Ashram children starved, drugged, tortured, royal commission hears

The Sydney Morning Herald/December 5, 2014

By Rachel Browne

A former senior member of a yoga centre where children were allegedly sexually and physically assaulted described "violent discipline" as an acceptable part of ashram culture, a royal commission has heard.

A number of former child residents of the Satyananda Yoga Ashram at Mangrove Mountain left the hearing room as a former senior member, known as Shishy, gave evidence.

The commission has previously heard evidence from former child residents that Shishy allegedly subjected them to fierce beatings and summoned teenage girls for sex with the ashram's leader, Swami Akhandananda Saraswati.

Repeatedly breaking down in the stand, Shishy apologised for the pain and suffering she had caused, including the slapping of children, but said she could not recall some of the more vicious assaults described in evidence.

Shishy told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that while sex was banned under the teachings of influential yoga teacher Swami Satyananda Saraswati, she began a sexual relationship with Akhandananda, his disciple in Australia.

"Swamis were celibate ... so at the time I did become involved with him I was surprised that it could happen," she said.

Akhandananda, who came to Australia from his native India in the mid-1970s to spread the word of Satyananda's teachings, swore her to secrecy about the relationship, saying: "You are a chosen one and other people won't understand."

She told the commission she was expected to have sex with Satyananda when he was visiting Australia, with Akhandananda telling her: "He might want to play with you ... it is a very great honour and I don't want you to get scared."

Shishy, who was a teenager at the time, described sex with Satyananda as "on a continuum between bland and quite perverse".

She moved to the Mangrove Mountain ashram with Akhandananda in 1976 and told the commission she became aware that he was having sex with some of the children there but did not view it as abuse as she believed it was for their "spiritual enlightenment".

Shishy, who is no longer a member of the Satyananda movement, told the commission she was forced to initiate a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old boy at Akhandananda's behest, describing it as the "most shameful thing of my life". She later had a child with the boy, known as APQ.

Now aged in her mid-50s, she became aware that what was happening at the ashram was abuse when she left the centre in 1985. The commission heard that she reported the abuse to Satyananda in 1986 but he responded: "Well, you know, pretty much, it's always been thus."

Akhandananda was convicted over sexual offences relating to former child residents in 1987 but the conviction was overturned in 1991. He died from alcoholism in Cairns in 1997. Satyananda died in 2009.

Earlier, former child resident Tim Clark told the commission his attempts to meet with the ashram's current management were rebuffed by a team created to respond to the allegations of abuse.

He was told that the "last thing [the ashram managers] wanted to do was meet with me or meet survivors of abuse".

The hearing, before Justice Jennifer Coate, continues.

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