Former Jewish leader’s sex abuse charges rock Melbourne community
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 article about David Kramer, who was convicted of pedophilia in Missouri in 2008 and now was wanted in Melbourne on allegations of child sex abuse dating to his stint as a teacher at Chabad’s Yeshivah College in the late 1980s.
Waks, a former vice president of the Executive Council of Australian Jews, studied at the all-boys college. He was not one of Kramer’s alleged victims, but the article stirred nightmarish flashbacks.
“When I saw that article, I thought this is the right opportunity,” Waks, 36, told JTA. “I knew there were other perpetrators and victims within the Jewish community. Someone needed to shatter the wall of silence, and I realized it needed to be me.”
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In short, he has become the face of child sex abuse in the Australian Jewish community, the shoulders on which other victims lean and their primary media spokesman.
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/former-jewish-leader-s-sex-abuse-charges-rock-melbourne-community-1.510674