it goes without saying that there are really no guarantees. HKBH does what He wants. Even though this is known to be a very powerful segulah – since perek 86 is a very powerful perek, when there are strong opposing forces, whether they come from the good side or the “other side” (sitra achra), it will not always prevail.

Back to our topic. Initially, there were 74 counts against Mrs. Leifer. When she arrived in Australia, four counts were dropped and 20 were added. Yet, when she went to trial, she was only tried on 29 of the 90 counts. Two were dismissed mid-trial which left 27 counts – out of 90. Of these, she was acquitted of 9 counts and convicted of 18.

It appears that all the drama is over. Yet, I once heard a saying about marriage:

Marriage is like a violin. Even after the beautiful music ends, the strings are still attached.

So now, the beautiful violin music may have stopped, the drama may be over, and the accusers may have achieved their goals, but the strings will always be attached. I wrote in a previous post, this entire ordeal creates this permanent bond between all of the players.

The accusers will go on with their lives, which were never really “ruined”, and will freely go places and meet and socialize with the people they choose to. Nicole Meyer, who is allegedly the observant one, will be able to keep Shabbos and Yom Tov and attend simchas of her own children and of other people, while at the same time I presume that Mrs. Leifer will be barred from all of it. I wonder whether or not this is going to nag at Nicole. If it is, it is going to last forever.

Even if all of the “proven” charges are true, this is still a travesty of justice. Chazal teach us (Bava Kama 83b) that “an eye for an eye” doesn’t mean a literal eye. It means cash. In other words, when one injures or inflicts physical pain on another person, the punishment is monetary compensation to the victim. This is the Torah way. Torah justice is done with monetary compensation, not with cutting eyes or limbs or putting people in jail. Our Torah is much more compassionate than any secular justice system.

As such, those who strive to inflict physical pain or corporal punishment or incarceration on such a person instead of the Torah’s monetary compensation cannot be considered compassionate by any stretch. How much more so does this apply to those who strive to inflict physical pain or corporal punishment or incarceration after and on top of receiving monetary compensation.

Alright. So, have we now firmly established that Mrs. Leifer is guilty beyond any reasonable doubt?

Seems like most people think this way. I’m sure it doesn’t come as any surprise that I think differently. I have reasonable doubts.

Let’s review. After the inflated number of charges was trimmed down, Mrs. Leifer was convicted on 18 of 27 counts. This means that for nine counts she was found unanimously innocent and for 18 she was found unanimously guilty.

And I wonder, what was the difference? What did these eighteen counts have that the other nine counts did not?

I don’t think I’ll ever know, or almost anybody, for that matter. One very interesting thing is that, according to this news report, all of the charges that relate to Nicole Meyer were found not guilty. All of the charges that relate to Elly Sapper were found guilty. I am amazed by this because, according to this article, Elly Sapper got involved with Mrs. Leifer after being warned by her sisters and disregarding them. I expected that to put the brakes on at least some of them. The charges that relate to Dassi Erlich were found part guilty and part not guilty.

There seems to be some kind of pattern here.

Let’s return to the whole picture. The jury has spoken. So, are we now convinced?

I had mentioned in several previous posts that, in my view, there is absolutely nothing of substance to corroborate the accusations of the accusers. “Nothing of substance” is meant to mean that there was no confession, no forensic evidence and no objective eyewitnesses to the precise crimes that she is being tried for.

There may have been background witnesses like the Spanish speaking janitor who saw her lock her office door but there doesn’t seem to be anything to corroborate that any of the crimes actually happened.

I wrote about this in my post about Extradition Law back in March of 2018:

A homicide is established by the discovery of a dead body (with signs of homicide). This determines that a crime was committed. The only question is: whodunnit? A homicide can be established years after its occurrence because the body will stay dead forever (though the signs of homicide may deteriorate).  Likewise, if the Mona Lisa is missing from the Louvre, this attests that a robbery took place. A burnt building attests that there was arson. In these cases, it is not difficult to establish that there was a crime.

 

Assaults are different. Especially sexual assaults. Unless there are broken bones, stitches, pregnancies, or permanent physical injuries, after a week, or at most a month or two, there is no longer any physical evidence of an assault. If an assault is reported within that time, the police report and the injuries will establish that an assault took place. But if the assault is not reported within that time, there is no evidence of a crime whatsoever. There is nothing but the belated complaint of the “victim”.

According to the news reports, this is all we have here. The judge, Judge Mark Gamble, said so himself:

On Tuesday, Judge Gamble told the jury Ms Leifer’s defence had submitted the “real and only” issue they must decide is if the alleged acts occurred.

 

“The defense submits you cannot prove beyond reasonable doubt these alleged acts took place,” Judge Mark Gamble told jurors on Wednesday.

 

“The defense submits the evidence of each complainant is simply not credible or reliable and ought not be relied on by you.”

 

“The critical or central issue relates to whether the prosecution can prove any of the sexual acts alleged in the charges did in fact occur,” he said.

Likewise, it states the remarks of the Defense Counsel:

“This whole case depends on accepting what the complainants say happened,” he said.

 

“It’s on those fallible memories that you’re being asked to convict a person on serious criminal offences.”

 

He told the court the defense had been disadvantaged by the delay to reach trial, with some of the alleged events occurring more than two decades ago.

 

“This has resulted in an impact on her ability to defend herself … it makes it difficult for the accused to raise any defense other than a simple denial,” he said.

 

“You're asked now to accept flashbacks, dreams, nightmares and the like … are not only truthful but reliable to convict.

 

“We deny they are telling the truth.”

Lastly, this was all summarized by the writer of the article:

The case against Ms Leifer rests on the testimony of her three alleged victims, who for two weeks gave evidence and were cross-examined in a closed court.

What all this says is that all hands concede that there was no hard evidence that any crime even occurred at all. No dead bodies, no missing Mona Lisas, no pregnancies or stitches. Nothing but the complaints of the accusers. And they were emotional complaints at that, as the judge instructed the jury (see HERE):

The jury was told there was no “normal response” to sexual offences, and they should not use the emotional nature of Ms Leifer’s accusers’ testimony as evidence of guilt.

 

“Both truthful and untruthful accounts can be given with or without distress,” Judge Gamble said.

 

“There are too many factors for emotion to be a safe tool to judge evidence.”

 

Why did the judge need to tell them that? Why not tell them to rely on all the forensic evidence and objective eyewitnesses?

Obviously, there wasn’t any. Only emotional testimony.

Also, the remarks of the defense about the passage of time making “it difficult for the accused to raise any defense other than a simple denial,“ is something we should find very disturbing. It tells us that even if a narrative is presented occurring at a faraway time with sparse unconfirmed details and there is not much opportunity to disprove them for logistical reasons, the defense is disadvantaged.

Why? Isn’t burden of proof on the prosecution?

We all know the bitter truth. In the Western world (actually, in the whole world – but even in the Western world), an accusation itself is looked at as proof positive. It suddenly becomes the burden of the accused to prove that the crime didn’t happen. A simple denial is not enough.

As such, one thing we know is that there was and is no concrete proof of any crime. And this is what the jury took into the deliberation room. No proof. Just their impressions.

Well, it took them nine days of deliberations and hard deadlocks until some of the jurors caved into the others. Guilty on 18 counts. Not guilty on 9 counts. It doesn’t look to me that it was beyond reasonable doubt on any counts. And we are supposed to be convinced that Mrs. Leifer was proven guilty?

Now, I’m certain that these accusers and all of their supporters are saying, “Hooray! Her guilt is proven! The impartial jury gave unanimous guilty verdicts on 18 counts. We are exonerated. We were right all along.”

But, if we are to trust the jury, we must declare that she is absolutely innocent of the other nine counts. After all, it was just as unanimous.

Now all of the charges relating to Nicole Meyer were unanimously dismissed. All of them. What happened?

Maybe she didn’t cry hard enough. Maybe it was just good old anti-semitism since she is the only one who dresses like an observant Jew. (Of course, so does Mrs. Leifer.) I expect that many people will just whine “Not guilty doesn’t mean she didn’t do it. It just means there wasn’t enough evidence to prove it.”

But there seems to have been enough evidence by the same jurists to convict the charges they had for the other sisters.

One thing it tells us for sure, whether or not any of this stuff happened, Nicole never really had a case.

It is hard for me to believe that Nicole Meyer is now ready to tell the world, “The truth is now out. Mrs. Leifer never molested me at all. The jury has spoken!” Nor can I believe that Dassi Erlich is ready to say, “Well, I was right some of the time, but not all of the time.” 

Actually, according to this report, Nicole is busy saying the opposite:

“No matter the outcome and the non guilty verdicts I know my truth. Malka Leifer abused me for 6.5 years. I said my truth as did my sisters and she can no longer deny her guilt. She has been found guilty and justice has been served,” said Nicole Meyer in a Facebook post.

 

I beg to differ. The way this circus was carried out, she can absolutely still deny her guilt.

By the way, this is the first time I am hearing 6.5 years. Until now the most I saw in the reports was four years. This report claims the "abuse" went from 2003-2006. I saw that in many others. Where do we get 6.5 years?

This report says that the "abuse" to Nicole began when she was 17. Where did that information come from if not from Nicole? 6.5 years from when she was 17?? Up to 23.5? And she never told anybody? And this is supposed to be called "Child abuse"? 

Okay, let’s not get into this again. But if this conflicting information is what the jury heard, is there any surprise that all charges related to Nicole were dropped?

One more point. Suppose the jury would have found her not guilty on all counts. What would the accusers and their supporters say? I can only imagine a collective cry of outrage, “Miscarriage of justice. Jury was blind. Jury was bribed. She must really be guilty, they just didn’t have enough to prove it.”

I don’t really need to imagine it. let’s look at the comment of renowned sex-fiend tracker, Yerachmiel Lopin on Nicole’s Facebook page:

You didn't let us down. You did your part to the hilt. The court system failed, though thankfully, only in part. As far as the world is concerned, Leifer has be properly branded as an abuser. No more need to qualify with "alleged."

Ah yes, the court system failed when they found Nicole’s claims not guilty even though they found most others guilty. Golly, Sarge, we can’t really rely on them jurists, can we?

Hey, if you can’t trust the court system when they say she’s not guilty, how can you trust them when they say she is? Don’t forget, in today’s world of sex offense allegations, the burden of proof on the defendant. So, why can’t we say the same thing for all of the counts where she was “found” to be guilty? “She really wasn’t guilty. Just, she couldn’t prove that she didn’t do it.”

Sorry, Yerachmiel. The court system didn't fail. If those acquittals were really in error, then it is Nicole who failed.

Well, here we are. What does all this mean? Is it good for the Jews or bad for the Jews?

You probably don’t want to know my answer.

Stay tuned… and for the mindless masses...

Let the Celebrations Begin!

Related post:

Mesira XVI: Putting the Peh before the Ayin – Building a Case