ACCOUNTS OF CHILD ABUSE IN HARE KRSNA SCHOOLS

remember as you read these testimonies, that this happened to little defenseless children, who were in residential schools, far far far away from our parents. warning content is shocking.
we have not included the names of the countless victims and perpetrators, and don't ask us either.
this is an emotional journey... if you are a parent and sent your child to gurukula, it could be the life of your child, and the perpetrator could be a friend of yours. many of our abusers are in high and respected positions within iskcon. listen to your child, without defending the religion and the gurus.

          BEATINGS/PUNISHMENTS

Physical abuse is characterized by inflicting physical injury by punching, beating, kicking, biting, burning, or otherwise harming a child. (Sexual Assault Crisis Center of Knoxville, TN)

This form of child abuse and neglect includes acts or omissions by the parents or other person responsible for the child's care that have caused, or could cause, serious behavioral, cognitive, emotional, or mental disorders. In some cases of emotional/psychological abuse the acts of parents or other caretakers alone, without any harm evident in the child's behavior or condition, are sufficient to warrant Child Protective Services (CPS) intervention. For example, the parents/caretakers use extreme or bizarre forms of punishment, such as torture or confinement of a child in a dark closet. For less severe acts, such as habitual scapegoating, belittling, or rejecting treatment, demonstrable harm to the child is often required for CPS to intervene. (The National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse and Neglect Information)

• He would beat kids with a ferocity as yet unseen in any teacher. We all feared him. He threw a kid to the floor face-first one time knocking his two front teeth out.
• We all saw two teachers sitting on this little old Indian guy pummeling him. One of them took his head and started banging it against one of those square pillars in the building. When they were done they dragged his senseless body down the stairs feet first so that his head bounced on every step. I thought he was dead for sure. He lived though. This event scared the shit out of me. It showed me what could happen to me if I wasn't careful.
• A female teacher taught an ashrama for young girls. One day she got mad and hit a girl with a tennis racket, breaking the racket over her back.
• A teacher smacked the girl with a flywopper across the face. He punched her twice in the stomach with a stone in his fist, and he did some more really perverted stuff. And she was just a small girl. Max. 8 yrs old.
• I was slapped and punched with brushes and hands. My friend was hit so hard she had fingerprints on her eyeball.
• I was a witness to and recipient of nosebleeds, ear-pulls and yanks, hair pulling and punches in the gut and sternum, whacks until our heads reeled and ears rang.
• I had my mouth scrubbed with a metal brush and dish soap.
• The monitor suddenly attacked him with a knife. He went completely nuts!
• He relentlessly pounded [the boy] for over an hour with encouragement from the teacher. After it was over his eyes were so swollen that he could barely see out of them.
• I was 3 and a half little girl, mother away in India, he (a teacher) took me into the boys shower room, stripped off my clothes and beat me until I was unconscious.
• One very vivid memory was that we were punished in a 'executionary style'. When I did something (or didn't), I was told by the person I had 'annoyed' that I would be punished, then sometime later in the day, an adult led me down the long hall of the wing to a door and I was pushed inside. The room was dimly lit and there was a person sitting on a chair, my clothing was lifted to expose my bottom and I was spanked with swift and very hard whacks. Then I was let off the lap of the 'punisher' and asked if I had learned my lesson. With tears in my eyes, my gaze fixed on the floor infront of me, shifting my weight between my feet, humiliated and ashamed, I would nod affirmative, though I had a very hard time remembering what I had done and to whom I had offended.
• I remember "smaranam" sticks and getting daily beatings (5 whacks minimum) for the bad stuff we did that no one saw.
• I remember [] hair brush that he used to beat us with. I remember his wife [] locking me in a dark closet standing on a milk-crate with the warning that if I got off the crate the giant rats would eat my feet. I was three years old and terrified for my life. This was a punishment that was repeated over and over again. I remember being tied into two milk-crates and kept there all day. While in there I was repeatedly informed that I was to be sold to a meat eating karmi who would then take me home and eat me alive. As ridiculous as that story sounds I believed it completely. Visions of a house with blood on the floor and a demon-karmi coming after me with a fork with which to eat me, filled my mind and dreams.
• I remember [] making me go to the programs and to the park to play while wearing dirty underwear on my head. At the time I didn't know which was worse: being seen by the deities or by all the other name-calling kids at the playground.
• Two of my most vivid memories of Dallas involve punishment. I have no idea what the crime involved was so they didn't teach me anything accept pain and suffering. I remember spending a long time (I think it was the whole day) in a trash can. It was one of those plastic barrel size things with plastic lid. I was 3 or 4 years old at the time. I was put in the thing at first with no lid. I remember crying and screaming until I didn't have the energy any more. Then someone showed up. I thought rescue was at hand. I was wrong. That's when the lid went on with a small air gap "so I could breathe". I screamed some more, but no one came. I managed to curl up in the bottom of the thing and sleep for a while. When I woke up I was still in the thing and it wasn't all a bad dream like I'd hoped. That's when I decided that the only way I'd get out was on my own. I tried climbing the inside by pushing my back against one side and walking up the other side. When I got to the top I pushed the lid aside and started to climb over the edge when the teacher came back. I got a beating for good measure, was put back in the thing and the lid was nearly closed so that it could support some heavy object that would keep me from opening it again. After expending most of my energy climbing the inside again and trying to move the lid I collapsed in the bottom, totally demoralized. After a while, boredom took over and I started trying to get out again. I alternated screaming for help and trying on my own. Somehow I discovered that I could rock the barrel back and forth by throwing my body against the walls. Before I had a chance to get scared about falling over, the thing had tipped and I was free. I knew that there was nowhere that I could go. I was in my underwear, sweating from head to toe, and exhausted. My only hope was to find somewhere to hide. Looking around, the only thing that I saw was the dirty laundry hamper. It was like a giant trough that 50 or 60 kids had thrown their dirty underwear into. I climbed in. I buried myself in urine soaked underwear and waited in abject terror for the teacher to return. As time passed, I fell asleep again from exhaustion. I was awakened by the teacher lifting me bodily from the hamper and throwing me on the floor. I kept wondering how he'd found me. I thought my hiding place was perfect. Back into the barrel I went. This time, however, I wasn't getting out on my own again. The bottom of the barrel was filled with about 6 inches of water. The lid was put back on all the way with the weight on it and a hole was made in the lid so I could breathe. I have no idea how long I was in there. It seemed like forever. I thought I was living a whole lifetime of hellish existence in that thing. I could no longer curl up and sleep because of the water. I sat there freezing, scared, and exhausted until my body turned white from immersion. When I was let out of the barrel it was dark outside. I think the punishment lasted all day.
• Another memory of her just came to me. How could I have forgotten this one? In the basement of the Seattle temple there were various rooms, most of which I became quite familiar with over the years(for they were my places of punishment and atonement). There was one by the walk-in cooler that had a huge thick door with a warning sign on it. "Hazardous" is all my mind's eye can see right now. It had a lock and latch on it like the walk-in cooler's. She [teacher] put me in there.. This was the closest thing to a dungeon. All I could see were mounds of dirt. There was a tiny bit of light coming thru cobwebs in the window. The rest of the windows and the room itself were all below ground. I felt so tiny as she took me to the place furthest from the door--a big mound of dirt---and had me sit there. I sat there and I was terrified. She bolted the door and it was utter silence after that. No light would've been better than the dirty light I had, because it was just enough to let my imagination go wild. What was this room? I still don't know. I sang, chanted and cried the Nrsimhadeva prayers and other select verses. Maybe this incident is what caused me to develop arachniphobia.
• the next memory that comes to mind is of being locked in the potato cellar of that house. There were 2 sets of doors and I was locked between the 2 sets in a tiny little space, one of my friends was put in the huge cellar part on the other side of the doors. I could not hear or feel a thing. It was just a vacuum of nothingness.
• One incident I remember from that bathroom was when [teacher] made [5 year old girl] wear her stooly underwear on her head, after she had cruelly rubbed them and it in her face.
• It was school policy, that every morning after breakfast there was an assembly, and at that assembly one student would be brought in front of the group and "punished" for something he had done the day before. This would show the other children that they should behave well. "Punishment" consisted of [the principal] picking up the boy by the ears, dropping him, and slapping both his ears with his hands as the boy fell. If a boy tried to escape the slaps, a teacher standing next to them, would punch the child with his fist, and the kid would collapse on the floor, screaming. This would "teach" the other children a lesson, to be afraid of the teachers and to behave.
• I was beaten black and blue so badly, I had to be locked in a room for two weeks and was not allowed to come out because the devotees in Vrindavana would have been upset about the bad bruises and black and blue marks all over my body.
• Two friends (10 years old) decided to run away. They went off by themselves, with 50 rupees, and were running away from the gurukula. Some people who recognized the boys to be from Bhaktivedanta Gurukula, informed the gurukula and the principal brought them back. He took the boys from door to door of every ashrama in the gurukula building, and in front of every door, beat these boys to show the other children how bad they were. The witness says the boys were "bleeding from their ears, screaming in pain"
• One day friend and I were playing in the basement and she got in the huge industrial dryer and shut the door. I went over and pretended that I was going to turn it on and the friend frantically pushed the door open, accidently slamming me in the eye and my cheekbone. Later on I was in the temple room that night at the Sunday program, with a huge pain and bruise on my face. When I was back at the ashram that evening, my teacher told me to meet her in the sewing room. I went in there and waited for her. The door opened and closed and I looked up as her step gradually hastened and an ugly snarl came on her face. She surprised me so I didn't have time to put my hands up as she grabbed my hurt and bruised cheekbone and started to twist it and mash it. She was half-spitting, half-growling the words, "you fu--ing bitch, you jealous, f----ing little bitch". She slammed my head into the bookshelf a couple of times and kept grabbing at my eye. I had no idea what she was talking about and I was so in shock that she was using language like that. We never heard words like that. She looked crazed. I was afraid to ask her what she was accusing me of or what I had done wrong, because it only fueled her rage. She explained to me in not so nice terms that I was a little manipulative bitch who couldn't live with my decision to not marry this man. This was all so foreign to me. I was 12 years old.
• I remember the haircuts she gave us girls. She would do a real chop-up job and would yank my hair til I cried. My crying would spur her on to be even more rough. I felt so much anger coming from her and I used to wonder why.
• One time he was very angry at me and dragged (I mean dragged) me out of the temple room by my ear. Then he took me outside the temple room, yelling at me, then was punching and throwing me. I fell and hit my head against the corner of a brick wall. I was knocked unconscious. From what I heard afterwards, he thought I was faking it, so he kept hitting me and throwing me around, yelling and accusing me of faking it. At some point he became conserned because I wasn't moving anymore, threw me in his truck and drove me back to the ahram, till I woke up several hours later.
• would insist on inspections of us children during his visits. We were to line up with only a loin-cloth, and then he would go through the showers while we were naked in the shower. He then, with a corn scrubber in hand, would look at our bodies and arbitrarily scrub some 'dirt' off.
• I mean, just how sick does a person need to be in order to actualy break the nose of a ten year old boy. It makes me cry alot when i think about it. Next time you see a ten year old boy why don't you try picturing what it would be like for him to be beaten so bad that he was unconscious and his nose was broken. And all those heartless people in "ISKCON" can do is criticize us for not being what they call "Krsna-conscious. It's utter insanity.

          SEXUAL ABUSE

Sexual abuse can be physical, verbal or emotional and includes:

• sexual touching and fondling
• exposing children to adult sexual activity
• having children pose, undress or perform in a sexual fashion
• "peeping" into bathrooms or bedrooms to spy on a child
• rape or attempted rape

Sexual abuse involves forcing, tricking, bribing, threatening or pressuring a child into sexual awareness or activity. Sexual abuse occurs when an older or more knowledgable child or an adult uses a child for sexual pleasure. (Sexual Assault Crisis Center of Knoxville, TN)

Sexual abuse includes fondling a child's genitals, intercourse, incest, rape, sodomy, exhibitionism, and sexual exploitation. To be considered child abuse these acts have to be committed by a person responsible for the care of a child (for example, a parent, a baby-sitter, or a day care provider). If a stranger commits these acts, it would be considered sexual assault and handled solely by the police and criminal courts. Many experts believe that sexual abuse is the most under-reported form of child maltreatment because of the secrecy or "conspiracy of silence" which so often characterizes these cases. (The National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse and Neglect Information)

• We were in New Vrndavan for a festival when I was 13 years old and I was raped. But my pain came after... How my father treated me and how the gurukula administration treated me and I was the example of what gurukula kids should not be!!!! I was 13 years old. To them I was a temptress and I was wearing a green sari and with my red hair it was complimentary and so "I was dressed to kill". The administration called my father and told him I was a prostitute and should be kept away from all gurukulas and children! My rape was on sept. 5th and after it was discovered around mid sept I was confined to my room in [] temple and the kitchen where I cooked all the dieties food from 3am to 8pm. I used to go into the cooler (fridge) just to talk to my sister! I was not allowed to speak at all until january. I was not allowed to speak to anyone about anything under any circumstances..... There was a woman devotee at the time who told me that one day I would look back on this and laugh... well I ain't laughing
• One teacher made fun of the way I walked and talked, saying I was so un-womanlike, etc. Little did she know that I did not want to be a woman because of what it implied within that society. She took it a step further and tried to create a weird space between my friends and me. One day, when [a girl friend] started to go out of a room with me, the teacher said, "Oh,quit following her around like a dog in heat". Oh, so now it was a sexual thing and I felt like I was being accused of being a huge ugly bull-dyke. This didn't do me any favors in regards to my self image (so fragile from repeated blows).
• We were called prostitutes all the time, we were kids.
• Most of the girls I grew up with, ended up getting married off to "twisted old men".
• She was 14 and married to some 30 year old jerk in Vrindavan. she expressed to me that she was very upset to be in that position.
• A robbing of my childhood, my betrothal to the 20 yr.old sanskrit teacher (I was all of 12 and not even fixed on a gender yet).
• The girl's ashram teacher hated that [a girl would] have so much independence and do so many un-wifely duties, while she was training her little herd of submissive females. She repeatedly made it a policy that none of the girls my age could hang out with me. This pained me.
• In regards to abuse and marriage. They went hand in hand.
• We were taught that any kind of touch was subtle sex-life.
• When I was 12, I was betrothed. He was our teacher. This was forced upon me. What was? A whole new aspect of life that I was not ready for. I did not even have breasts yet, I was a little kid who was just starting to get used to having parents and perhaps even the security (stability) that could go with that. And now I was supposed to look at the teacher as a potential sex-partner. What was sex? A dirty, gross act.
• It was thrust upon me. I had no sexual feeling or curiosity. I was too busy trying to fight for survival and hold onto an identity to even begin to start wondering about that aspect of life. Its an intrusion, and its not based on what the individual needs. Its based on assumption. Its guilt and the belief that sex is wrong and sinful, a distraction from god and worship thereof, and also that women should be subservient to men. Because for some reason god created them as less and they have to go through someone else, their pati[husband]-guru to experience god's love. God won't deal with them directly because they're so stupid and dirty and they're cursed, etc.
• I was a victim at this gurukula of this experiment, trying to follow the vedic system within this culture. The headmaster wanted to set an example. What troubled me immensely was the way my friends looked at me. I could no longer just be one of them. Nope, I was singled out and separated, in thought and spirit, from the others. I was a freak of nature because I was a lot closer to having sex than they were. And, oooh, how gross! The feeling that I had to live with was horrible. I did not ask for this to happen. It was a total nightmare.
• All day I would hear little snickerings and comments whenever [he] and I were in the same vicinity as each other. I refused to talk to him, and wouldn't even look at him. Whenever he came into a room, I would say "yuck ". He was 20, ancient in the eyes of an under- developed 12 year old and I didn't tell him to go and get all attached and sexually attracted to a kid, -Me. I just wanted to be gone.
• The ashram[boarding school] teacher gave me the hardest time in regards to this marriage thing. When I confided in her that I did not want to get married she said that I was a fool if I thought that I would get someone better or just anyone to marry after I had turned down [this man]. I didn't care. I had pretty much decided that I would never get married, ever, if i ever got out of this one.
• I remember a time, when all of us were sitting on the floor in a half-circle, facing the teacher and one of my friends in the front of the room . She had just spanked the girl (who was older than us, already developing, I was 7) and she laid her across the chair with her pants still down. We all just sat there and it was a very uncomfortable and icky feeling, at least for me. Like some kind of s&m ritual or something. Over the years this time has plagued a part of me. It was very warping. She was mean. Really mean.
• one of the ashrama monitors (older boys between 16-20 years old...) had attacked him in the middle of the night with a ten-inch knife and forced him to have sex with him. The boy told the principal who asked the boy to live in his office for a week or two until he had "calmed down." Then he told this boy that he shouldn't tell anyone about the incident. He would fix the problem.... he moved the boy to a different ashram and did NOT kick the monitor out.
• He participated in a sort of commradere with the other molesters, which they referred to as 'politics'. What was their 'politics'. It was the word that was used by the Bengali monitors and other molestors to refer to the interplay of their domination over their sexual victims. For example if one of them had taken it upon themselves to sexually abuse one of the other monitors victims, they (the abusers) would refer to it as politics.
• teacher at the Mayapur Gurukula and was openly known to be having sex with some Bengali children there. The circumstances surrounding is discharge from Mayapur are unclear, but it was common knowledge amongst the gurukula children, that he left Mayapur because of his pedophile activities. He was transferred to the Vrndavan gurukula.
• One night, as i slept in the room with my friend, I was awakened by someone walking in the room. I knew something was wrong. I saw the man standing over by the radiator on the floor. He walked over to me and then went to my friend who slept in the sleeping bag beside me. I pretended I was asleep, but, i was nervous so I moved my foot. He got up quickly and left the room . I looked over at my friend and her nightgown was up and she was snoring away. I covered her up with her sleeping bag and lay back down. He wasn't there for a while. I wasn't sure who it was. I thought it could be one of two men. I slept with a small knife under my pillow and I touched it reassuringly. I was afraid because there wasn't supposed to be any men on the girls' floor, thus I imagined that this person had gone crazy. He came back into the room and I opened my eyes and kind of peeked and he was standing at my head. He went over to my friend and once again I moved to scare him off and I found the same thing. I closed my eyes, he came in again and I put my arm over my eyes because I was blinking too much. He knelt down beside me and started rubbing my nipple thru my blanket. I flung my arm over to the side and he ran out and I heard him go out the front door. I didn't know what to do. What the hell was wrong with him? Who would believe me if I told them? He was an older Prabhupada disciple, one of the oldest. I lay there and I woke up my friend and told her what had happened, she was too sleepy and went back to sleep. A little girl came to the door and quietly called my name. She informed me that she was scared because he had pulled down her pants and rubbed something sticky all over her bum.. I told her that I would take care of it in the morning and to not be afraid. I was 12. [follow up, he did get kicked out from that temple, because this brave girl told a woman she trusted who investigated and told the temple authorities. Surprise, surprise, he is now in a position at another temple with little kids].

          CHILD NEGLECT

Child neglect is characterized by failure to provide for the child's basic needs. Neglect can be physical, educational, or emotional. The latest national incidence study defines these three types of neglect as follows.
Physical neglect includes refusal of or delay in seeking health care, abandonment, expulsion from home or not allowing a runaway to return home, and inadequate supervision.
Educational neglect includes permission of chronic truancy, failure to enroll a child of mandatory school age, and inattention to a special educational need.
Emotional neglect includes such actions as chronic or extreme spouse abuse in the child's presence, permission of drug or alcohol use by the child, and refusal of or failure to provide needed psychological care. (The National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse and Neglect Information)

FOOD

• One boy in my asrama had his food saved and then saved again, without refrigeration. The teacher finally became very angry and induced him to eat the potion of food, which by now had mold spots. A short time later he grew suddenly very ill and vomited the contents of his stomach onto his plate. This got our teacher furious. He was red to the face and his lips were even twitching. He took the boy and the plate next door to the laundry room and sat him violently down on a washing machine. As I watched from behind a corner, the teached forced open his mouth and fed him his own vomit. Then three or four times over he threw up again and was again forced to injest what he had regergitated. [Vrndavan]
• I remember one time in Vrindavan at breakfast. Someone was serving kichari. Two kids in a row got little treats in their food. The first one got a half smoked bidi. The second one got a brick. It was probably more edible than the kichari.
• Oatmeal mush and flying dates [Dallas].
• How could I forget the flying dates? How about the disgusting guys who would come and do the cooking for the gurukula? They would cut vegetables with a knife using their dirty feet! [Vrndavan]
• "Organic" kitchari, with nutritious supplements (worms). Very close resemblance to French cheese. [Vrndavan]
• The worms looked almost exactly like the rice. For the first few weeks I actually picked through my food and separated the worms from the kichari. I would end up with a few dozen worms on the side of my plate each meal. By three weeks in I was not even bothering to separate, just eating whatever was on the plate.[Vrndavan]
• How many of you guys used to take your evening milk and lemon from lunch and make yogurt/curd to mix the next day with your kichari? [Vrndavan]
• Watched "Sleepers" the next day and had a similar experience. Eating off the floor(no plate). [Vrndavan]
• I remember licking milk off the floor whenever it was accidently spilled. And they had the audacity to use that term "don't cry over spilt milk.", whenever it suited them.[All]
• I can still remember what the floor in Dallas tasted like. I know what you mean about digestive abilities
• All this talk about food makes me think that our teachers must have trained at the same place. I remember one time a girl was sick and threw up her rice and oat water (a staple at NV). The teacher made her sit in front of us and eat her vomit. I'm surprised the rest of us kept our food down. Another time the same teacher made [a girl] drink a whole cup of oil when someone mistakenly got the pot of oil for deep frying off the stove thinking it was tea. When [she] said it wasn't tea, the teacher used the old line, " It's Krsna's prasadam, drink it!" So she did. [West Virginia]
• The usual rat hairs, roach parts and eggs, though with all the rice and dahl.
• I remember not having enough food and being hungry a lot. We were little kids and we'd be up from 3:00 am, sometimes earlier, and breakfast wasn't til 8:30 or 9:00. Maybe this is what got a couple of us eating Crest toothpaste and our teacher's cocoa-butter stick. If we were caught eating toothpaste, the teacher would squeeze 1/4 or 1/2 a tube of it onto our plates and that would be our meal.
• One of the grossest things I ever got in my food was a cockroach egg-sack. The huge thumbnail in my juice wasn't appetizing either.
• There was also this rule that if we couldn't finish our meal we would have to save it and eat it at the next meal, before we could have any of the new food. These left-overs were not refrigerated, so they were real special by the time we sat down for the next meal.
• When I was 7 yrs.old, someone made avocado chutney. It was grotesque. By the end of the meal, I hadn't eaten it, and it was saved for the next meal. Picture an avocado that sits even in a refrigerator exposed to air for about 10 min. This stuff sat for hours on a metal plate, not in a refrigerator. It was this black, mushy globule at the next meal and I could not get myself to eat it. Well, I didn't get any food for that meal and on and on.
• The quality of our food was terrible, our kichari was made up of the day's before leftovers and the junk that we found in it was usually organic, but, disgusting. For a few weeks, our bread tasted and smelled like mothballs. We were told to honor it and shut up. They later found a ton of mothballs in the huge barrel of flour.
• I was locked in the temple basement from sun-up to sun-down and was fed nothing, was not allowed to go to the bathroom, etc. and this was almost a regular occurence.
• Whenever food was served, it was first served to second initiates, then first, then those aspiring, then irritations like me, and then the weak and miserable. Needless to say I was starving all the time.
• I was 4 or 5. It all started on Janmashtami night. We kids didn't have to fast all day but we'd only gotten a small amount of food. We had a nap in the evening so that we could stay up for the feast at midnight. I think the problem involved my waking up grouchy or something. Anyway, there were two of us involved (at least initially). All the other kids were getting ready for the arati and feast (it was late at night, about 11 or so) and this other kid and I were being tied up with strips of cloth (kopins). Our hands were tied together and our feet were tied together. Then our feet were tied to our hands behind our backs. We were left on our stomachs with our limbs all tied together behind us. I could barely breathe because of the pressure on my stomach. We stayed that way in the dark for a while, then we started to try to get out. The other kid was more nimble than I was (or more loosely tied) because he could get his feet under his body and move around. He came over near me and we talked bit trying to figure a way out of the bonds. We were unable to get free on our own. Then something unbelievable happened. An adult who was chanting japa in the ashram heard us talking and came into our room. He untied us and we got ready to join the festivities. Just as we were about to leave the ashram, our teacher returned to check up on us. After ranting at the other person to mind his own business, he tied us back up even tighter than before. We spent the night tied up. Everybody got to sleep in the next day because of being up late. We were not completely untied in the morning. Our hands were left tied behind our backs. After breakfast (no hands -- oatmeal off a plate) the teacher decided that the whole ashram deserved to be punished. He then tied everyone's hands behind their backs. Then we were tethered together as pairs. Then we were all tied together. It ended up with a big knot in the center of a circle of kids tied with our hands behind our backs. He then made us walk up and down with him in the parking lot while he chanted japa. We tried to manage but kept tripping over each other. We were all stuck together in a clump. We stayed that way all day. In the evening we got fed again. We each got a styrofoam cup full of kichari which we got to eat with our hands behind our backs. We knelt there in the grass and tried to get as much food down our starving throats as we could. We were being yelled at the whole time that we were dogs and that this treatment was too good for us. Some kids spilled their food and ate it off the dirt. Some forced their faces into the cups to try to lick the bottom. Some ate the styrofoam. When we woke up the next morning, our hands were untied and we got to go to the bathroom and wash the dried up food off our faces. It was totally disgusting.
• I recall sitting in the temple room trying to eat or get out of eating some poor-excuse-for-oatmeal. It was just so gross, I can't even describe it, though the taste of it is in my taste-buds' cellular memory. For anyone familiar with Iskcon gurukula's cuisine, you know what I'm getting at. She threatened that if I vomited it, I'd have to eat that, too., So, I sat there for what seemed an eternity half swallowing and half-vomiting this grey mess.

OTHER

• One time we were all waiting in line to go to class and this Bhakta was going to give us a science class. I liked his classes because he would make little models of what he was talking about and we could see the concepts applied. Before we went into the class, she [] was getting on our case about something and this man said something. Right in front of all of us, (his students) she started to yell at him. I can see him with his back smashed up against the wall--to this day. She was in his face, snarling that he address her with respect. I felt sorry for him. Even though I was only 7, I felt that it must have been so humiliating for him as a man and a teacher, to be treated that way at all, let alone in front of all of his students. I hated her. Other teachers were mean, but, some part of me believed that they still cared about me(I know that is sick), however, I knew that she hated us and I really hated her. Hate is a strong word and this is probably the only time I've used it, so far.

NO PRIVACY

• At the end of the hallway where it began to get dark, there was the bathroom on the right. It had open showers with small yellowish brown tiles on the walls and floor. The bathrooms were large open rooms that gave no feeling of privacy.
• Most of the children slept in sleeping bags on the floor in lines in these huge rooms and there might be a dresser against one of the walls.
• All of our letters to our parents were censored.
• Perceptions from the boys were that he was quick to punish for no reason, always looking to get you in trouble, he wasn't liked by any of the boys. He was quite intimidating to all the boys and he liked to spy on the boys.

INTIMIDATION

• The feelings associated with the whole building was very scary. The entire upstairs area was known to be haunted and inhabited by ghostly beings, raksasas, and in particularly there also lived the most dreaded brahmaraksasa. The scriptures contained ample vivid descriptions of these malevolent beings that were inhabitants of evil dark worlds, who were intent on preying upon helpless souls. They were the un-dead with incredible powers and had no reservations inflicting unimaginable torture on their victims. We completely believed in their existence and their 'presence' was consuming and totally terrifying. We were always alert to their presence and the stories struck terror into our hearts. The auditorium/'sanctuary' was filled with its places of dread. We would avoid with fervor the dark passage way behind the stage. We were told blood curdling stories about the brahmaraksasa that living in the small entrance room at the street side of the building -- the front entrance they didn't want people to use. As children we were terrified. This thought was enough to keep us as far from that outside door as possible. Whenever we were assembled in the auditorium we children huddled near the center of the room or near a side window. The corridor behind the auditorium, our access to our living quarters was no less frightening. We would walk/run down this passage ways our thoughts filled with the terrifying images of the hideous creatures sneaking from behind. We fervently murmured incantations to the deity, Nrsinghadeva begging for him to save us. When we rounded the corner on the stairs, we would eagerly seek protection from the strategically placed picture of Nrsingha -- he would stop the advancing demon hoards. The fear of the gurukula building and its ghostly inhabitants was used by the teachers to keep us under control. We were scared to go anywhere alone and thus we huddled together with the other children. [Dallas]

PRABHUPAD SAID

• She blew up. "You can't say that Prabhupada didn't know something. He knows past, present and future." On and On. Well, later I was thinking of how to shut her up and make her stop being such a robot and I thought I could say that if Prabhupada knew everything then he knew about the abuse and still didn't stop it.
• Saying that Prabhupad knows all or that he received messages directly from Krishna (who knows all) is the worst indictment of Prabhupad/Krishna possible. Either he knew and didn't do anything, or K knew and didn't tell him in one of his spiritual faxes. And the interesting thing is that the same people that say that he knew all are also the first to say that he is not to blame for the abuses in gurukula; there were some bad apples. Prabhupad put people like Bhavananda, Kirtanananda, and Hayagriva into top posts in ISKCON. If he really knew all, would he have put such wastes of skin into those posts?
• What I meant by that is he was not everywhere at once. Therefore he did not know everything that was going on at all times. When he would go through Dallas all he would see was bright smiling faces. The reason behind that was because the teachers would treat the kids better the few weeks before his arrival and the kids would get fed better, etc. The times he did hear of abuse he told people to deal with it. He should have personally checked more into it. He trusted the people around him too much. And yes the GBC did lie to him and use him for their own gain and agenda.
• One of those "Prabhupada said" quotes (That he probably never said anyway) about spilt milk and some severe punishment (like so many years in hell for each drop spilled)

ADULTS THAT SAW

• I remember visiting with my wife in Denver Co. at the temple on Cherry Street. There was a house next to the temple where one night I noticed a lot of activity going on. When I opened the door I was struck by the number of children packed in the main floor area. On questioning one of the men in the house, he told me that he had just come back from Dallas Gurukula with these children. He related how the children had been abandoned and were left to fend for themselves, they were filthy, hungry, sick etc.!!
• One asram teacher was given that service after she had a nervous breakdown. They thought that she wasn't able to do the more "important" service of distributing books that she had done prior, so they gave her a less "important" service. Not all asram teachers chose to be in that position but accepted it because they were told to do so by the temple authorities.
• The Houston Chronicle Sunday magazine also carried a cover story about the Dallas Gurukula that year. In the lead paragraph, writer Connie Lunnen called the school house a "gray tombstone in a low rent district in east Dallas." The headmaster, a Marine Corps veteran, told the reporter, "When a child gets to be six years old, austerity is fun. Its a way of live." He demonstrated his love of austerity by throwing away a stuffed animal, a present that his wife's parents had mailed to his own daughters.
• He was considered to be a very valuable man and at the time he went to Vrndavanna we had absolutely no suspicions that he was a molester. In fact, we reasoned that our children would be well looked after [parent]