A yoga ashram say they will offer compensation to victims who had been drugged, raped and beaten as children years ago at the retreat. The ashram was initially offering to hold a “healing fire ceremony to cleanse these victims.”
Disturbing details have emerged at a royal commission concerning the sexual abuse of children in the 1970s and 1980s at the Mangrove Yoga Ashram on the NSW Central Coast in Australia.
The commission has heard from nine victims who have described how the former spiritual leader at the isolated retreat in the foothills of Mangrove Mountain, Swami Akhandananda, used them for his sexual gratification.
One victim revealed that she was held naked when she was seven years old and had the skin on her chest cut during an initiation ceremony, before a swami licked the blood and had sex with her.
Child victims have also given evidence of the second in charge, known as Shishy, reportedly subjecting them to fierce beatings and summoning teenage girls for sex with Akhandananda.
Shishy admitted to slapping the children at the royal commission, but could not recall the more brutal assaults described by the victims.
Akhandananda came to Australia from India in the mid-1970s to start the ashram as a disciple of the well-established Satyananda Yoga movement.
He was jailed in 1989 for abusing four girls but the conviction was overturned on a technicality in 1991. He died in 1997.
Shishy told the commission that she began a sexual relationship with Akhandananda in secret when she was a teenager, even though sex was banned by the movement's head, Swami Satyananda Saraswati.
The ashram's response to those who came forward to tell of sexual, emotional and physical abuse by Akhandananda and his 'handmaiden' Shishy has come under fire during seven days of evidence at the public hearing in Sydney.
Mangrove Yoga Ashram posted a generic apology on Facebook, then blocked the victims from posting responses and sent letters threatening legal action to others.
It then invited all victims to a havan - a ritual fire ceremony to help them heal as part of the ashram's 40th anniversary celebrations.
The Bihar School of Yoga, the international center of the Satyananda movement, threatened to withdraw all support to its Australian branch and demanded an apology.
A lawyer representing the India-based school told the commission that until the hearing his client did not know the appalling extent of the abuse.
One yoga devotee told the royal commission they didn't think the ashram should be held responsible for abuse inflicted on children by its former spiritual leader and his second-in-command - Akhandananda and Shishi.
Muktimurti, a longtime resident of the Mangrove Yoga Ashram said she did not really believe the allegations against Akhandananda when he was brought to trial.
She said in her statement to the commission she found it 'morally questionable' for victims to now seek financial compensation.
(The hearing in the case continues)
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