Manny Waks

Waks gave evidence at the Royal Commission that he received abusive emails including one from an executive of the Sydney Yeshivah centre reading "Just because a security guard molested you, don’t blame Yeshivah... Get over it. I haven’t met a person yet with one nice word to say about you. Most people consider you a low life." The Sydney Morning Herald wrote that Yeshivah rabbis "railed against the whistleblowing Waks" and claimed that Waks and his father had "a vendetta against the centre." In testimony before the Royal Commission a former manager and director both apologized to Waks and admitted that they should have prevented this.

Waks established a non-profit group, Kol v’Oz. Kol v'Oz is lobbying the Knesset for changes in the statute of limitations on sexual crimes. Waks serves as director of Kol v'Oz.

In 2016 Waks spoke to the chair of the Knesset Special Committee for the Rights of the Child. In his comments he cautioned the committee: “Sex offenders tend to move from country to country to avoid jail, but what makes Israel unique is the Law of Return, which essentially grants unhindered access to anyone who is Jewish to come here without any real screening." said Manny Waks, the chief executive officer of Kol v’Oz, a newly formed nonprofit that aims to prevent child sexual abuse in the global Jewish community.

In 2015 Chabad’s international leadership made overtures to Waks. Waks says he was invited to meet with Chabad's director of operations, Rabbi Mendy Sharfstein, to discuss best practices in responding to allegations of abuse.

In 2015 Chabad’s international leadership made overtures to Waks. Waks says he was invited to meet with Chabad's director of operations, Rabbi Mendy Sharfstein, to discuss best practices in responding to allegations of abuse.

Both perpetrators were convicted of sex crimes in 2013.

Waks is an advocate against child sexual abuse within the Jewish community. In 2012 he founded Tzedek, an Australia-based organisation advocating for a Jewish community free of child sexual abuse, after having brought his own experience of Child sexual abuse in Australia within the Jewish community into the public arena in July 2011.

Although born in Israel, Waks was raised primarily in Australia. He is one of 17 children in an Orthodox Jewish family who were part of the Chabad-Lubavitch, Hasidic community in Melbourne, Australia. Before they were eventually ostracized for reporting child sexual abuse within the community, Waks, his parents and siblings were viewed as a "poster family for the Australian Chabad movement." Waks returned to Israel when he turned 18, where he served in the Israel Defence Forces. After returning to Australia from his service in the IDF, he obtained a degree in International Relations. He completed internships with a federal parliamentarian and the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney. Waks' family featured in the 2003 SBS documentary Welcome to the Waks Family.

In the late 1980s Waks attended Melbourne's Yeshivah centre, run by the Chabad ultra-orthodox movement of Judaism. Starting at the age of eleven, he was sexually abused by two members of the staff at the centre. Waks reported sexual abuse by two different perpetrators to the Yeshivah leadership and to the police in 1996. When no action was taken, Waks went public in 2011 with allegations against the abusers, and pressure to keep quiet.

Manny Waks (born Menachem Leib Waks, 1976) is an Australian activist. He was previously part of the orthodox community in Australia and later became known for his activism against child sexual abuse in the Jewish community worldwide. He founded Tzedek, an organisation to fight child sexual abuse in Jewish communities. Waks assisted the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in investigating Melbourne Yeshivah centre of the Orthodox Chabad movement of Judaism on their handling of child sexual abuse cases.