16 The Jewish Herald • Friday, March 22, 2013 19 AB US E


Former Jewish Leader’s Sex-Abuse Charges Rock Melbourne S


Manny Waks revealed he’d been molested several times by two officials — one of whom he claims is the son of a venerated Chabad emissary Dan Goldberg


YDNEY — Menachem (Manny) Waks was on a


leadership training program in Israel in June 2011 when he made a decision that would radically change his life. Flicking through Melbourne’s


The Age newspaper on his laptop one morning, he spotted an ar- ticle about David Kramer, who was convicted of pedophilia in Missouri in 2008 and now was wanted in Melbourne on alle- gations of child sex-abuse dat- ing to his stint as a teacher at Chabad’s Yeshiva College in the late 1980s. Waks, a former vice president


of the Executive Council of Aus- tralian Jews, studied at the all- boys college. He was not one of Kramer’s alleged victims, but the article stirred nightmar- ish flashbacks. “When I saw that article,


I thought this is the right op- portunity,” said Waks, 36. “I knew there were other perpe- trators and victims within the Jewish community. Someone needed to shatter the wall of silence, and I realized it need- ed to be me.” The wall was decimated on the


morning of July 8, 2011, when Waks’ story was published on the front page of The Age. Under the headline “Jewish


community leader tells of sex- abuse,” Waks revealed he had been molested as a student — not once, but several times. Not by one official, but by two — one of whom he claims is the son of a venerated Chabad emis- sary. Waks said he was molested


in a synagogue and in a ritu- al bath, where he was lured to bathe in the nude by his alleged assailant. His revelations landed like a


bomb in Balaclava, a leafy Mel- bourne suburb that is home to a large proportion of the 50,000- strong Jewish community, in- cluding many affiliated with the Chabad chasidic move- ment. Waks’ explosive accusa- tions — in particular his claim that senior Chabad rabbis cov- ered up complaints by parents and even helped alleged perpe- trators flee the country — trig- gered a sequence of dramat- ic events that has shaken the Jewish community. Nearly two years on, the af-


tershocks are still reverberat- ing. In December, Waks testified


before the Victorian parliamen- tary inquiry into child sex-abuse. Next month, he is expected to be called before the royal com- mission into institutional child sex-abuse in Australia. And he has taken leave from his job as a public servant to work as the full-time director of Tzedek, an advocacy group he founded last year for Jewish victims of child sexual abuse. In short, he has become the


face of child sex-abuse in the Australian Jewish communi- ty, the shoulders on which oth- er victims lean and their prima- ry media spokesman. Sitting in a café in the heart


of Jewish Melbourne last week, Waks looks nothing like the de- vout chasidic kid who grew up in a strictly Orthodox household with 16 siblings. Indeed, his trau- matic childhood prompted Waks


“a form of spiritual toxicity” within Orthodoxy. Waks says his family also has been large- ly supportive. But to others, Waks is exploit-


ing an unfortunate situation. He has been accused of grand- standing and seeking fame and fortune while taking down the very organization that helped raise him and his siblings. “Is it grandstanding?” Waks


Manny Waks testifies recently


to sever ties with Chabad in his late teens, shave his beard and abandon his black hat. Today he is bespectacled and sports a goatee beard; a tattoo is visible on his left arm. “I hate going to synagogue,”


Waks says. “I feel very uncom- fortable being there. I can’t even utter prayers from the siddur. But I go there for my kids.” Since he came forward, Waks


says dozens of Jewish victims of abuse have contacted him. Of those, only one — Yaakov Wolf, the son of a popular kabbalistic rabbi — has spoken publicly. “It’s been endemic within the


ultra-Orthodox Jewish commu- nity — both the abuses and the cover-ups. There’s enough evi- dence to support that,” Waks says. “There are so many cas- es, so many allegations, so many perpetrators, so many victims and so many more allegations yet to be revealed.” Waks says he has received


“incredible” support from with- in the community. Ze’ev Sma- son, a St. Louis rabbi who re- ported the allegations against Kramer to police, congratulat- ed Waks for helping confront


Fix Your


asks. “Maybe. But the simple rhetorical question to these in- dividuals is this: What have you done to address the rampant child sexual abuse and cover- ups that have plagued our com- munity for decades?” Perhaps inevitably, the in-


tense media coverage Waks has generated has had a polar- izing effect in the Jewish com- munity. The editor of the Australian


Jewish News, Zeddy Lawrence, wrote that the scandal indicates the Orthodox rabbinate is “an apple that is rotten to the core.” In response, Rabbi Meir Kluw- gant, president of the Rabbin- ical Council of Victoria, wrote last week, “Never in my history as a religious leader within our community have I experienced such disrespect and contempt leveled at the religious leader- ship as a whole.” Chabad’s leadership has re-


mained tight-lipped since the charges were first made pub- lic. In a July 2011 letter, Rabbi Yehoshua Smukler, the princi- pal of Yeshiva College, called the effects of abuse “profound” and urged victims to contact au- thorities. He declined to com- ment further because the mat- ter is before the courts. In August, Yeshiva Center,


the college’s parent body, apol- ogized “unreservedly” for “any historical wrongs that may have


occurred.” A spokesman for Cha- bad headquarters in Brooklyn, N.Y., noted that the organiza- tion’s child safety policies re- quire reporting child abuse to the appropriate authorities. Despite such sentiments, Waks


has neither forgiven not forgot- ten what happened to him un- der Chabad’s watch. He is par- ticularly rankled that his fa- ther, Zephaniah, has been de- nied communal rites at Chabad’s main synagogue and shunned by members of the tight-knit community. “It has profoundly impacted


my father’s health and his life,” Waks says. Rabbi Moshe Gutnick, presi-


dent of the Organization of Rab- bis of Australasia, wrote to Waks in January saying the rabbin- ate fully supports “uncovering and uprooting the scourge of child sexual abuse — as diffi- cult a challenge it is for our com- munity to face up to — and that we stand with all the victims in their search for both healing and justice.” At least three cases are slat-


ed to go to court this year, two of them embroiling Yeshiva Col- lege. Kramer, who was extra- dited late last year, will face a committal hearing next month to ascertain whether the mul- tiple counts of assaults against minors between 1989 and 1992 merit a trial. In July, David Cyprys, a for-


mer board member of an Or- thodox synagogue and a for- mer security guard at the col- lege, will face trial on 41 counts of child sex-abuse against 12 for- mer students, including Waks and Wolf. And a third man, whose name


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is being suppressed by a court order, also is expected to face trial later this year on charg- es involving Jewish children in a non-Orthodox Jewish or- ganization. Despite the progress in the


courts, the public criticism and the expressions of remorse from religious leaders, Waks says he has no intention of letting up. “If I step away, there are many


powerful individuals and bod- ies who would still much rath- er see this whole scandal swept under the carpet,” Waks says. “We are resilient. We will not be intimidated. We will no lon- ger remain silent.”


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