Salon.com, "Holy Abuse," by Peter Brandt, 02 July 01
(read the article - click here)
. . . The Krishna society estimates it now has 90,000 followers in the U.S. -- but only about 800 actually live in one of the 45 ISKCON spiritual communities. That number is down from about 5,000 live-in devotees in the late '70s. ISKCON says the plummeting number of full-time residents -- those devotees once ubiquitous in airports -- represents the trend in the movement away from monastic life and towards congregational weekend worshipping.
Former ISKCON public relations secretary Nori Muster disagrees. "They've been saying that for decades. I think most of the people who have left don't want anything to do with the organization. A lot don't ever reveal to people they were involved with this group. It would be like saying 'Oh I was in the SLA' or 'I was in the Manson Family.' They're probably counting a lot of people who do not wish to be counted."
In her 1997 book "Betrayal of Spirit," Muster details her decision to leave ISKCON in 1988 -- a decision motivated by what she sees as a "lack of accountability between leaders and followers" and "ISKCON's faltering honesty with the outside world."
. . . Though highly critical of ISKCON in general, Muster gives a great deal of credit to Dasa for his work with Children of Krishna.
"He has done a wonderful job of trying to get donations. Some of the other officials have made small contributions to Children of Krishna, but nothing like the millions that the plaintiffs are asking. Besides, Children of Krishna gives grants to all ISKCON children. A special fund should have been set up specifically to help survivors."
Portland Mercury News (read entire article - click here)
Vol. 2 No.3, June 21, 2001
MURDER, SEX AND FREE FOOD
How the Portland Sect of Hare Krishna's are Struggling to Overcome a Very Shady Past
by Frank Bures
. . . Nori Muster worked for 10 years as ISKCON's publicist, before quitting in disgust. She thinks the group is beyond hope.
"They don't like to let people know there's really as much chaos as there is," she says of ISKCON's leadership. In 1997, Muster published her book, Betrayal of Spirit, about her 10 years in ISKCON's publicity department.
"What you have now is just a dying thing that's kind of lingering," she says. "It would take a lot for them to turn it around at this point. And that would involve being more honest about their history, opening up more about their finances, and where they get their money from, which we still can't figure out. They (the leaders) have access to lots of money and they channel it where they want it."
For Muster, it's a matter of the corruption and intransigence of the GBC, especially the core group of gurus. "They took over the organization in about 1970, and they have run it ever since. And they have run it with an iron fist."
. . . If 1977 was a bad year for ISCKON, 1997 might have been worse. That was the year Nori Muster's book came out giving, what was for many, a first glimpse of the machinations of the organization. It was also the year several tapes were leaked to ex-ISKCON member Tim Lee--tapes of Prabhupada's final days on earth. On them, Prabhupada allegedly says several times he is being poisoned.
The Sunday mood is festive and relaxed. People seem happy to be here. An Indian man tells me he comes here for a little slice of his homeland. A dreadlocked American says he likes to pick and choose from the different paths to God, this being just one. No one seems obviously brainwashed, glaze-eyed, or in need of deprogramming. There is a hopeful feeling among the people I talk to, like they've found this new way, and it feels right. The politics of ISKCON seem far away. And they may just be, says Muster.
"They have a whole side that's underground," she says of the GBC. "I think that's why they're so secretive, and protective, and uncaring about their members. None of the members know about this stuff. Nobody knows. The younger people don't know anything. And that's the way they like it." Muster worries that this means they will be doomed to repeat ISCKON's mistakes.
Glamour Magazine, October 2002
"No one stopped my rape" The shocking charges against the Hare Krishnas
by Debbie Seaman
. . . Young girls like Tiller who lived in these gurukulas were particularly vulnerable to violation, says Nori J. Muster, author of Betrayal of the Spirit (University of Illinois Press), an autobiography of her years as a Krishna. "Girls were married off as young as age 12 to men about three times their age," says Muster. "Since Krishna authorities often allowed men to hit their wives for misbehavior, a girl was at the mercy of her husband."
BBC: Sunday Religion and Ethics (read entire broadcast - click here)
10 Feb. 2, 2002
Excerpts from a report on ISKCON's Chapter 11 Bankruptcy as their response to the lawsuit Children of ISKCON vs. ISKCON filed in Dallas last October
Nori Muster was a devotee for ten years but left the movement disillusioned in 1988. She went on to write a book about the decline of the Hare Krishna movement in North America and the scandals that enveloped it after its founder A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada died in 1977. Although some members like Anuttama Dasa acknowledge that some reform is needed, she believes many of ISKCON's temple leaders do not share his views.
Nori: The organization has to learn that it's wrong. They do have to function within the rules of society. They cannot abuse children, they cannot abuse women, they can't beat people up. If they could learn those things, then yes, I think that the organization should survive. But if they're going to go on with their attitudes that they're above the law, then no, I don't think it should survive, because it doesn't represent Krishna, it doesn't represent Hinduism.
FRI, FEB. 02 2001
Boston Phoenix (read article - click here)
Where have all the Krishnas gone?
More cash-conscious than counterculture, the Hare Krishnas are changing their marketing plan and going mainstream
BY DORIE CLARK
. . . But it is not at all clear what these changes mean for the movement in the long term. Former devotee Nori Muster, who has written an expose called Betrayal of the Spirit: My Life Behind the Headlines of the Hare Krishna Movement (University of Illinois Press, 1997), says Indian families visit the group's temples to pay homage to their God. Still, "I don't know that they actually join ISKCON," she says. "They come to the temple, but that's something different." Anti-cult watchdog Steve Hassan, author of Combatting Cult Mind Control (Park Street Press, 1988), agrees. And he says of the Hare Krishnas, "I'm not aware that they're a force that's growing. In fact, I have the impression they're a force that's shrinking." In the face of these uncertainties, the group now faces the biggest question of all: just what makes a Hare Krishna?
. . . But the end of book-selling income wasn't the only change that rocked the Krishnas. In 1977, Prabhupada, their guru, died at age 81. The line of succession was not clearly determined beforehand, so 11 leaders came forward and attempted to share power by carving up international fiefdoms. Trouble arose almost immediately, according to Nori Muster, who joined the organization shortly after Prabhupada's death and left in 1987. "They had 11 guys who thought they were gurus, and all of them started to exhibit problems," she says. "First the guy in the Bay Area got caught with guns and importing illegal Mercedes Benzes. The guru for England was on LSD all the time and he got murdered.... Ninety percent of the [original] Prabhupada disciples had left within five years. It was just the corrupt people and their disciples; all the good people had left."
Attracted to Prabhupada's ideals, new members like Muster were deliberately kept unaware of the group's mounting problems which included widespread domestic violence and child abuse, ties to drug dealers, and fraudulent financial dealings. Meanwhile, in Boston, a well-publicized anti-cult lawsuit began wending its way through the courts. It would take 21 years before the Hare Krishnas, in 1997, finally negotiated a settlement with Susan Murphy, a former devotee who became involved at age 13 and later sued for emotional distress. (Under the terms of the agreement, ISKCON is not permitted to discuss the lawsuit.)
With each scandal, the movement became increasingly discredited in the outside world. But on the inside, reports of organizational misdeeds were heavily censored. Muster's disillusionment began when, as the associate editor of the society's international newspaper, she tried to cover the news objectively. "They told us we couldn't do it anymore," she says, "and issued resolutions that we should go back to printing the good news and shouldn't be so controversial. The Governing Body Commission completely censored us, so I finally resigned and left." The Hare Krishnas were at a crossroads
. . . Some critics do remain skeptical that the Hare Krishnas have really changed. Though she applauds the publication of Rochford's findings on child abuse, Nori Muster says: "The same people are still basically in charge. They're always trying to say that the organization has changed now, that they've weeded out the bad people, that the organization is more open now. I just see that as more smoke screen." She says a real measure of openness would be reaching out to disaffected former members. Anti-cult expert Steve Hassan agrees. He's pleased that fewer Krishna devotees live in temples and are therefore beyond the reach of constant monitoring. But, he says, "until they can get rid of the corrupt leaders in this organization and establish a system of accountability and allow people to think negative thoughts, meet with critics, former members, and consider alternatives ... I'm still going to have grave concerns about them."
Rediff.com June 29, 2000 (read article - click here)
In search of a lost childhood
by Shanthi Shankarkumar
. . . Nori Muster, who worked for 10 years as public relations secretary of ISKCON and editor of the organisation's newspaper, wrote a sensational book, Betrayal of Spirit, after she quit ISKCON in 1988. In this book, published in 1997, Muster writes about the almost Mafia-like activities of ISKCON -- from international drug smuggling to arms caches, child abuse and assassinations.
"Some dishonest people made their way up the organisation and when Prabhupada died, they just took it way up further," says Muster. She blames ISKCON's troubles on Prabhupada's attempts to inflict Indian customs and culture on a Western society that was unable to absorb the essence of an alien culture.
Prabhupada introduced arranged marriages between devotees, he advocated celibacy and an almost mediaeval approach to women, whom he considered people of low intelligence who needed to be protected.
"If people believed in the concept of surrendering to the guru, then they could get them to do anything. It was something new for the Westerners not to question all this," says Muster.
After all these years, Muster is still burdened with the guilt of being part of an organisation that was so far from the true teachings of Krishna. "It is unbearable to think that I once belonged to an organisation that did all these terrible things. I've suffered a lot too. Writing the book was healing for me," says Muster.
After years of dealing with one scandal after another, the Hare Krishna movement is now acknowledging that the legacy of abuse and the leadership's failure to grapple with the problems have led to many children and their parents leaving the movement.
"This is the third generation. Prabhupada would say that when the third generation arrives, those will be the pure devotees, but these kids are being raised in poverty and they will never have the opportunities of the baby-boomer generation," says Muster.
The Age (read article - click here)
Melbourne, Australia
Exposed: the sins of the gurus
By MARTIN DALY
Sunday 18 June 2000
. . . An American author, Nori Muster, who for 10 years was the sect's public-relations officer in the US, says in her 1997 book Betrayal of the Spirit: My Life Behind the Headlines of the Hare Krishna Movement that Bhavananda Das was later expelled by the governing board of commissioners for breaking an undertaking that he would not initiate disciples.
Peace, love tainted by shame (sidebar to previous article)
By MARTIN DALY
Sunday 18 June 2000
(read article - click here)
. . . The great tragedy of the two decades of abuse in Hare Krishna schools across the US and in India, according to Mr Turley and former Hare Krishna public relations officer Nori Muster, is that the movement, including its revered founder, the Indian sannyassi (or holy man) Swami Prabhupada, knew all about the abuse and did nothing.
"We were forbidden from talking about child abuse," Ms Muster told The Sunday Age. "We were supposed to cover our ears and walk away ... We were supposed to say that was just a rumor and `I do not believe it'."
Ms Muster, who for 10 years was public relations secretary and editor of the sect's newspaper, wrote Betrayal of the Spirit based on her life inside a movement that broke many spirits. The book is about schism, drug and weapons dealing and stockpiling, deceptive fundraising, child abuse and murder in the temples and ashrams allegedly devoted to the god Krishna.
Many of the parents who trusted the movement with their children meant well. They wanted, in cases, to shelter them from a material world of which they disapproved. "They sheltered and isolated them, but neglected them in their own world. The kids were not only cut off from normal society, but they did not have TV or toys. They were kept away from relatives, grandparents, who were not members of the organisation. A lot of the kids not physically abused have a fear of the outside world," says Ms Muster.
Those Hare Krishnas who are pure of heart and spiritually committed are now being tarnished by what the leaders did or did not do about allegations of child abuse.
But for those who want to find god, Krishna-style, Ms Muster suggests they buy a book, take it home and stay away from the movement. Krishna, she says, is everywhere, except perhaps in some of the Hare Krishna temples.
Whole Life times (read the article - click here)
Journal of the Holistic Lifestyle, December 1998
Child abuse in Krishna schools, by Kerri Hikida
. . . 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.
Index of all child abuse information available through this site.
