BARSANA DHAM TEMPLE
Women say temple gurus made sexual advances
Religious group denies accounts of intimate contact with two spiritual leaders.
By Eric Dexheimer
AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Saturday, September 27, 2008
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Sexual advances from
the two spiritual gurus of the Barsana Dham temple were a part of life
for some women who lived on, or frequently visited, the ashram south of
Austin, according to the recollections of five women who spent a
collective 60 years living, working and worshipping at the Hindu temple.
The
intimate contact between the gurus — Prakashanand Saraswati, known as
Shree Swamiji, and his spiritual master, Maharajji Kripalu, also called
Kripalu — and some women on the ashram was known and accepted among
other devotees, added the women, who all said they experienced the
advances firsthand. Many of the incidents they recounted occurred years
before: The latest with Prakashanand was a decade ago; with Kripalu, in
2003. All of the women have since quit the organization.
The
organization did not make the gurus available for comment. But temple
representatives vigorously denied the accusations, suggesting they were
part of an orchestrated plan to disparage the organization by
disgruntled ex-devotees. Ashram director Kathleen Williams called the
women's recollections "preposterous" and insisted that the incidents
did not happen.
The women's claims come five months after
Prakashanand was indicted in Hays County on 20 counts of indecency with
a child, and a little over a year after Kripalu was charged with rape
in the West Indies country of Trinidad and Tobago. The charges against
Kripalu were later dropped for lack of evidence.
The charges
against Prakashanand, filed in April, stem from incidents in 1993 and
1995, according to a Hays County grand jury indictment, in which two
women accused the guru of repeatedly groping them when they were
teenagers living at the Austin ashram. He has pleaded not guilty.
Peter
Spiegel, another ashram director, said the allegations by the five
women were ignited by the recent headlines and were from a small group
of people attempting to "disrupt" Barsana Dham. "I've never seen
Swamiji do anything remotely related to these false allegations," he
said. "Maharajji Kripalu is always surrounded by multiple people. I've
never heard anybody make any claim of sexual impropriety. I believe
these allegations are complete fabrications."
In recent years,
Prakashanand, who travels widely, has visited the Austin ashram four or
five times a year, staying for two weeks to a month at a time. He was
last in Austin a month ago. Kripalu keeps a home in a temple in
Mangarh, in central India. He was last at the Austin ashram in spring
2007.
The women who spoke to the American-Statesman requested
anonymity because they feared reprisal from the Hindu organization. The
paper typically does not publish the names of people alleging sexual
exploitation.
Some of the behavior described by the women would
not be considered criminal because it occurred between consenting
adults. A few of the incidents might have been considered assaults,
although the statute of limitations has since passed in most of the
cases. Texas law also includes a provision in which a "clergyman" can
be charged for having sex with someone by "exploiting the other
person's emotional dependency on the clergyman in the clergyman's
professional character as spiritual adviser," although it is unclear if
that would apply in these instances.
One woman, today a
California resident, said she tried to interest lawyers in her story.
But because the incident she recalled occurred in India and there was
no physical evidence, she said she couldn't find an attorney to
represent her.
Barsana Dham is part of a larger Hindu
organization called Jagadguru Kripalu Parishat, or JKP, that was
founded around Kripalu, who is considered God-realized, or a living,
saint by his followers. It claims tens of thousands of followers and
has a half-dozen large temples, all, except for Barsana Dham, in India.
Barsana
Dham is one of the largest Hindu worship centers in the United States.
Hundreds of worshippers, many drawn from Central Texas' South Asian
community, attend weekly services. Major Hindu festivals can attract
thousands of people to the site.
The women who spoke to the
Statesman represent a small subset of that membership. Part of an inner
circle that typically lived at the ashram and spent many hours on-site
praying and performing volunteer service for the organization, they had
regular contact with the gurus when the men were there. At Barsana
Dham, the vast majority of people in this group are not Indian.
Barsana
Dham is mounting an aggressive legal defense of Prakashanand and the
ashram's reputation,
hiring several lawyers and a public relations
firm. Supporters note that the accusations of improper conduct were
brought many years after the reported offenses. They describe the
79-year-old Prakashanand and Kripalu, now 85, as pious and
grandfatherly men incapable of the acts alleged. Some supporters have
suggested that the women accusing them of inappropriate behavior are
after the organization's money.
But the women, who range in age
from their late 20s to mid-50s, said they have struggled with their
experiences and are telling their stories in light of the charge that
Prakashanand groped children. One said she is in therapy to try to
understand what happened. All said they have experienced emotional
upheaval, shame and embarrassment. Several have formed an informal
support group to help one another work through the recollections.
All
the women say the incidents they recall are troubling because of the
gurus' influential positions as teachers, spiritual guides and ashram
leaders. The women compare the power imbalance in their relationships
with that found in teacher/student or counselor/client liaisons.
Prakashanand "was supposed to be my guru," said one of the women. "Not my boyfriend."
Such
intimate relationships also appear to violate the religion's own dogma.
Prakashanand stressed abstinence for single adults and modest relations
for married couples, former devotees recalled. His writings warn that
sex can cause a worshipper to "fall from his devotions." Several of the
women who questioned the advances, however, said they were told that
the gurus were "gracing" them, or preparing them to realize God, by
agreeing to be intimate with them.
Self-published histories of
the temple explain that Prakashanand began preaching outside of India
in the early 1970s. In 1981, he established the International Society
of Divine Love, which purchased the 200-acre site off RM 1826 in
northern Hays County in 1990 after a national search, settling on it
because it resembled a holy place in India.
Early devotees
describe the days creating the ashram as idyllic, a time of working
together to plant gardens, build new structures and tend the land. The
organization's name was changed to JKP-Barsana Dham in 2002. About 60
people live there now, a temple spokesman said.
Barsana Dham's
religious practice revolves around twice-daily meditations on
Radha-Krishna, a Hindu deity described as a combination of Lord Krishna
and the love of his life, Radha. But the religion also stresses service
and devotion to the spiritual masters, who are considered essential
conduits to "gracing" devotees to enter God's divine presence, said
Sannyasin Arumugaswami, managing editor of Hinduism Today.
Some
former followers said that devotion was tested in May 2007, when
Kripalu, who had finished a six-week stay at the Austin temple, was
arrested and charged with raping a 22-year-old Guyanan woman in
Trinidad and Tobago. Prosecutors later dropped the charges for what
they said was lack of evidence.
It wasn't the first time Kripalu
had been charged with a sex crime. Court documents from Nagpur, a city
in central India, show that several women and girls accused the guru of
assaulting them sexually between 1987 and 1991. Several said Kripalu
had told them he was the incarnation of Krishna and was blessing them
with the intimacy. The case has bounced around courts and appears to be
still pending.
Woman No. 1 who spoke to the Statesman said she
started following Prakashanand in the late 1980s after hearing him
speak at a meeting in California. "It was mesmerizing," the woman, who
at the time was married, recalled. "I was enamored of him."
She
relocated to Austin after the land for the new ashram was purchased,
and, she said, soon began a physical relationship with Prakashanand — a
development she did not discourage and, until hearing of the Hays
County charges filed against him based on the experience of the two
girls, did not regret.
"It was just his nature to charm women,"
said the woman, who has since left the ashram and lives on the East
Coast. She said their activities never progressed past kissing and
fondling, and occurred about 15 times.
Other women who spoke to
the Statesman described their interactions differently. Like many other
JKP devotees, Woman No. 2 came to Barsana Dham from Transcendental
Meditation, the spirituality-infused meditation technique made famous
by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's connection to the Beatles, among other
celebrities.
After 20 years, she said, she'd grown disillusioned
with TM, and when a friend who had seen Prakashanand speak told her,
"This is the real deal," she began following the guru. She moved to
Texas from the Midwest soon after the International Society of Divine
Love bought the Hays County property.
In the early 1990s, as the
temple was still being built, No. 2 recalled, "I was dressed in a
costume for a dance." Before the performance, she entered an old stone
building on the property and walked upstairs to go to the
bathroom.
The
bathroom was next to Prakashanand's bedroom, she remembered. "As I came
out, I saw him," she said. "I told him I was excited for that
afternoon's program. He grabbed my hand and pulled me into the
bedroom." The woman said Prakashanand pushed her back against the door
and groped her breasts and buttocks before quickly leaving.
"I
realized then that stuff like that might happen, and so tried to never
be alone with him again," she said. She remained affiliated with the
ashram for another 15 years.
Woman No. 3 said she experienced a
similar event. She moved to Austin from the Pacific Northwest to follow
Prakashanand. Leaving the ashram one day in the early 1990s, she
entered the guru's bedroom to say goodbye. He grabbed her and pulled
her down, kissing her and fondling her breasts, she said, adding that
she broke away. She lived on the ashram for more than 15 years and said
no similar event happened again.
Another woman, No. 4, lived on
the ashram for more than a dozen years. She said she was called to
Prakashanand's room many times as a young adult, where, she said, the
guru would tell her to lock the door behind her, and then kiss and
fondle her. She spent the night in his room, next to his bed, on
several occasions, she said. In the middle of the night, she said, he
would wake her up and fondle her.
The incidents occurred several
dozen times over the course of two years, said the woman, who has since
left and moved to the West Coast. She said she later drifted away from
the ashram and vowed to keep the experiences to herself.
"You kind of assume it's over," she said. "But then we found out about the (rape) charges against Maharajji Kripalu in Trinidad.
"We
thought we had been protecting people," she added. In August 2007, a
group of women who'd lived on the ashram contacted Hays County
authorities. The investigation into Prakashanand's relations with
underage girls began soon after that, according to prosecutors.
Three
of the five women also said they were groped by or watched Kripalu
grope women during a ritual called pressing, considered an honor for
devotees. In it, several women were invited into a darkened room to
massage the guru's legs. One of the three said she performed oral sex
on him.
The women said the pressing typically took place in a
private room, where they stationed themselves alongside the holy man's
legs, from thigh to foot. A helper dimmed the lights, and the women
massaged the part of the leg in front of them.
A session lasted
about 10 minutes, the women said, adding that Kripalu often was
massaged several times a day during his Austin visits.
Woman No.
3 said that in a pressing session in the spring of 2007 she was
stationed at Kripalu's thigh. "He started to nudge my hand closer, to
his private area," she said. When she resisted, he did it again, she
recalled.
Later during the holy man's visit, the same woman
said, she observed another woman rubbing his genitals. Another time,
she saw his hand inside a woman's blouse, fondling her. The women
involved, she added, appeared to consent.
The former TM
follower, No. 2, said she was willingly intimate with Kripalu in India,
where all devotees are encouraged to visit. In the evenings, she
recalled, the guru would retire to his bedroom and put on his sleeping
clothes. Devotees — mostly women, she said — waited outside. After some
time, Kripalu would open the door for several minutes while everyone
yelled and cheered.
Once, after he closed his door, the woman
recalled, a preacher approached her and said Kripalu wanted to see her
in his room. When the woman asked what would happen, the preacher told
her only to "be open to this; it will be like being with your husband,"
the woman remembered. She was told to cut her fingernails, not wear
jewelry and bathe well.
Once inside his room, Kripalu quickly
pulled her onto his bed, she said, and began tugging at her
clothing to
get under her shirt and, eventually, rub her privates. Later, she said,
she performed oral sex on him.
When it was over, she said, the guru told her he loved her. "I felt it was the opportunity of a lifetime," she said.
Today,
however, she said she feels betrayed. "We thought he was doing it all
for us," she said. "That we were gross, and that he was coming down to
our level, but that he wanted to share his divine love."
A fifth
woman, a West Coast resident who never lived at Barsana Dham, said she
was invited to massage Kripalu during a summer 2001 visit to the JKP
temple in Mangarh. "I was told if I go there, he might do some personal
things," she recalled. "Hugging and kissing."
Not certain she
heard right, she said she decided not to go to him. But in December
2003, during another pilgrimage to the temple, she accepted an
invitation to accompany a group of women into Kripalu's room. "They
turned off the lights and closed the shutters, and I was told to stand
next to him," she recalled. "He started groping me, feeling my
privates." She pulled his hand away and quickly left the room.
When
the woman returned to the United States, she said she confronted
Prakashanand about the experience with Kripalu during one of his trips
to California. "He told us that we'd received something special and
profound from Maharajji, and that we couldn't understand," she recalled.
The
woman said she contacted lawyers, who told her that because there was
no physical evidence and because the incidents occurred in India, she
had no case. She began writing letters and phoning other families
within the organization to warn them.
Several families who had
been closely involved with Barsana Dham for years confirmed that they
left the organization in early 2004 after hearing the woman's story.
Ray Sharma, a California real estate agent who had been heavily
involved in Barsana Dham since 1997, helping arrange and sponsor
Barsana Dham's temple programs in the San Francisco and Sacramento
area, said he reversed course when he heard, and began calling local
Hindu temples to warn them not to host guest programs for the ashram.
N.
Kumar, a California devotee since 1992, had hosted prayer sessions at
his home. "We were shocked," he said. "This is absolutely not
acceptable in the religion, in India, in the culture."