AUSTRALIA
Sky News
One of Australia’s largest yoga retreats on a NSW Central Coast mountain will be the focus of a national hearing into child sexual abuse.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse says its 21st public hearing will inquire into the response of the Satyananda Yoga Ashram at Mangrove Mountain to allegations of child sexual abuse by a former spiritual leader in the 1970s and 1980s.
Akhandananda Saraswati was charged, convicted and jailed in the late 1980s for sexually abusing teenage girls living at the Ashram.
The Swami spent 14 months in prison and the convictions were overturned by the High Court appeal in 1991. He died in 1997.
The commission at a hearing in Sydney on December 2 will examine the response of the Ashram to allegations and reports of child sexual abuse made against Swami Saraswati.
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