I was first attracted to this book because of its title “Who gave you permission” it made ask who and what it was about. The blurb only served to whet my curiosity even more. I really wasn’t sure what I was going to be greeted with.

This is not an easy read (although it reads at a reasonable pace), but both a worthwhile one and also a necessary one. It’s dense in parts and the reader may be left wondering why Manny goes into so much detail around the middle of the book where the process of the Royal Commission is discussed at length. However, my advice is to stick at it because your efforts will be rewarded in the end where you’ll understand why he wrote it in this way.

After the prologue the reader is introduced to the author as the reluctant ‘troublemaker’. He says on his opening page of chapter one that the reason he went public was “… to put a face to the experience … to encourage other victims to do the same … or to take whatever action …” they feel is necessary and appropriate. It is important to realise that although this is the memoir of a person who had been sexually abused in a religious community it’s not the Anglican or Roman Catholic ones (the groups commonly thought to be the perpetrators of sexual abuse in the religious world). Manny Waks is talking about the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community which lives separately from the general population. This seclusion has probably afforded a certain amount of security when dealing with the issue of sexual abuse because they didn’t have a great deal of contact with the outside world. This was a world that was self-contained – there wasn’t a real need to go beyond their own boundaries. Manny says that the response from those in authority who were supposed to help and protect those in their charge took the following form: 1) they ignored him; 2) then they downplayed what happened to him; and 3) then they told him the matter was being addressed. However, when he showed up that nothing was being done he, his mother, father and siblings were shunned and ostracised to the point where they were all cast from the only life they knew.

This book, whilst intense, gave some interesting background information about the belief and cultural underpinnings of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish religion. In addition to Manny being one of 17 children (a number that I find extremely remarkable and I really admire his mother in looking after such a huge brood of children) he describes the attire that the boys wore in his community (white shirt, black pants, and a black hat). Manny and his family lived in East St. Kilda. Some of the rituals they had to abide by were: washing hands in the morning after getting out of bed but before walking three steps; when they went to sleep they had to sleep on their left side of their body; their day started at 6.30am whereupon they washed each of their hands three times. There are more little tidbits like this which helped to give the reader a better understanding of the close knit community that is ultra-Orthodox Judaism.

This is a must read for anyone who is interested in learning about lesser-known groups and how the very isolation that they depend on becomes a hot bed for abuses upon children going unheard. ( )