Manny Waks - Who Gave You Permission: The memoir of a child sexual-abuse survivor who fought back

Who Gave You Permission?

Manny Waks was raised in Melbourne, the second oldest of 17 children in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish family. In 2011, Manny publicly disclosed his personal experiences of child sexual abuse within the Jewish community and undertook extensive work as a victim advocate, culminating in a royal commission public hearing into Australian Jewish institutions. He is currently CEO of Kol vOz, an organisation he established to address child sexual abuse in the global Jewish community. Prior to this, Manny held several senior leadership positions within the Australian Jewish community.

www.mannywaks.com
www.facebook.com/MannyWaksPublic

Michael Visontay has worked for over 30 years as a journalist, author, and lecturer. A former assistant editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, he has ghost-written four books of memoir, including The Happiest Refugee and Undies to Equities: the remarkable life of Henri Aram.

Scribe Publications
1820 Edward St, Brunswick, Victoria 3065, Australia
2 John St, Clerkenwell, London, WC1N 2ES, United Kingdom

Published by Scribe 2016

Copyright 2016 by Manny Waks

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publishers of this book.

9781925321623 (Australian edition)
9781925307665 (e-book)

A CiP entry for this title is available from the National Library of Australia.

scribepublications.com.au
scribepublications.co.uk

To my wife and children and to the victims and survivors of child sexual abuse

Contents

Preface

In writing this memoir, I have endeavoured to be authentic in every way. This has led to some internal conflicts about what I could and could not share with readers. Ultimately, I decided to be forthright about everything that I felt I had a right to share warts and all. Particularly confronting were my very personal challenges, especially those Ive had to deal with in recent years.

They are not the ones most readers will assume the intimidation and ostracism that I and my family have endured due to my public advocacy regarding child sexual abuse within the Jewish community. Rather, its the challenges Ive never spoken about publicly, and have only recently started sharing with those closest to me.

The biggest deterrent to sharing these very personal challenges has been the need to protect my wife and three young children. I dont want to impact them detrimentally any more than I may have already done, whether it was my fault or not. This is why I have taken the decision to protect them by not including them in the book. This is my story, not that of my wife and children.

There are several other important points I would like to make before the reader delves into the book itself. Despite some of the difficulties Ive had with my parents, especially my father who Im critical of in the book I would like to make it clear that Im now closer to my parents than ever before. And its not only because of their continuing support for me and my campaign. Most of us make mistakes as parents. No doubt they made a fair share of theirs, which was magnified, considering they have 17 children. But well before my public campaign, we addressed the conflicts of our past, and as a result our relationship today is solid.

It is also important to emphasise that, despite my terrible experiences with the ultra-Orthodox community, I greatly respect and appreciate some aspects of Orthodox Judaism such as having a break from work on the Sabbath and spending time with the family, something youre compelled to do if youre prohibited from working and using electrical appliances.

I just wish that Orthodox Jewish leaders would be less hypocritical and more tolerant of others. They also may want to wake up to the disturbing fact that many within their community have left due to having been sexually abused as children so many people Ive spoken to have shared this terrible experience with me. But the Orthodox community also contributes to something that is important to me: Jewish identity and continuity. As a proud Jew (and Zionist, a believer in the right of the Jewish people to exercise self-determination in our historical homeland), this identity is a core part of who I am, and I will do my utmost to ensure our Jewish continuity is passed on through my children.

Chapter One

The reluctant troublemaker

People often ask me why I am so driven, why I have spent so many years calling for retractions, resignations, and apologies. Why have I chosen to become such a trouble-maker? When people hear my name, they nod their head. Oh, that guy. Yeah, I know him, the abuse victim fighting Chabad or Yeshivah in Melbourne. To the general public, and even to some of my own family, I am Manny Waks, the sexual-abuse advocate, the nuisance who wont go away, the irritant who wont shut up.

Its not how I want to live, or be known, and its certainly not how I imagined my life would unfold. So back to my question. Why me? Other people have been sexually abused, in other schools and religious contexts many of them far worse than I was, and over a much longer period of time. Most of them dont turn into a one-man band for justice. It was never my intention either. When I went public with my allegations in 2011, one of the reasons I did so was to put a face to the experience and, by doing so, to encourage other victims to do the same, or at the very least to take whatever form of action that best suited their needs. Although I was taking a major personal risk, I backed myself. I was experienced in public life, not short of chutzpah, and I could be forceful and candid. I knew how to stand up for myself, and for others.

Yet here we are, over five years later, and there is still only one surname linked with child sexual abuse within the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Australia. For most of that time, its been just me. A year ago my brother revealed publicly that he, too, was abused. Two victims, same name. No wonder people think its the Manny Waks show.

If others had come forward, the spotlight would have been shared more broadly, as it has been in other communities. Why havent others taken the plunge at least not in Australia? The reality is that most victims dont disclose their abuse, but here theres the additional stigma of speaking out against the closed world of ultra-Orthodox Judaism. And they have seen what happened to me and my family. Many victims have told me how they thought of disclosing their names. But weve seen what youre going through. Why do that to ourselves and our families?

They fear being cast out from everything they hold dear. Like them, I grew up immersed in the ways and words, values and rituals of the Chabad movement. Chabad was not just my way of life. It was my world. I was saturated, enveloped, and almost suffocated by it. My family lived across the road from the Yeshivah Centre, which includes the Yeshivah College where I went to school. My daily life was defined by a walk of 20 metres, from the house of my Chabad family to the extended family of Chabad a stones throw away.

It was a straight and narrow path from my family to the Yeshivah Centre. The rabbis and teachers who nurtured, taught, and shaped me were not like teachers at a public school, or even a private religious school. We regularly interacted including outside of the classroom and these men loomed as giants to my youthful, fragile mind. Fierce and friendly, they were figures of awe-inspiring authority, my moral and ethical prophets in a complex world.