2024 Feature Writing Long (Over 4000 Words)

Former principal Malka Leifer was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment for sexual offences against two sisters who attended the ultra-Orthodox Adass Israel Girls School in Melbourne. Over five years of reporting, Sarah Krasnostein attended the trial and spoke to religious leaders, community members and the two victims and their sister: Ellie Sapper, Hadassah Erlich and Nicole Meyer. She explored how shame and trauma are treated by the criminal justice system, how institutions fail children in their care, and what might cause a community to close ranks against outside scrutiny.

Krasnostein drew on her position as a journalist with a doctorate in criminal law and her lived experience as a member of Melbourne’s Jewish community to illuminate two traditionally opaque institutions: the Adass sect and the criminal justice system.

She explained where women and children sat within the power structure of this closed sect; how their low status facilitated the offending and its concealment; and how that dynamic is replicated in similar communities nationally and globally. Through broad context and close detail, she painted the human picture behind the statistics.

Sarah Krasnostein is the best-selling author of The Trauma Cleaner, The Believer, the Quarterly Essay “Not waving, drowning: Mental illness and vulnerability in Australia” and On Peter Carey. She is a regular contributor to The Monthly and The Saturday Paper.