1) Krishnas Face Huge Abuse Claim (BBC NEWS 6 Sept. 2000)
2) ABOUT GURUKULIS
3) NNV again

Dear folks, PAMHO. AGTSP.

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1) Krishnas Face Huge Abuse Claim
(BBC NEWS fwd by AD dasi)

Former students of the Hare Krishna religious movement have filed a $400m claim against the organisation for alleged sexual and emotional abuse. They say children as young as three were abused at boarding schools in America and India in the 1970s and 1980s. The lawsuit alleges offences including rape, sexual abuse, physical torture and emotional terror. It says young girls were given as brides to older men who donated to the religious community. The current Hare Krishna leadership has carried out its own investigations and promised a compensation fund for any victims. Only one of its schools now takes boarders.

Source: ISKCON. More than 1,000 children could have been affected, said a lawyer for the 44 former students who filed the charges in Dallas, Texas. Windle Turley said the case covered "the most unthinkable abuse and maltreatment of little children we have seen". Beating claim -- The incidents are alleged to have started in 1972 at the International Society of Krishna Consciousness's (ISKCON) first school in Dallas - and continued at six other schools in the US and two in India.

The lawsuit claims that children were: Forced to sleep in unheated rooms and walk great distances in bitter cold without coats or shoes, deprived of medical care for malaria, hepatitis and broken bones, scrubbed with steel wool until they bled, moved to schools in different states without parental consent. Plaintiff Greg Luczyk, 30, said he had been beaten four or five times a day at a Krishna school in India in the early 1980s. He said his mother had tried to remove him from the school and sent him plane tickets to come home, but teachers tore them up at school assemblies.

Pure devotees -- "The parents were trying to get us out, but the ring of molesters had tight control," said Mr Luczyk, who now lives in Vancouver, Canada. Thousands of westerners joined Hare Krishna in the peace and love era. The lawsuit names ISKCON as lead defendant, along with members of its governing board and the estate of the movement's founder, AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. He brought his form of Hindu devotionalism to America in the 1960s, at the height of the love and peace era and rejection of the war in Vietnam.

Thousands of westerners joined Hare Krishna, donning the trademark saffron and orange robes, chanting mantras and collecting donations on the streets. Prabhupada said children should be sent to boarding schools at the age of five so they could learn to be pure devotees, freeing parents to sell devotional books and do other jobs. By the end of the 1970s, 11 schools, known as gurukulas or houses of the guru, were operating in North America with several more around the world.

Counselling offer -- Now, the only boarding school in the US is in Alachua, Florida, home to the largest US Hare Krishna community. Hare Krishna director Dhira Govinda said Krishna leaders wanted to provide counselling and financial support to victims. "There is no doubt many children did suffer... while under the care of the organisation," he said.

Krishna leaders had pledged $250,000 a year to investigate past child abuse and aid survivors. ISKCON formed its own Child Protection Task Force in 1998 and had compiled the names of 200 people who allegedly inflicted abuse in the 1970s and '80s. Windle Turley's Dallas law firm won millions in damages against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Dallas in 1997, after the jury found it had ignored evidence that a priest had sexually abused boys, and had tried to cover up for him.

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2) ABOUT GURUKULIS -- (fwd by AD dasi)

I have just read your post with all the honest ear I own. Seems there are two opinions here and I don't have any right to judge. But I have a few honest questions about this. First, is it true or not that Jagadisa was as implicated as the worst perps in the abuse? Did he abuse directly? Did he turn a blind eye knowingly to abuse?---that is evil too.

It is logical anywhere, not just itscon, that Nirmal would not see his father as culpable. It is also logical that Nirmal wouldn't suffer the same fate as the rest of the kids, a lot of whose single mothers were out on SK. Is it however true? Does Jagadisa now lay the blame to SP for what he himself did or didn't do? Is that something you would/do accept? I am referring to his alleged participation. What I am trying to understand is, did he abuse children directly himself, as has been claimed, and blame that very abuse of his on SP? And would/do you agree with that? Or do you hold him responsible for his part, as an adult who knew better? On the other hand, if he was blind to the abuse, is his blindness the fault of SP?

I have understood in a big way why you, however many of you who do, feel that SP is to be held culpable, yet would you accept the innocense of a violent abuser instead as SP's fault in any other way than the fact that he instituted the gurukula system and his preaching on it? Or maybe more clearly, would you consider all of the adult perps as wholly themselves responsible for their sins to the children, or does some of their guilt rest on SP as OPPOSED to on them? That is not the same thing as holding SP responsible by dint of his preaching if he is also held directly responsible for the FACT of the abuse, is it? What do you think?

I am not being facetious; I am truly trying to understand your opinion. What appears strange to me is how Jagadisa is exonerated, if indeed he is, by your good selves, but SP who was not directly involved as was Jagadisa, isn't. Yet I say appears purposely to indicate I do not have all the information; that's why I'm asking. I would also personally like to know the truth about my 'godbrother' Jagadisa, in that should he be on my long list of those deserving the opposite of respect?

Perhaps that would offend you, for which I'm sorry if it does, and you have every right to chastise me; I'm just trying to get things straight in my own heart which has also been through painful abuse at the hands of devotees, horrible enough, but not to the extent and horror of you children. I know you are an adult, but to me I still see you as children. Is that ok? I don't mean it to patronise, I am just very maternal and my own children are starting to have their own and I still think of them too as children. But if it offends you, please say so and I will re-educate my mind.

I have already stated that in my heart there is no possibility of SP's ever condoning or allowing abuse. That is what my heart tells me. I do not wish to push my feeling on to you. I respect entirely how you feel, but it is very painful for me to hear your accusations of SP, despite how much I understand them. You see, prabhuji, I myself ran a nursery under the same 'idyllic' instructions of Srila Prabhupada that the goons used.

I read all the books more than once or twice. I listened to all the lecture tapes I could. And I avidly asked and heard all the dealings my godbrothers and godsisters would tell. From that total of understanding, my nursery was so kid-friendly that the little tots would throw a tantrum when Mom came to take them home; they didn't want to leave because they were having fun and were very happy. So, you see, I personally do not BELIEVE that these goons were following SP's instructions AT ALL, and with very good reason, simply by comparing how I applied the instructions and how they did.

If I had been teaching in gurukula as opposed to nursery, I would have done the same sort of application of instructions, and the kids would be happy, not abused, of that I am certain. But the off-the-wall headmaster would not put me in gurukula because once my daughter gave his step daughter some karmi m&m's. This stepdaughter of his was the same child whose mother I had sat with crying years earlier, the story is below of how she HATED her child. This type of asshole authority always thought themselves pure devotees. We on the sidelines, the more sane section, even had a name for the disease, 'pure devotee syndrom'.

But where I was, the type of abuse you suffered did not occur; many of the parents were there too, and had learned from the past disasters to watch like hawks. But before those days, before the truth started coming out, no one I know could even conceive what was being done to the children. In fact I totally did not know such an act of horror even existed, so it is easy for me to think a very cultured gentleman who preached continuously that women should be protected, could conceive of it either. And as far as the beatings, since I previously posted to you, some facts of SP's dealings to actually stomp it out have emerged.

Personally I don't believe Krsna will allow the court's to rule SP culpable, but only time will answer that. Yet I think it would be well-advised not to base the whole win or loose on this point. I don't think it is provable; I am just being honest with you. Once I had to sit with a new devotee, years before she married the headmaster mentioned above, with a two-year-old whom she was feeling great hatred for, as she felt the child was ruining her devotional service. She was basing this on ERRONEOUS training on the 'bhaktin' program. I was totally HORRIFIED!!! We sat for hours while I explained to her that it was SP's first instruction to LOVE her child and care for it as her Deity, as SP did teach us, however buried this information is. This was years ago, say early '8o's and I flatly refused the demand of the sonal 'acarya' to run nursery all day long and seven days a week. I would not, period. I based my decisions on what I learned from SP not on power mongering usurpers. All devotees SHOULD have done this. The fact they didn't is a testament to how far so many did deviate from the actual instructions.

This devotee mother who had been hating her child for 'standing in the way of her devotional service', began to cry very bitterly. I stayed with her for hours, continually giving her the truth till it went in deep enough to begin her devotional service anew within her heart, and include loving her child first and foremost above all other IDEAS of service, which were not Krsna's arrangement for her, having instead given her this beautiful child. She completely changed, and for years I witnessed her being a very wonderful mother. I try to shout this kind of truth out all the time, and even on this so-enlightened forum I am railed on for being unchaste yada yada yada. There are some here who exactly remind me of iskcon abusive men, yet they are thinking they are so enlightened because they reject the iskcon party line. The abuse came from these kinds of people. I think that the sad truth is that the world is SO full of this kind of people that the odds are very bad indeed. Still you may say, it would be wrong for anyone to implement such a system as gurukula in a society where this sick thinking is prevailent, but that is a point which can be contended in many ways, without taking the validity out of the original charge that it would be wrong to try. But it cannot be definitively declared without the extenuating circumstances also being known. I have no desire right now to cover that idea, rather I wish to understand the facts as you see them and specifidally as I've asked above.

Well, if you never change your feelings about SP I will not hold that against you. It hurts because I love SP, not because I am brainwashed or scared, as many like to say.(I still don't GET what exactly I'm supposed to be scared OF?!?

I sincerely wish you well, you and your children and your sibling and all the others you love.

----- dasi

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3) NNV again

Dear Sanat Maharathi prabhu! PAMHO, AGTSP! It would seem that PADA is
becoming quite uncertain and confused.

[PADA: Nope. Sanat says he was hanging out with a pot smoking woman molester while all the kids were getting molested, so that makes him a great warrior? Ummmm, ok NNV! You are the one who is either confused or compromised. Sanat also says over and over that he wants to chop up the abused kids and kill them, and you say that makes him a great warrior? Killing molested kids is great warrior behavior? You endorse chopping up the molested children? And killing Srila Prabhupada's abused kids makes you guys great wariors? No wonder this molestation went on, you think blaming and killing the victims makes one a great warrior? Ummm, ok. You are the ones who are confused.

By the way, we had said that you would not be able to enforce the direction of management some years ago. And we were right, you have not been able to, just as we said some years back. We are not confused, rather, we said you had no basis to say you could enforce it, and were were right then, and we are still right about that now? When are you going to be able to enforce that directive? You are not. Period. Our prediction was and is correct.

Indeed, you have not even got the thugs off the street in LA, just as we ALSO said some years ago as well? But, then you argued with us and said we were fools for thinking it could not be enforced? No, we were right, you could not, and have not, enforced it. Then you argued that we were saying Srila Prabhupada is a fool? No we say you are a fool for thinking it can be enforced, and we were and are correct. And moreover, temples with thugs are still beating and banning people, and you will not be able to change that soon, just like we said as well.

We also said, for the past 20 years, that folks like you have made no effective court case for the fraud, the gurukulis et al. And thus, the result is that the Turley case became the default case. Again, we are correct, there has been no counter or better worded suit, so you did not do better, just as we predicted some years ago. Indeed, NNV said about two years ago that everything we ever predicted has come true. Well, physician heal thyself!

thanks pd]

SITES TO CHECK OUT:

* http://members.xoom.com/prabhupada/ new ISKCON reform page

Srila Prabhupada wanted to be poisoned?
* http://www.equalsouls.org/tkg

* PRABHUPADANUGA'S:
* Seattle, Wa (Dhamaghosa dasa 206-729-0111) dasdasdas@aol.com

* http://iskcontimeline.homepage.com Nandini's history site
* http://www.krishnabooks.org Krishna Books
* http://www.prabhupada.cc Prabhupada samkirtana site

* http://mitglied.lycos.de/pada/ (Pada's Newsletter Archive)
* http://www.krishna.org/ (S.P. REAL AUDIO download)
* http://members.xoom.com/manvantar/index.htm (Sulochana's Homepage) 
* http://www.vedabase.com/  (Vedabase)
* http://tsa.ppp.ripco.net/das/articles.htm (DAS)
* http://tsa.ppp.ripco.net/padaweb/puranjan.html (Puranjana's Site)

* POISON TAPE audio and pada newsletters: 
* http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Parliament/3933 
* POISON TRANSCRIPT 
* http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Parliament/3933/19990519.htm 

* http://www.winink.com/tkg/  (Tamal Krishna)
* http://mitglied.lycos.de/gbc   (GBC expose)
* gbc_108@hotmail.com  (e-mail)

* http://pages.infinit.net/pragosh/home.html  (FRENCH)
* http://www.unlimited-resources.com/anubhavananda.html  
* http://members.aol.com/gauridas (Gauridasa Pandita Dasa)
* http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/5708/  (SPANISH)
* http://www.com.org/hb/ptd/cyber_gurukula.htm)  (Cyber gurukula)
* http://www.islandnet.com/krsna/  (Rocana's site)
* http://www.islandnet.com/krsna/vada/poison/poison.htm  (Poison issue)
* Vipramukhya and Jayadvaita's "illicit sex guru" rationalizations
* http://www.artnet.net/~yasoda/index.htm  [appointment tape fraud]
* http://www.gaura-nitai.net Gaura-Nitais Homepage Deutsch

* ISKCON WOMEN-PRABHUPADA'S TIME (by Jyotirmayi Devi Dasi)
* Polygamy In The Hare Krishna Movement (Pritha's Page)