Tag Archives: Sex Scandal

The Management Committee EXPOSED (Part 2)

“Mediation”

In this essay, we review the Management Committees’ mediation process.

To recap, during the Saturday night Satsang program in late 2014 a senior Management Committee member surprised the gathering crowd by announcing that there had been “allegations of a sexual nature made against Swamiji”, and made a verbal commitment to the community that the Management Committee would conduct a thorough investigation into the allegations.

Just several days after making this statement, they posted their now infamous “Letter to the Community” (seen here) in which they claimed that Swami Shankarananda had been engaged in secret tantric practices “in line with age-old Hindu Tantric scriptures”.

This caused consternation and outrage in the community.

Shortly following this, another letter was sent out by the Management Committee which offered to enlist the services of an external mediator to resolve the matter, which many people in the community felt was extremely premature as the promised investigation hadn’t been completed (or even started as far as anyone knew). This post dated 13th Jan 2015 outlined some of the concerns that the community had regarding this at the time.

The Management Committee chose to ignore the raised concerns and proceeded with the Mediation process regardless, fueling further mistrust within the community. Shortly afterwards they sent out the following invite to the community via email (we include it in its entirety here :

The Management Committee stated in this invitation that the purpose of the offered mediation was “for the benefit of the Ashram community”, yet they subsequently chose to keep all of the information gathered during the process to themselves. Even people who participated in mediation were not allowed to know what the Mediators Report contained, or how the information they had provided had been worded or expressed.

Excerpts from the Mediator’s Report:

The mediator himself was quick to identify the trust issues with the Management Committee and reported to them that participation in the process was lacking as a result:

“Fishing, or a fact-finding mission…”

“Attacks from the board…”

“Perception of reprisals…”

The following two recommendations by the mediator on how to resolve the lack of trust issues were subsequently ignored by the Management Committee:

“Swamiji has the ultimate power…”

This review of the mediation process will continue in the next post…

Resources page updated

The resources page has been updated to add a new support group that an ex-member recommended. It is worth noting that many of the women who were abused by Kruckman at The Sri Nityananda Ashram in Mount Eliza are still in therapy four years after leaving. The remaining senior members of the ashram continue to refuse to acknowledge that anything happened and prefer to lie to new recruits, claiming that they are the victims of a conspiracy.

Professional Services & Support

 

Two more news articles

Shiva Yoga continues to be in the papers this week in these articles as the reporters start digging into the ashrams financial situation:

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/ashram-could-wind-up-amid-sex-abuse-allegations-20150328-1m97ox.html

http://mpnews.com.au/2015/03/30/signs-of-closure-at-ashram/

Meanwhile someone in the community (not necessarily an ex-Shiva Yoga member) chose to show their support for those affected by hanging a banner from the bridge over the Nepean Highway.

ashram-sign

Shankarananda “retires”

Yesterday Shiva Yoga made the following public announcement which was forwarded to us by a member who received it:

Shiva Yoga public announcement

In light of the criminal investigation that is being conducted into Swami Shankarananda, the Management Committee has asked Swamiji to retire from Shiva Yoga. Shiva Yoga will now consider its options for the future and we will let you know as soon as we have more information. Devi Ma will be giving Satsang tonight and we will be publically making this same announcement.

With love,
Shiva Yoga Management Committee

Whilst this is seen by many as a positive step, others have expressed concern that this doesn’t yet address what possible involvement that senior staff members and the management committee had in this whole affair. Are they now attempting to distance themselves from Swami Shankarananda?

Documents exist that suggest that the management committee had been “challenged” to come clean about their knowledge of what was going on as far back as December 19th 2014 and even many months before, so what level of accountability do they have?

These are just a few of the issues that have been raised by the community in recent days and show the complexity of the case.

 

Letter received: “The men of Shiva Yoga”

This letter was received today and the person asked us to post it on their behalf:

I am just writing in to raise another point not yet mentioned on the site, and that is the effect of all this on the men of Shiva Yoga.

I was involved with the ashram for well over a decade and I saw Swamiji as a kind of ultimate father figure, the ideal spiritual man, and I trusted him absolutely.

But the sad reality is that nearly all the male devotees of Shiva Yoga were treated like dogs. I have been pondering the fact that in all those years, I don’t think I earned a full hour of his time. If I wanted to seek his advice on my most pressing spiritual problems, I would have to make an appointment sometimes a week or more in advance and get less than five minutes during which he would brush aside my question, patronise me and then send me packing with a new Seva project to work on.

I was permanently mystified by the fact that the women seemed to be able to walk in and out of his room at will without even knocking and demand his attention for hours on end about the most ridiculous trivia.

The position of the men at Shiva Yoga can now be seen for what it was, that of the Useful Idiot.

Shankarananda has sown a virus of deception into so many relationships, causing them to become dysfunctional and in many cases break apart. The women of Shiva Yoga were educated to believe that it was perfectly acceptable (and even a “secret spiritual practice”) to lie to the face of her partner, and the pressure was on her to maintain an illusion of normality in her relationship.

I have to live with the fact that I have sat in Shankarananda’s room asking him for help and advice because there is something “wrong” with my relationship, and meanwhile he was having sex with my partner. I feel traumatised and like a rape victim might.

I am now expected to hold my head up high and just move on with my life and perhaps seek counselling for myself; thankfully I have the example of my other male friends from Shiva Yoga who are in the same boat, and I am blown away by the dignity, compassion and understanding they have shown in the face of this disgusting betrayal.

Anonymous