The father of child sex abuse victim Manny Waks is taking
two senior officials at the Yeshivah Centre to the Victorian Civil and
Administrative Tribunal.
Zephaniah Waks had taken his complaint against Yeshivah’s
chief rabbi, Zvi Telsner, and the chairman of the Yeshivah committee, Hershel
Herbst, to the Victorian Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission,
accusing them of ”an escalating campaign of shunning me during the last 18
months, because of my views and actions and those of my son who they find it
hard to attack except via me”.
Since Manny Waks went public in 2011 with allegations of
child sex abuse in the 1980s and claims of cover-ups by school leaders at the
time, his father claims he has been shunned by many in the fervently Orthodox
community although Rabbi Telsner has denied the allegations as “absolutely
false”.
Zephaniah Waks withdrew his complaint on Friday after
Nechama Bendet, a spokesperson for Yeshivah, said they required until May 31
“to consider the issues”.
But Waks said “these delaying and other tactics by the
respondents are unacceptable”.
He said he had agreed to all their demands for the benefit
of the conciliation, including waiting until after Shavuot, agreeing to
confidentiality, and in last week accepting “their unwillingness to show the
smallest gesture of goodwill towards the conciliation by giving me an aliyah
upon the birth of a grandchild, as is customary for everyone else in the
congregation”.
Waks wrote in an email to the HREOC official earlier this
week: “I am not prepared to play their games any more,” stating that he will
now pursue the case with VCAT.
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