Krishna temples urge victims of abuse to make formal claim Sunday, May 04, 2003 - 05:14 pm By Larry B. Stammer, Los Angeles Times, 4/30/2003 LOS ANGELES - The six Hare Krishna temples in California, along with several other Krishna organizations here and in West Virginia, took steps yesterday to identify minors who may have been sexually abused or mistreated at boarding schools during the 1970s and '80s. A lawsuit over the alleged abuse prompted the Krishna movement, known officially as the International Society of Krishna Consciousness, to file for bankruptcy last year to protect its assets and, the group said, to prevent closing of temples and other facilities across the United States. As part of the bankruptcy process, the Krishna temples plan to publish legal notices today in major newspapers and magazines and on websites, urging victims to make claims if they want to be compensated under a proposed bankruptcy reorganization plan. The move is the latest development in a three-year legal battle over the abuse allegations. In charges that echo the sexual-abuse scandal in Roman Catholic dioceses across the United States, plaintiffs allege they were raped or otherwise physically and emotionally abused while living in Krishna boarding schools away from their parents. The US boarding schools, known as ashram-based gurukulas, were all closed by the mid-1980s. In the United States, schools were located in Los Angeles and Three Rivers, Calif., Moundsville, W.Va., and Dallas. Other boarding schools were located in India. A suit was filed in 2000 in Texas against the Los Angeles, Moundsville, and Dallas schools. The six California temples were also named as parties in the suit, which seeks millions in damages on behalf of more than 90 alleged victims. A lawyer for the victims said the number could rise to as many as a thousand victims. Victims were subjected to "the most unthinkable abuse and maltreatment of little children which we have seen," said Wendell Turley, the Texas plaintiff's lawyer who is handling the suit. "It includes rape, sexual abuse, physical torture, and emotional terror of children as young as 3 years of age." A Los Angeles lawyer for the Krishna movement, David Liberman, said yesterday that he had no idea how many victims might step forward. He said that "well over" 2,000 to 3,000 children went through Krishna boarding schools during that period. Liberman said the lawsuit "threatens to close places of worship and punish innocent families that had nothing to do with these allegations." The movement reports about 75,000 members in the United States. Worldwide it says it has 10,000 temple devotees, who live at Krishna temples, and 250,000 congregational devotees. An article on child abuse within the movement between 1971 and 1986 appears on the movement's website. In it, E. Burke Rochford Jr., professor of sociology at Middlebury College in Vermont, said US Krishna boarding schools first opened in 1971 in Dallas. "It was here that some children were physically, psychologically, and sexually abused," Rochford wrote. Estimates of the number of students abused have ranged from 20 percent of all students who attended an ashram-gurukula to as many as 75 percent of the boys enrolled at a boarding school in Vrindavan, India, according to Rochford. Nation: Hare Krishna congregations to file for bankruptcy, spokesman says Copyright 2002 AP Online By STEPHEN MANNING, Associated Press LANHAM, Md. (February 6, 2002 7:37 p.m. EST) - Hare Krishna congregations named in a $400 million lawsuit alleging sexual and emotional abuse of students at several boarding schools will file for bankruptcy to avoid being sued, a spokesman for the Hindu sect said Wednesday. About a dozen congregations will start filing for Chapter 11 reorganization next week in several states, said Anuttama Dasa, a Maryland-based spokesman for the International Society of Krishna Consciousness, or ISKCON. "We don't believe that innocent members and congregations should be held accountable for the deviant behavior of individual acts committed 20 or 30 years ago," he said. The group hopes that if their plan is approved by federal bankruptcy judges, the lawsuit filed in Dallas by former boarding school students will be dismissed. he Texas lawsuit alleges young children at Krishna schools in India and the United States were terrorized by their instructors. There are 94 plaintiffs in the lawsuit, according to the office of Windle Turley, the Dallas attorney who filed the lawsuit. They allege that young girls were given as brides to older men who donated to the religious community. Children also allegedly were deprived of medical care, scrubbed with steel wool until their skin bled, and prevented from leaving the schools. Turley has said the abuse started in 1972 at ISKCON's first school in Dallas and continued in six other U.S. schools and two in India. He said ISKCON knew that sex offenders were working in their schools. The faith's spiritual leader believed children as young as 5 should be sent to boarding schools so they can learn to be pure devotees. Roughly a dozen schools operated in North America by the late 1970s, but all have since closed. There are currently 75,000 Hare Krishnas in North America. Bitter Memories: Former Hare Krishna children allege abuse Newsday; 3/2/2002; Tina Susman THE MOLESTATIONS began at age 8, and by 9, as her body began showing the first curves of maturity, Melody Gedeon was being eyed as marriage material. She was first raped at 13, she said, but instead of sympathy she got anger from the community, which accused her of being a temptress who had wrecked her assailant's marriage. Through it all, say Gedeon and dozens of other children of Hare Krishna followers, there were days locked in roach-infested rooms, nights listening to the cries . . . [full article not available] FACTNet Newsletter FACTNet, Inc., is a cult information group. It stands for Fight Against Coercive Tactics Network. Link to their site: Factnet.Org. News Briefs, Oct.-Dec. 1998 The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (Iskcon) is experiencing internal upheaval over a series of sex scandals involving its gurus. Leading the upheaval is long-time devotee Vineet Narain, founder of the newly established Iskcon Reform Group (IRG) with branches in Australia, France, Germany, the UK , and Canada. Narain stated that former disciples are rejecting guru Loknath Swami after discovering the swami was responsible for molesting a teenaged girl in the U.S. Recently, several other self-proclaimed gurus fell from grace due to serious charges of child abuse and homosexuality. One leader is currently serving a term in a U.S. Prison; another, Anand Swami, ran away with the daughter of an Indian diplomat; while another, Hansduta Swami, married his own disciple. Iskcon Chairman Harikeshaswami recently ran away with a sex-worker, leaving thousands of his disciples in a state of emotional shock. Iskcon, with assets worth billions of dollars in over 500 centers around the world, is administrated by senior disciples and devotees following the path of spirituality. According to Adridharan Das, president of the Iskcon in Calcutta, the self-proclaimed guru system slipped into place despite the wishes of its late founder, Prabhupada, who initiated some of his disciples to function as priests. He was careful to insist on the distinction between priesthood as opposed to that of guru, because in Hinduism, gurus have spiritual power over the life and death of their followers. Child abuse in Krishna schools by Kerri Hikida Whole Life Times Journal of the Holistic Lifestyle, December 1998 Whole Life Times website The official journal of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) has published an expose documenting child abuse in Hare Krishna boarding schools in the U.S. And India during the 1970s and 1980s. Two articles catalogued ISKCON's failure to provide adequate protection for its parochial school students during the society's earliest years. Abuses outlined were physical, emotional and sexual and were initially brought to the attention of leaders in 1996, when a panel of ten former Krishna pupils testified they had been regularly beaten and caned at school, denied medical care and sexually molested and sodomized at knife point. E. Burke Rochford Jr., a sociologist of religion at Middlebury College in Vermont and the author of one of the studies published, said the abuse could be attributed to the structure of the early Krishna movement, which was brought to the U.S. In 1966 by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami. "The mentality of the time was that distributing the guru's books and engaging oneself in missionary activity was the most important service one could be involved in," Rochford wrote. However, devotees who were not successful at this were put to work in the boarding schools with no screening or training, the article stated. On the other hand, Nori Muster, a former editor of the ISKCON journal, devotee from 1977 to 1988 and author of the book Betrayal of the Spirit (University of Illinois Press), said the abuse in the United States was systemic and organized. Muster also said the movement is divided on the issue of coming to terms with the past abuse. ISKCON has now established a Child Protection Office staffed with professional social workers trained in abuse response. In addition, the traditional gurukula (boarding school) system brought from India has been modified in the U.S., with ISKCON operating only day schools instead. Click here for a collection of news articles on this subject. Click here for more ISKCON gurukula information. Click here for an index of all child abuse information available through this site.