UNITED STATES
medium.com
September 3, 2017
Nandini Stocker
[An auspicious birth. An epiphany from my inner voice.]
I was born into the International Society of Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), otherwise known as the “Hare Krishna Movement”. In fact, I was even born on the “appearance day” (i.e. birthday) of its founder, in the same village in India where its primary deity, Krishna, is said to have been born on Earth some 5,000 years ago. …
… There is really nothing else to explain the greatest tragedy of ISKCON — what happened to an entire generation of its children. And that’s where I would like to focus. Like the Catholic Church and many other religious groups, ISKCON has suffered from scandal and missteps in managing cases of child abuse. A large group of kids that grew up in my generation and went through the worst of it collectively filed and won a lawsuit against the leaders of ISKCON in 2000. For the kids who either entered the movement with their parents at a young age or were born into the movement in the 70’s and early 80’s, being in the Movement involved every range of abuse. Most kids were enrolled in gurukula ashrams (think parochial boarding schools), hundreds or even thousands of miles from their parents. These schools varied greatly in how stark or miserable they were. Some were just austere but full of fun and adventure, while others were like prisons, in every sense of the word. Children were often deprived of nutritional meals, beaten, molested, “disciplined” with brutal punishments, and for some, things were much, much worse. And by children I mean some as young as 3, but the standard age kids were sent away began at 5.
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