Yoga ‘handmaiden’ raped with loaded shotgun

By Dan Box
Australian
December 8, 2014

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/yoga-handmaiden-raped-with-loaded-shotgun/story-e6frg6nf-1227148461835

AN AUSTRALIAN woman was sexually abused with a loaded shotgun by an Indian yoga guru who also forced her to drink his urine as a form of contraception, a royal commission has heard.

The woman, identified only as Shishy, said that she later heard the founder of the international Satyananda yoga movement, Guru Satyananda Saraswati, apparently plotting to kill her as she was “a great danger to … the organisation.”

Giving evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Shishy said she was a “handmaiden” to another guru, Akhandananda, who was sent to Australia from India to found a yoga ashram north of Sydney in 1974.

Despite preaching abstinence himself, Akhandananda began having sex with Shishy at the age of 15 or 16, she told the commission. He would later use her to summon other women or girls from the ashram, with whom he would also have sex.

Over time, their relationship became more abusive, Shishy said. On a number of occasions, including after she had refused his orders, Shishy said she was told to fetch Akhandananda’s double-barrelled shotgun, which he loaded and used to rape her.

“He would say things like: ‘oh see here, see what we can do with this, oh and

look here, what would happen if I just pulled the trigger?’

“He sometimes partly pulled the trigger back. I was terrified because it was an old gun and I didn’t know if it was reliable or not. I submitted to this because I had accepted that my path to enlightenment was through discipleship,” she told the commission.

Both Akhandananda and Satyananda told Shishy to drink their urine directly from their penises as a form of contraception, before having sex with her, she said. When she subsequently travelled to India to confront Satyananda about the child abuse taking place in the Australian ashram she “felt like I was in danger.

“I overheard a conversation between Satyananda and his successor, Swami Niranjan, in which they discussed what a great danger to (Akhandananda) and the organisation I was — that I was trouble, and that ‘ it would be best if she ended up floating downriver on the Ganga (Ganges).’

“The Ganges River flowed right outside the ashram which was a converted old fortress with massive walls and very tall, locked gates. I took that to mean I would be best dead.”

Several other former child residents of the Mangrove Mountain ashram have told the commission they were brutally beaten by Shishy, and that they want to see her prosecuted for procuring children for sex.

While Shishy has admitted beating some children, and having sex with a 14-year-old boy at the ashram herself, she denies the other claims.

“For myself, I ask for a little compassion and if not compassion perhaps a little understanding for the young girl, the young woman I was then and if not understanding maybe a little mercy … if everyone can leave us alone now, it’s enough, it’s enough.”

“I’m definitely not the monster as portrayed,” she said.

Akhandananda and Satyananda have both died.