AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
Paul Kalina
Deputy TV Editor
Filmmaker Danny Ben-Moshe had no interest at first in making a follow-up to Code of Silence, the Walkley-winning documentary about Manny Waks, the whistleblower who lifted the lid on child sex abuse within Melbourne’s Orthodox Jewish community.
But listening to the testimony presented to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse, he was dumb-struck at what he describes as the “phenomenally preposterous” answer a prominent rabbi gave to a question about appropriate adult conduct.
What was meant to be a jokey remark about making a sequel became reality, and 48 hours later he was filming outside Melbourne’s County Court.
The clincher was that the leaders of Melbourne Yeshivah Centre, who had refused to talk to the filmmakers in Code of Silence, were now under the spotlight in the courtroom making cringeworthy and clumsy confessions. Rabbi Yosef Feldman, among others, had unwittingly given them a gift.
“It was the prevarication, the obfuscation, the denials, the twisting,” recalls Ben-Moshe of the courtroom testimony.
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