AUSTRALIA
ABC News
By Jean Edwards
Australia’s most senior rabbi sent a text message calling a father whose children were molested at Melbourne’s Yeshivah College a “lunatic” who neglected his children, the royal commission into child sexual abuse has heard.
Rabbi Meir Kluwgant admitted sending the message about Zephaniah Waks to the editor of the Australian Jewish News, Zeddy Lawrence, on February 3.
The Waks’s lawyer Melinda Richards SC put it to the rabbi that he sent an SMS to Mr Lawrence which read: “Zephaniah is killing us, Zephaniah is attacking Chabad, he is a lunatic on the fringe, guilty of neglect of his own children, where was he when all this was happening?”.
“I may have sent that, yes,” Rabbi Kluwgant replied.
The rabbi is the president of the Organisation of Rabbis of Australasia.
He initially said he did not recall sending the text message and denied watching or listening to Mr Waks’s testimony.
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