UNITED KINGDOM
The Jewish News
BY FRANCINE WOLFISZ May 11, 2017
My life is not what it was. I had a comfortable job, a serene life, I was involved communally. Things were going very well. Then this happened and it changed my world.”
Three decades may have passed, but Manny Waks, now 41, admits not a day goes by without acknowledging the sexual abuse he suffered as a child.
Raised in a strictly-Orthodox Jewish home in Melbourne, the second oldest of 17 children was betrayed by two men trusted by his family.
For years, Waks resisted telling anyone, but in 2011 he went public about his experiences in an attempt to bring his abusers to justice.
That testimony was more explosive than he imagined: it became the catalyst for an Orthodox sex abuse scandal that rocked Australia and resulted in the conviction of several men for sexually abusing boys during the 1980s and 1990s.
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