Mother-of-eight Malka Leifer looked like the perfect school principal until she was accused of being a sexual predator. This is the story of three sisters' battle to bring their alleged abuser to justice.

The Sapper sisters say Malka Leifer used mind games to target school girls at their most vulnerable at Adass Israel Girls School. (Supplied)

It wasn't a happy home, but the sisters have decided they need to see it again. Dassi Erlich and Nicole Meyer pause outside the North Caufield art deco era bungalow where they lived as children and point to the flower beds that once preoccupied their mother. They step up then, into the portico entrance flanked by white columns, and into the house.

The current owner of the Sapper household where the sisters grew up has allowed them to visit with ABC's Australian Story so they can try to understand their past. Some memories confuse them: the backyard seems much smaller than they recall it. But, after all, when they lived here with their five other siblings, they were just children.

They move around the rooms, shaking their heads. Nicole is carrying her phone aloft and showing the house to their youngest sister, Elly, who joins them via Skype.

Memories from childhood flood back. How they would walk on egg shells lest they upset their controlling, angry mother who terrified them with her punishments. Dassi asks her sisters to go to the cupboard under the stairs. "I just remember it being so dark," says Dassi, now 30.

As she opens the wooden door, it squeaks. "Not such great memories," says Nicole, 32. "That cupboard brought back memories which I prefer not to talk about. Very, very, significant memories," Elly, 29, says.

The sisters refuse to expand on what happened inside the dark cupboard under the stairs. They agree though, that their home life as the children of parents who were members of Melbourne's ultra-orthodox Adass Israel community made them susceptible to dark forces that they were ill-prepared to understand or resist. "There was neglect emotionally and that would have left us vulnerable prey for anyone who would show any form of affection or care in any form," Nicole says.

Malka Leifer is currently in custody. (Supplied)

At the Adass Israel Girls School at one point or another, each of the sisters thought they had found affection with principal Malka Leifer, a mother-of-eight who was employed by the school from Israel in 2000. Now, for the first time, Dassi, Nicole and Elly have come together publicly to talk about the sexual abuse they allege Malka Leifer committed against them, as they continue their international campaign to have her extradited from Israel to face 74 child sex abuse charges in Australia.

But the path they have chosen is far from simple .The sisters have had to deal with the reality of their past — a difficult home life, the emotional fallout of the alleged abuse and estrangement from their parents.

Then: Nicole, Dassi and Elly Sapper stand in front of their childhood home in the Adass Jewish community in Melbourne, Victoria. (Supplied: Dassi Erlich)

Now: Sisters Nicole Meyer and Dassi Erlich say they don't have fond memories of their former family home. (Australian Story: Mark Farnell)

The five Sapper sisters: Dalia, Dassi, Nicole, Michelle and Elly as children at their family home in the Adass Jewish community in Melbourne. (Supplied: Dassi Erlich)

No TV, arranged marriages, modesty: Inside the reclusive Adass community

Dassi Erlich has given Australian Story exclusive access to her diaries, which reveal some of the trauma she experienced as a teenager. At the age of 13, with no one else to turn to, and struggling to make sense of her world, she believed her diary was listening. Her words paint a picture of an isolated teenager confined to a cold and angry home, smitten with her principal, beguiled by the prospect of love and warmth.

Elly remembers Dassi sitting on her bed writing her diary, as she also did. "We didn't have TV, we didn't have internet, and … we had a lot of thoughts and expressions that we wanted to share but we didn't feel that we could with anyone," Elly says.

Understanding what happened to Dassi and her sisters, Nicole and Elly, requires an insight into their childhood and the rarely penetrated world of the Adass Israel community.

"Our way of following Judaism has its roots in 19th century Eastern Europe, when the reform movement was gaining traction," says Abe Weiszberger, Adass Israel member.

"We wanted to maintain a strict adherence to Jewish law."

The Melbourne community was largely formed by refugees who had fled persecution in Europe during the Second World War. Now the close-knit enclave of about 200 families has its own fishmonger, butcher, kindergarten, school and cemetery and exists largely within the boundaries of four intersecting blocks of streets in Melbourne's south-eastern suburb of Ripponlea.

"It was a very warm, well-knit community that went through the life cycle together. It was literally a community in its own world. Parents watched over their children and wanted to bring them up with moral guidelines that were in spirit with the religion and the rabbi," says Michelle Orbach, older sister of Dassi, Nicole and Elly.

Dassi recalls that, when she went to the dentist in a neighbouring suburb, her parents made her close her eyes so she wouldn't see the immodest billboards along the way.

Watch Duration: 1 minute 43 seconds 1 m 43 s Malka Leifer was brought over from Israel in 2000 to work at Adass Israel Girls School in Melbourne.

Adass men wear dark pantaloons, long black coats and fur-trimmed hats known as shtreimels. Married women cover their heads with wigs and scarves, wear sleeves to their wrists and are covered down to their ankles. Adass children live by strict religious rules from the moment they wake up to the second they fall asleep. Exposure to world events is so limited that, in September 2001, Dassi, Nicole and Elly had no idea there had been attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York until the following day.

For Adass girls, all roads lead to the official matchmaker and a future as "a perfect Jewish wife and mother". To that end, modesty is everything, even at home. Elly remembers they weren't allowed to walk around in pyjamas. "We had to cover up if we wanted to get out of bed to go to the kitchen to get a drink." The sisters never even saw each others' bodies. From the age of three, boys and girls are separated and girls are not allowed to speak to any male to whom they aren't related. For teenage Dassi, marriage was more important than school. In a speech that Dassi gave in December 2017, she recalled how she felt as a teen: "I just need to fill up my time until the matchmaker calls my parents with someone she feels may be a good husband for me. I don't really need VCE to get married and be a good religious wife and mother."

But even within the Adass community, Dassi, Nicole and Elly knew their home life was different from their friends. "Every single action we ever did was governed by a fear of what would happen if we didn't do the right thing at all times, day or night," recalls Nicole. The sisters knew they couldn't tell anyone about what happened at home. In the Adass community, family image is everything. The stigma and shame of being from an unhappy home could ruin a girl's marriage prospects.

Australian Story approached the sisters' parents with detailed questions about their allegations but they declined to comment or be interviewed for the program.

Dassi Elrich's diary revealed her innermost thoughts as a teenager, painting the picture of an isolated teenager. (Australian Story: Mark Farnell)

The diary of a teenage Dassi Erlich. (Australian Story: Mark Farnell)

Dassi Erlich when she was an Adass Israel school student. (Supplied: Dassi Erlich)

'I had no idea what she was doing'

Dassi Erlich's diaries reveal her innermost thoughts as a young girl. They also reveal her disturbing connection with Malka Leifer.

Seemingly within days of her arrival at Adass Israel Girls School, Ms Leifer had charmed her students and captivated the Adass community. Older sister Michelle Orbach had left the school by the time Ms Leifer arrived, but she remembers the stories that swirled around her. "I had heard that she was very energetic, and very capable. From the reactions of my neighbours and people that lived on our street at that point, there was a great deal of reverence and respect," Michelle says. "It was almost as if she was larger than life. She seemed to be, at once, running the school and everything from admissions, to curriculum, to school camps. Everything ran through her; she cast a wide sphere of influence over the community."

Ms Leifer's rule went unquestioned and pulling children out of their classes to be with them, allegedly behind a locked door, would not have raised eyebrows. Even if it did, few would have dared to challenge her. Nicole was the first to receive Ms Leifer's attention. She was 17 when the alleged abuse began. "I had a weekly group that said psalms every Saturday, so I would go." She had no idea her sister Dassi was having similar experiences. Dassi had started regularly visiting Ms Leifer's office. There, she says the principal would pull down the blinds and lock the door.

The sisters were ill-equipped to distinguish between care and concern on one hand, and alleged grooming on the other, and no words to describe what was happening to them. "I had no idea what she was doing," says Dassi, who claims the abuse started when she was 16. "So I just believed that as she was the principal she knew what she was doing and it wasn't my place to question her."

While unable to find the words to explain what was happening, the sisters did come to have a sense it wasn't right. Dassi recalls how, in her head, she would "just disappear and just not even be in that room anymore." Nicole describes how she coped as "severe dissociation". She says she was robotic. "There was no thinking how to stop it. There was no thinking about what's happening right now."

Dassi Erlich and her sisters were ill-equipped to distinguish between genuine concern and alleged grooming as children. (Australian Story: Mark Farnell)

The exterior of the Adass Israel all-girls' school in Melbourne, Victoria. (Australian Story: Mark Farnell)

Exterior of the Adass Israel School in Melbourne, Victoria. (Australian Story: Mark Farnell)

Sisters' 'subtle' warning about Malka Leifer

By 2005, Nicole had finished school and been appointed a teacher. At a winter school camp she and Dassi both attended, the sisters became aware they were experiencing the same thing. "I came out of the camp room and we just shared this look of mutual understanding," recalls Dassi, who by then was in Year 12. But the sisters never spoke about it. "What was there to say? There was no reason to speak about it. It was just a matter of self-preservation and surviving at that point," says Nicole.

Elly had seen how Ms Leifer favoured her older sisters and, by the time she was 16, she desperately wanted to be in Ms Leifer's inner sanctum too. Dassi and Nicole tried to subtly warn their little sister to avoid the principal. "I think I was too in my own world of wanting attention and wanting some love, that I wasn't going to listen to anyone anyways," says Elly.

Ms Leifer had her favourites and everyone wanted to be one and soon Elly was granted her wish. "At the end of Year 11, I was 16, that's when Mrs Leifer started to pay attention to me. We were all hearing, 'This is good for you. This is going to be good for you when you get married. What I'm doing is helping you and I'm giving you love'."

Interviewed in Israel by Australian Story, Malka Leifer's lawyer Yehuda Fried responds: "We must understand these are only allegations. OK? That means a person is innocent until proven guilty."

The secret's out

By early 2008, Dassi was living in Israel with her husband. She was having trouble conceiving and had become deeply depressed. She spent days in bed, only leaving it to go to the toilet. She started to see a social worker and, slowly, started to reveal her story. Initially, the social worker could barely believe what she was hearing. Dassi gave her permission to call Nicole — who was still teaching at Adass Israel Girls School with Ms Leifer — to confirm the information. "Nicole asked me what I had done," recalls Dassi. "She wasn't upset at me, she just was very, very shocked. At the time I had some idea what my words would do. I didn't know how that would play out, and I was nervous and scared and anxious."

One day soon after, Ms Leifer walked into the classroom where Nicole was teaching. "She looked a little bit scared, and I've never seen her look scared before," says Nicole. "And she asked me, 'Tell me, tell me. What's going on? What do you know? What's going on?'. I said, 'I don't know. I've got nothing to say. I don't know'. And that was the last time I ever saw her."

Malka Leifer is wanted on 74 charges of child sexual abuse (ABC News)

When the allegations of abuse reached people linked to the school and two senior school board members, a series of meetings were held, culminating in a final meeting where decisions were made. Within 24 hours Ms Leifer had been stood down, air tickets had been purchased, and she and her family had flown to Tel Aviv on a one-way ticket.

In the years since, Dassi has received a record civil payout from the school and Ms Leifer has fought extradition proceedings on the grounds she is mentally unwell. She is currently in custody in an Israeli prison awaiting another court appearance, scheduled for May.

For Dassi and her sisters, there is still a long road ahead. "I think that we're all at different points of our journey," Dassi says. "I definitely don't see myself as a victim. And I don't even see myself as a survivor. That would mean I'm trying to survive something and I believe I'm a lot further along than that. If anything, the word 'thriver' comes to mind."

The Sapper sisters: Nicole Meyer, Elly Sapper and Dassi Erlich have come out publicly, for the first time in Australia, about alleged sexual abuse allegations against their former school principal, Malka Leifer. (Australian Story: Mark Farnell)

Dassi Erlich has launched a campaign in 2017 to seek justice for the alleged sexual abuse at the hands of her school headmistress, Malka Leifer. (Australian Story: Mark Farnell)

There is pressure to bring Malka Leifer back to Australia from Israel. (Australian Story: Mark Farnell)

Watch Australian Story's The Justice Principle two-part investigation on Youtube.

Credits

Reporters: Belinda Hawkins, Sarah Farnsworth

Editor: Stephanie Wood

Photos: Mark Farnell and contributed

Graphics: Alex Palmer