AUSTRALIA
ABC News
By Nicole Chettle
A worker at a New South Wales yoga ashram who denies fetching teenage girls from their beds at night and taking them to their spiritual leader, who sexually abused them, says the organisation should not be ‘held to ransom’ by people seeking compensation.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is looking at the handling of 11 complaints made against Swami Akhandananda Saraswati over the past 40 years, relating to abuse that happened in the 1970s and ’80s.
Muktimurti Saraswati told the Sydney hearing that she joined the ashram at Mangrove Mountain on the New South Wales Central Coast when she was 17.
She worked as a secretary and assistant to a woman called Shishi who has already appeared before the royal commission.
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