A man who has dedicated his life to supporting Jewish child abuse victims has been awarded more than $800,000 for assaults by his former karate teacher.
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Manny Waks was 13 when David Cyprys, then 20, sexually assaulted him while he was a student at the Yeshivah College in Melbourne in 1988.
The Supreme Court of Victoria on Monday awarded the outspoken survivor the six-figure damages after he took legal action against his abuser.
Mr Waks said he was determined to seek justice.
"This serial pedophile has never expressed remorse or taken responsibility for his destructive abuse against so many children," he said in a statement on Tuesday.
"Worse, he has forced some of his victims to endure further trauma, myself included, by contesting matters in court and in other ways."
Mr Waks grew up within an ultra-Orthodox Hasidic sect.
He started karate classes, organised by Yeshivah, mostly held on the site of the Elwood synagogue up to twice a week.
Cyprys touched Mr Waks before and after classes and while in the company of other students, the judgment states.
After a private session with another student, Cyprys made Mr Waks undress in the male ritual bath, joined him to teach him to float before touching the child.
During a karate class, the teacher gave Mr Waks the ultimatum of an impossible task or jogging around the yard with his pants down and genitals exposed, the court was told.
The abused ended when Mr Waks was 14 and a half years old.
Cyprys was previously charged and pleaded guilty to various offences.
Mr Waks engaged in "reckless and rebellious behaviour" during his teens and into his 20s, telling his father of the abuse in 1996 and going public as a victim in 2011.
Mr Waks settled damages claims for psychiatric injury in September 2018 from Cyprys and 11 other defendants associated with the Yeshivah Centre and Yeshivah College.
Australian Associated Press
