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'My upbringing broke me': Disturbing insider account reveals life growing up in 'cult-like' yoga ashram where a self-styled guru sexually abused and humiliated children
By Khaleda Rahman
A woman who was raised inside a notorious 'cult-like' yoga ashram has revealed horrific details of her traumatic childhood. The woman, identified only as Sandra although that is not her real name, opened up about how her upbringing inside the Satyananda Ashram - now known as Mangrove Yoga Ashram - left her broken in a heart-breaking piece published on news.com.au. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found children in the ashram - located in the foothills of Mangrove Mountain on the NSW central coast were raped, sexually assaulted and threatened with violence. Although Sandra was not sexually abused, she revealed the brutal treatment she endured there from the age of four in the 1970s and 1980s left her traumatised for life. 'I did not receive the nurturing that is needed as a child so that I could grow up to be a normal functioning person,' she wrote. 'Instead, my upbringing broke me. I might even go so far as to say that it fragmented me.' Sandra said she was forced to live in the ashram by her by her mother, who was attracted to the alternative lifestyle. Once she got there though, she was isolated from her mother as renouncing family members and 'worshipping' the guru only was one of the ashram's rules. While her mother was unavailable to her, she was brought up among the other children living in the ashram in huts or dorms away from the adults. She says children were punished for the smallest things, like talking on the bus ride from school, had their heads flushed in the public toilets for not brushing their teeth, and were beaten in public is they said anything negative about the guru. Sandra also revealed how at times, women and girls were forced to bathe in the creek where the water was below freezing, instead of taking hot showers like the men. She said she didn't cope with the tough conditions – and began taking drugs at 14 and was in a self-induced coma for three days when she was 16. As an adult, she says she went from one abusive relationship to another – and ended up having a child with a physically abusive paedophile. Since discovering the latter fact, Sandra says she moved her two children away. She and her family have been in hiding ever since. Although she wants nothing more than to give her own children the 'normal' life she never had, Sandra says she struggles to hold down a steady job. 'I can only describe that it's like living with PTSD for a lifetime,' she adds. 'I tell people it is like being punched in the face.' Last year, the royal commission found Satyananda Ashram was insensitive and defensive in its handling of abuse complaints from the 1970s and 1980s against its former spiritual leader Swami Akhandananda Saraswati. The commission released its report into the ashram in September and revealed a culture of 'violence and humiliation' prevented victims from reporting the abuse – and some were even threatened with murder. Ten women and one man gave evidence saying they had been sexually abused by him as children at the ashram. Children as young as four were physically abused by Akhandananda or his former partner Shishy, former residents of the ashram reported. The abuse ranged from slaps to repeated striking with heavy objects and forms of discipline included hard labour, starvation and humiliation through public nudity. One victim said she was stripped, held down and had the skin between her breasts cut at the age of seven in an initiation ceremony – before Akhandananda raped her. Shishy witnessed him rape two girls and also summoned girls to have sex with him, the commission heard. But she was also subjected to sexual violence and abuse at the hands of Akhandananda.
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