LAW OFFICES OF WINDLE TURLEY, P.C / ATTORNEYS FOR PLAINTIFFS
39 charges of Iskcon child abuse listed by Attorney Widle Turley
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Windle Turley Court Case – Children of Iskcon vs. Iskcon
Dallas trial lawyer WINDLE TURLEY, attorney for the plaintiffs, said today, “This lawsuit describes the most unthinkable abuse and maltreatment of little children which we have seen. It includes rape, sexual abuse, physical torture and emotional terror of children as young as three years of age. The worst of the practices spanned two decades, starting in 1972 with ISKCON’s first school in Dallas, Texas. The abuse continued in a half-dozen other schools in the United States and eventually at two boys’ schools in India.
PLAINTIFFS’ ORIGINAL PETITION
— NO. 01-9282 —
FILED 2001 OCT. 25, 3:32
IN THE DISTRICT COURT
DEPUTY JIM HAMLIN, DISTRICT CLERK,
DALLAS COUNTY, TEXAS JUDICAL DISTRICT –
– lj10200103.wpd –
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WRONGFUL AND ILLEGAL ACTS OF ABUSE OF MINORS
A. YEARS OF PRIMARY ABUSE
1. The sexual, physical and emotional abuse of the minor children occurred primarily between the years 1972 and 1990, although abuse continued after 1990 and, it is believed, continues to the present. The sexual, physical and emotional abuse of minor children was inflicted on children from as young as 3 years of age to 18 years of age, and included both boys and girls.
2. The abuse to which the ISKCON children were subjected was inflicted on some children for several years. It included a pattern and practice of sexual abuse of both boys and girls, physical abuse, and emotional abuse. In many instances, the abuse could be accurately described as torture of children. Not all of the following described acts of child abuse were carried out on every child, but every plaintiff in this case was subject to multiple forms of child abuse over extended periods of time, some for years. Some examples of the types of abuse and neglect to which the children, ranging in age from 3 years to 18 years, were subjected include but are not limited to:
B. ABUSE INFLICTED
3. Sexual abuse including rape, oral sex, intercourse with children, sexual fondling of children, and masturbation with children.
4. Physical beatings of children with boards, branches, clubs, and poles.
5. Physical beatings by adult teachers and school leaders with fists to the head and stomach.
6. Kicking the children into submission.
7. Children were in some instances made to walk great distances in bitter cold, including snow and rain, without jackets, coats, or shoes.
8. Children were often forced to sleep on cold floors and in unheated rooms.
9. Children were frequently deprived entirely of medical care or provided such inadequate medical care as to suffer longterm and, in some instances, permanent injury. The medical conditions for which children were not treated included malaria, hepatitis, yellow fever, teeth being knocked out, broken facial bones, and broken bones in their hands, often inflicted as they attempted to shield themselves from beatings.
10. Children were sometimes kept in filthy conditions. In at least one instance, a local group utilized what had recently been a cattle or horse barn for a nursery.
11. In almost every school the children were kept in severely overcrowded conditions, often forced to sleep shoulder to shoulder on the floor or in small rooms in three-high bunks with 10 or 12 children to each tiny room.
12. The children were physically abused by being awakened every day in the early morning hours (generally at 4:00 a.m.) and subjected to a cold shower, after which they were taken, without any breakfast, to a daily religious service. At some schools, the children were forced to walk great distances in the dark to attend the service, and often in cold or rainy conditions, clothed only in their thin gown-like “dohti.”
13. The children were not provided bathroom tissue, but instead were expected to wipe themselves with their fingers, after which they would dip their fingers into a bowl of water.
14. As punishment for not cleaning themselves thoroughly, children were scrubbed with steel wool until their skin was raw and sometimes bleeding.
15. Children were abused when they were forced to sleep on their wet blankets or in tubs as punishment if they wet their bedding.
16. Some children were forced to wear their soiled underclothes on their heads for long periods of time because they had wet themselves.
17. Children were often forced to go without food entirely, either because there was none, or as punishment. When food was provided, it was always inadequate for a growing child’s diet.
18. The inadequate food that was provided was often prepared in unsanitary conditions, was of very poor quality and so unpleasant that even hungry children frequently could not eat it. In at least one school, the children learned as a matter of routine to remove insects from their food before eating it.
19. Each child was expected to eat what they were provided. If they did not do so, their served portion was kept on their plates until the next meal when it was served again. This process often continued until the cold food — even moldy and insect-infested ~ was swallowed.
20. In some schools, children were forced to lick up their vomit from any foul food they may have thrown up.
21. At New Vrindavan, three young boys, about six or seven years of age, who worked in the kitchen, took some food to their hungry friends. They were caught and punished by being gagged, having bags placed over their heads, and being put in a small room for several days with only a bucket for their waste and no food or water. One of the same boys was later slammed by a teacher into a marble wall, resulting in a loss of some teeth and fractured facial bones.
22. Children were controlled by various threats to hurt or kill them and by punishments. Young children, strictly limited to a vegetarian diet, were continually terrorized when told that non-Krishnas were meat-eaters, that they ate each other, and that the children, if given to or taken by the meat-eaters, would themselves be eaten.
23. Children often saw rats in their rooms and schools. Some children (such as those at the school in Dallas) were told the rats lived in a particular old closet, and the child would be, and often was, placed in the closet if they didn’t do as told.
24. One form of punishment included forcing little children to stand on a crate for long periods of time in a darkened closet “so the rats would not eat them.”
25. Very young children were in fact placed in those dark and locked closets and left afraid and crying for hours at a time. They were locked overnight in dark cellars with dirt floors. One young child was made to sleep alone in the loft of a cold barn for many nights.
26. Sometimes the children were sent by their superiors to massage and bathe the religious gurus and then drink their now “blessed bath water.”
27. In some cases, children were placed into trash barrels as punishment for relatively trivial “sins.”
28. Children were almost universally told that if they disclosed their condition or complained to their parents or others, they would be severely punished. When complaints were made, the children were publicly and often severely beaten or subjected to other forms of punishment.
29. Girls, as young as 12 or 13 years, were frequently “given” or “promised” to an older male in the movement. Although their marriages were generally not sexually consummated until the child was at least 16 or 17 years old, the little girls were terrorized by the threats, and often reality, of being given away by their leaders to become engaged to marry “strange old men.”
30. Children were often forced to lie awake in their beds or sleeping bags and listen as their little friends were sexually molested by teachers and other leaders.
31. The children were emotionally abused by subjecting them to near-total parental and societal isolation. In an effort to totally control their minds, the children were, in most cases, separated and isolated from their parents and were not allowed to have regular contact with their parents. Personal visits, correspondence, and telephone calls were either forbidden or discouraged. Gifts, particularly of food, were intercepted. For example, one young boy felt abandoned by his parents, and had no contact with his family for more than a year. He later learned the one small package of cookies sent by his mother was intercepted and kept from him.
32. Children were frequently moved to different schools in different states without the consent (or, sometimes, knowledge) of parents. Some children were hidden from parents. Some boys were shipped out of the country to ISKCON schools in India. In at least some cases, after the parents discovered their child’s whereabouts and made arrangements for them to come home, their plane tickets were intercepted, and torn up in front of the children. Then, these children were punished for their parents’ attempt to bring them home.
33. Even though the children were given by their parents to ISKCON to educate, except for the reading of their “vedic scriptures,” the children received little or no education.
34. Because of near-total isolation from the outside world and lack of education, the children who remained within the ISKCON schools for extended periods of time were totally unequipped to enter outside society. They have experienced extreme difficulty in earning a living, entering and maintaining relationships, including marriage, and in adapting to the laws and regulations of society. Many are in need of extended psychological and/or vocational training, rehabilitation, and medical care.
35. Plaintiffs, like almost all of the children who remained within ISKCON schools for any period of time, were forced to work many hours a day, at ages below the applicable minimum age requirements of the state child labor laws in which the schools were located. Compounding this illegal work program put in place by the Defendants in the gurukulas is the fact that none of the Plaintiffs was ever paid for their many hours of labor. Thus, not only were Plaintiffs forced to work by Defendants in violation of applicable child labor laws, but were forced to do so without any compensation whatsoever, robbing them of the value of their work.
36. The widespread use of child labor was a necessary part of the Defendants’ scheme. Because Defendants fail to provide adequate staffing to prepare meals, cook, wash dishes and clothes, and clean the facilities and, in some instances, operate the farms, Defendants utilized the children to perform a large portion of these services. This practice freed the children’s parents to continue to raise money for ISKCON and to provide other services to the ISKCON enterprise.
37. The founder of the institution, Prabhupada, was informed in 1972, at a time when he totally controlled the institution, that extensive physical and sexual abuse of minor ISKCON children was occurring, but he concealed the wrongdoing from the public, parents and all but a handful of close advisors.
38. Despite having been alerted to the physical, emotional, mental and sexual abuse of children in its gurukula boarding schools and other schools as early as the 1970s, ISKCON and the other Defendants conspired to suppress any public disclosure, or disclosure to gurukula children’s parents, of the pattern and practice of rampant abuse and theft at its gurukulas. ISKCON fraudulently concealed this information for decades, allowing the offending gurukula teachers and supervisors continued access to children for their sexual gratification and to subject them to physical, emotional and mental abuse. Defendants also endeavored to dissuade and discourage parents of gurukula children from visiting the schools. This was done at least in part to preserve the secrecy surrounding the abuse of and theft from the Krishna children.
39. ISKCON, by and through its GBC, knew that if it did not conceal and keep secret the theft, sexual, physical, and emotional abuse it had learned was taking place in many of its schools, the very viability of the movement would be jeopardized. ISKCON would face a large loss of students and their parents from the movement and with that a large loss of funds and fundraisers. The individual income of many members of the GBC would have been adversely impacted. Its leaders would also have been subject to criminal and civil sanctions. The GBC made conscious decisions to conceal the fact that injury had been, and was continuing to be, inflicted on minor boys and girls
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WRONGFUL AND ACTIONABLE CONDUCT OF THE DEFENDANTS
The actionable conduct described herein, unless stated otherwise, refers to the conduct of all the defendant associations, corporations and individuals, both acting collectively and singularly, and is stated as ISKCON’s conduct or acts.
A. NEGLIGENCE
1. At all times material herein from 1971 through 1996, Defendant ISKCON, through the GBC, operated and supervised the gurukulas across the United States and in India. The teachers and supervisors at the boarding schools and gurukulas acted upon the delegated authority of ISKCON as its agents. The gurukula teachers and supervisors came to know the Plaintiffs and gained access to them because of their status as leaders of
ISKCON indoctrination. The gurukula teachers and supervisors engaged in the described wrongful conduct while in the course and scope of their duties with ISKCON and its affiliated entities. Therefore, ISKCON is liable for the wrongful conduct of its gurukula teachers and supervisors.
2. ISKCON negligently selected and placed the offending gurukula teachers and supervisors in positions of trust, confidence and authority and in direct, unsupervised contact with minor children, when they either had no knowledge of the teachers and supervisors’ backgrounds or ISKCON had actual or apparent knowledge of these individuals’ dangerous propensities towards physical, emotional, mental, and sexual abuse of the gurukula children.
3. ISKCON failed to establish written guides and procedures to safeguard the children entrusted to it.
4. ISKCON failed to provide proper training to its teachers and supervisors.
5. ISKCON encouraged, through its pattern and practice, the herein described acts of wrongful and illegal conduct by its agents.
6. ISKCON failed to warn Plaintiffs or their families of the offending gurukula school teachers and supervisors’ dangerous propensities towards abuse of minor children. Indeed, it was ISKCON’S pattern and practice to encourage this abusive behavior from the teachers.
7. ISKCON was under a duty to disclose the extent of the problem of physical, emotional, mental, and sexual abuse by gurukula teachers and supervisors towards the gurukula children, and the severe psychological problems that would result from such abuse if not properly treated, but failed to make such disclosures.
8. ISKCON failed to notify state and governmental authorities of known and suspected abuse when it was the law that it do so.
9. ISKCON failed to provide reasonable supervision of its teachers and supervisors.
10. ISKCON failed to provide adequate staffing to provide a safe environment.
11. ISKCON failed to provide adequate funding to its schools, even though it represented to parents and others it would do so, and despite the facts, parents and others raised larger amounts of money for the operation of ISKCON enterprises.
12. ISKCON failed to provide adequate food, clothing, shelter and education in its boarding schools, even though it represented to parents and others it was doing so.
13. The older students were sometimes appointed “monitors.” The Defendants knew and encouraged monitors to abuse and beat the children. Actual rapes and beatings of children by the older “monitors” were ignored by the ISKCON enterprise.
14. ISKCON’s conduct during the time and occasions of the abuse in question resulted in both negligent and intentional infliction of emotional distress upon the Plaintiffs.
B. ISKCON’S BREACH OF FIDUCIARY DUTY
15. ISKCON, as a religious organization, is granted special privileges and immunities in the United States by society and is in a special fiduciary relationship with the Plaintiffs. ISKCON owed the Plaintiffs, who were entrusted to its care, the highest duty
of trust and confidence and was required to act in the childrens’ best interest. ISKCON’s actions and inactions, as described herein, violated that relationship when ISKCON failed to act with the highest degree of trust and confidence to protect the Plaintiffs from physical, emotional, mental and sexual abuse.
16. Plaintiffs and their parents were, at the relevant times, deeply devout followers of defendants. Plaintiffs and their parents entrusted their entire physical, emotional, economic, and spiritual lives to the control and direction of Defendants and to the Defendant entities of which Plaintiffs were members and/or devotees. Plaintiffs and their parents relied upon the promises and representations of the Defendants.
17. As devoted children, unable to care for or make decisions for themselves, and entrusted in the care of the child care facilities and schools operated by the Defendants, Plaintiffs were owed a fiduciary duty by each of the individual entities and by all the Defendants. By failing to take steps to prevent, detect, and minimize the harm from the incidents of abuse suffered by Plaintiffs, the Defendants breached their fiduciary duty to Plaintiffs.
(i) CONSTRUCTIVE FRAUD
18. As fiduciaries of Plaintiffs, Defendants owed a duty to Plaintiffs to inform their parents/guardians of the fact that the child care facilities and schools operated by defendants were staffed by unqualified individuals, did not contain sufficient staffing to prevent, detect, and to minimize the effects of incidents of abuse, that their children were being used for child slave labor, and that the child care facilities and schools were below the child safety standards that would reasonably be anticipated.
19. By reason of the failure to make these disclosures to Plaintiffs or Plaintiffs’ guardians, and the resulting detrimental reliance thereon, the Defendants are guilty of constructive fraud.
(ii) BREACH OF CONTRACT/BREACH OF WARRANTY
20. At the time that the ISKCON Defendants accepted Plaintiffs into the schools and child care facilities operated by them, (and, at the same time, collected payment from Plaintiffs’ parents for school tuition and/or room and board), they did, by both their conduct and verbal statements, expressly and impliedly agree and warrant, in exchange for valuable consideration, to provide good quality child care, schooling, boarding services in a safe, nurturing environment, such that Plaintiffs would, among other things, not be intentionally or negligently harmed. Plaintiffs were intended third-party beneficiaries of this express and implied agreement and warranty between the Defendants and their parents.
21. ISKCON and defendants breached their express and implied contract and warranty to Plaintiffs, and as a result of those breaches, Plaintiffs were harmed.
C. DEFENDANTS BREACHED THEIR STATUTORY DUTY
22. In most jurisdictions where the Defendants operated, they were under a statutory duty to protect children entrusted to their care from physical and sexual abuse and to report to various child welfare and child protective agencies any known or suspected occurrences of sexual or physical abuse of children. The Defendants breached their statutory duty in that: (a) they engaged in a pattern and practice of, or knowingly permitted their agents to, physically and/or sexually abuse minor children; and (b) the Defendants learned of suspected sexual and physical abuse of children but concealed its existence from state authorities, and to this day continue to fail to report known instances of physical or sexual abuse of children entrusted to its care.
D. GROSS NEGLIGENCE
23. ISKCON, at the time and on the occasions in question, acted with heedless and reckless disregard for the safety of the Plaintiffs, which disregard was the result of conscious indifference to the rights, welfare and safety of the Plaintiffs in violation of the laws of the State of Texas, and other states.
E. DEFENDANTS’ NEGLIGENT ASSUMPTION OF RISK OF INTENTIONAL OR CRIMINAL CONDUCT
24. Plaintiffs incorporate by reference as if set forth at length herein all previous allegations set forth above, and assert that ISKCON and the other Defendants are liable for acts and/or omissions pursuant to the Restatement (Second) of Torts, Section 302B, under the legal doctrine of negligent assumption of risk of intentional or criminal conduct.An act or an omission may be negligent if the actor realizes or should realize that it involves an unreasonable risk of harm to another through the conduct of the other or a third person which is intended to cause harm, even though such conduct is criminal.
Restatement (Second) of Torts, Section 302B.
25. Defendant ISKCON and the other Defendants realized or should have realized that the abusive gurukula teachers and supervisors posed an unreasonable risk of harm to minor children, including Plaintiffs.
F. DEFENDANTS’ NEGLIGENT MISREPRESENTATION INVOLVING RISK OF PHYSICAL HARM
26. Plaintiffs incorporate by reference as if set forth at length herein all previous allegations set forth above, and assert that ISKCON and the other Defendants are liable for acts and/or omissions pursuant to the Restatement (Second) of Torts, Section 311, under the legal doctrine of negligent misrepresentation involving risk of physical harm.
(1) One who negligently gives false information to another is subject to liability for physical harm caused by action taken by the other in reasonable reliance upon such information, where such harm results
(a) to the other, or
(b) to such third persons as the actor should expect to be put in peril by the action taken.
(2) Such negligence may consist of failure to exercise reasonable care
(a) in ascertaining the accuracy of the information, or
(b) in the manner in which it is communicated.
Restatement (Second) of Torts, Section 311.
27. Defendant ISKCON and the other Defendants informed parents of the abused children that ISKCON would provide a safe and wholesome environment for their children. Defendants’ failure to ascertain and apprise Plaintiffs and their families of the propensity of offending gurukula teachers and supervisors to physically, emotionally, mentally and sexually abuse minor children, and ISKCON and the other Defendants’ representation that the offending gurukula teachers and supervisors were not dangerous to young children placed Plaintiffs in peril, and caused them injury.
VII. BATTERY
1. Plaintiffs incorporate by reference, as if set forth at length herein, all previous allegations set forth above, and assert that ISKCON and the other Defendants are liable for acts and/or omissions pursuant to the Restatement (Second) of Torts, § 13, under the legal doctrine of battery, which states that an actor is subject to liability to another for battery if (a) he acts intending to cause a harmful or offensive contact with the person of the other or a third person, or an imminent apprehension of such a contact, and (b) a harmful contact with the person of the other directly or indirectly results.1
VIII. ASSAULT
1. Plaintiffs incorporate by reference, as if set forth at length herein, all previous allegations set forth above, and assert that ISKCON and the other Defendants are liable for acts and/or omissions pursuant to the Restatement (Second) of Torts, § 21, under the legal doctrine of assault, which provides that an actor is subject to liability to another for assault if (a) he acts intending to cause a harmful or offensive contact with the person of the other or a third person, or an imminent apprehension of such a contact, and (b) the other is thereby put in such imminent apprehension.2 (2Restatement (Second) of Torts, §21.)
All Defendants are liable to Plaintiffs for the assaults committed upon them; some of the Defendants participated directly in assaults upon Plaintiffs at the gurukulas, while others are liable as principals of the actors who knew about and condoned the assaults upon Plaintiffs, and failed to take any action to stem that abuse.
IX.
FALSE IMPRISONMENT
1. Plaintiffs incorporate by reference as if set forth at length herein all previous allegations set forth above, and assert that ISKCON and the other Defendants are liable for acts and/or omissions pursuant to the Restatement (Second) of Torts, § 35, under the legal doctrine of false imprisonment. Defendants either directly committed, knew about, condoned, and concealed acts intended to confine Plaintiffs within boundaries fixed by the authorities at the gurukulas, which such acts directly or indirectly resulted in the confinement of Plaintiffs, who were conscious of the confinement and were harmed by it.
X.
BREACH OF DUTY TO ACT IMPOSED BY PRIOR DANGEROUS CONDUCT
1. Plaintiffs incorporate by reference as if set forth at length herein all previous allegations set forth above, and assert that ISKCON and the other Defendants are liable for acts and/or omissions pursuant to the Restatement (Second) of Torts, §321, under the legal doctrine of failure to act when their prior conduct is found to be dangerous. Under that doctrine, if an actor does an act, and subsequently realizes or should realize that he has created an unreasonable risk of causing physical harm to another, he is under a duty to exercise reasonable care to prevent that risk from taking effect. ISKCON and the other Defendants were aware that the conduct of them and their agents at the gurukulas created unreasonable risks of physical harm to Plaintiffs, but failed to exercise reasonable care to prevent that risk from being effect, and Plaintiffs were harmed as a result.
XI.
DUTY TO AID ANOTHER HARMED BY DEFENDANTS’ CONDUCT
1. Plaintiffs incorporate by reference as if set forth at length herein all previous allegations set forth above, and assert that ISKCON and the other Defendants are liable for acts and/or omissions pursuant to the Restatement (Second) of Torts, § 322, under the legal doctrine of duty to aid another harmed by an actor’s conduct. Under that doctrine, the Defendants, knowing or having reason to know that, by their conduct, whether tortious or innocent, they had caused bodily harm to Plaintiffs as to make them helpless and in danger of further harm, were under a duty to exercise reasonable care to present such further harm. Defendants failed to satisfy this duty, and never exercised any reasonable care to prevent further harm to Plaintiffs. Plaintiffs were damaged as a result.
XII.
CONSPIRACY AND FRAUDULENT CONCEALMENT
1. ISKCON has acted in concert with the other Defendants in a pattern and practice to fraudulently conceal the extent and nature of the physical, emotional, mental, and sexual abuse occurring at its gurukulas, boarding schools, and child care centers, as well as the harmful effects of that abuse, continuing through the present day. Defendants have also acted in concert to fraudulently conceal the fact that Defendants engaged in a pattern and practice of stealing the value of Plaintiffs’ (and other children who attended the gurukulas) labor, forcing them to work several hours a day, for the duration of their attendance at the gurukulas without any compensation whatsoever, as well as the value to Plaintiffs of even a minimally sufficient education.
2. All Defendants herein entered into a civil conspiracy to act in concert, accompanied by a meeting of the minds regarding concerted action, the purposes of which were to suppress and minimize public knowledge (as well as widespread knowledge within ISKCON) of the rampant physical, emotional, mental and sexual abuse of minor children in the gurukulas by teachers and supervisors, and to take a uniform position and approach to the handling of reports of abuse. ISKCON used benefits derived from child labor to expand the scope of its impact, including its injury to children, by opening still more schools, and by moving the children to avoid encounters with local government authorities and parents, that risk exposing the maltreatment of children. This uniform position and approach was designed to avoid criminal prosecution of the gurukula teachers and supervisor offenders, to avoid civil litigation and to prevent or minimize claims for damages, to avoid public exposure of the sexual and other abuse of children by teachers and supervisors at the gurukulas, to protect the reputation of ISKCON and “Hare Krishnas” from scandal, and thus to insure the continued financial contributions of Krishna devotees and outside supporters to ISKCON. This conspiracy to conceal includes spoliation of evidence and is ongoing. Based on these actions, the Plaintiffs allege that the Defendants are equitably estopped from asserting any defense of limitations.
3. This ongoing conspiracy and concert of action was carried out by Defendants to fraudulently conceal the fact that Defendants have committed acts of theft, negligence, gross negligence, fraud and breach of fiduciary duty, and the other wrongful conduct described herein, and have engaged in concerted action to commit acts of negligence, gross negligence, fraud and breach of fiduciary duty.
4. In the absence of this conspiracy and concert of action, Defendants would have responded to repeated notice of the abuse children suffered at the hands of gurukula teachers and supervisors and issued general and specific warnings to the entire body of Krishna devotees, particularly the parents of children in the gurukulas. Had a proper warning been issued, the offending teachers and supervisors would never have had unsupervised access to Plaintiffs and other minor children, and this physical, emotional, mental and sexual abuse and exploitation would never have occurred. Moreover, the theft of the value of Plaintiffs’ work, and the deprivation of their educational opportunities, would not have occurred had a proper warning been issued. Thus, Defendants’ actions in furtherance of this conspiracy are a proximate cause of the injury and damages herein.
5. As a part of their conspiracy to conceal the physical, mental, emotional and sexual abuse of children by the offending gurukula teachers and supervisors, as well as the theft of value of Plaintiffs’ work and their opportunities to receive even a minimally sufficient education, Defendants followed a practice of refusing to investigate suspected theft or abuse, or to disclose and warn of the dangers of physical, mental, emotional and sexual abuse by gurukula teachers and supervisors despite actual notice and knowledge of the risk dating back over two decades. Defendants failed to aggressively address abuse issues by such actions as promulgating proper policies for the appointment of gurukula teachers and supervisors.
6. Plaintiffs allege that ISKCON officials, with others as plead herein, also engaged in a conspiracy to avoid the prosecution of gurukula teachers and supervisors and to cover up the physical, mental, emotional and sexual abuse of minor children suffered in the gurukulas, and the theft of the value of Plaintiffs’ work and educational opportunities. The purpose of this conspiracy was to prevent criminal prosecution, avoid adverse publicity, prevent claims for damages by the numerous minor victims, and to avoid exposure of this conspiracy designed to conceal the claims arising from the crimes of these gurukula teachers and supervisors appointed by ISKCON through the GBC. Further, officials of ISKCON, in furtherance of the overall conspiracy alleged, engaged in affirmative acts to conceal the existence of this conspiracy, and to conceal acts of fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, negligence, and gross negligence.
XIII.
DEFENDANTS’ CONCERT OF ACTION
Plaintiffs incorporate by reference as if set forth at length herein all previous allegations set forth above, and assert that ISKCON and the other Defendants are liable for acts and/or omissions pursuant to the Restatement (Second) of Torts, Section 876, under the legal doctrine of concert of action, and as agents of these entities, under which theories Plaintiffs seek damages from all Defendants jointly and severally.
XIV.
DEFENDANTS’ INTENTIONAL INFLICTION OF EMOTIONAL DISTRESS
1. Plaintiffs incorporate by reference as if set forth at length herein all previous allegations set forth above.
2. In administering the abuse against Plaintiffs, in conspiring to cover up that abuse, in ratifying the acts of those gurukula workers who administered the abuse, and in conspiring to assist those gurukula workers in avoiding detection by law enforcement agencies, Defendants engaged in a pattern and practice of outrageous conduct that intentionally inflicted severe emotional distress upon Plaintiffs, for which all defendants are liable both in actual and punitive damages.
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Message from Windle Turley
Several members of the Iskcon group, Temples, Publishing, etc, have ask the Bankruptcy court to reorganize them ,contending they can not pay the judgments about 90 Iskcon students have taken against some of them.
From: “Windle Turley” <Windle@wturley.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2003 1:17 AM
Subject: Re: Hare Krishna Abuse Chapter 11
Several members of the Iskcon group, Temples, Publishing, etc, have ask the Bankruptcy court to “reorganize “them ,contending they can not pay the judgments about 90 Iskcon students have taken against some of them.
As a part of that process, all potential claimants are ask to file claims in the bankruptcy court and then the court will decide what portion of the Iskcon group assets the claimants should receive, if any. Once this particularly group is release by the bankruptcy court they can not be sued again.
Unless a student who has a damage claim , asserts it before the deadline, they may be forever barred from claiming against these particular defendants, but not against other possible defendants.
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Abuse of Children in Gurukuls [Boarding Schools]
http://krishna.org/iskcon-shattered-by-abuse-of-children-in-gurukuls-boarding-schools/
ISKCON–Shattered by Abuse of Children in Gurukuls
In October 2001, 91 plaintiffs in their late 20s and early 30s filed a four hundred million dollar lawsuit in a Texas district court against more than a dozen Hare Krishna temples and organizations and many former leaders of the movement. The suit alleges that horrendous sexual and physical abuse occurred in at least eight of 11 Hare Krishna boarding schools in the 1970s and ’80s. Amy Engeler (My Generation Magazine/July 2002) (04-30-03)
The appalled movement elders, who had learned of the abuse five years earlier, did not dispute the claims. But they argued that since the boarding schools were now closed (some because of the abuse, some because they were too costly to run), it would be unfair to force the movement to sell off major assets in order to placate the young people over events that had taken place 20 or 30 years ago. Instead, the Krishnas announced in February that the temples named in the suit would file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. This would effectively stop the legal proceeding.
Instead of using their limited resources to fight the suit, the Krishnas could establish a fund for the children who’d suffered. The victims of the abuse were undeterred, unwilling to paper over the deep rift that had formed between the generations.
The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), founded in New York in 1966 and known as the Hare Krishna movement, once held a powerful appeal for youth disillusioned by American society and the Vietnam War. By the early 1970s, several thousand young people had given up everything to follow Srila Prabhupada, the movement’s elderly founder, and build temples and farm ashrams across America and later in Europe and South America. By joining the Hare Krishnas, they became members of a strict Hindu congregation that had originated in India. They shaved their scalps and wore fluttering orange robes, they worshiped Krishna over all other Hindu gods, they followed scriptures written thousands of years before Jesus and aspired to live simply and without material attachment, as prescribed in the Vedic scriptures.
It was so simple then. A 23-year-old from Mississippi named True Dianne Faust felt the same aversion to the American mainstream as the disaffected young devotees. Faust ran into a band of Hare Krishnas in downtown Dallas in 1971. As she stood there, rapt, in her hippie clothes, everything just clicked for her. Other devotees describe that moment as “walking through a wall of water.”
At that time, the movement was just 6 years old and its leader had already made a name for himself. Prabhupada’s translations of the Bhagavad Gita and other sacred texts were widely respected and used for college courses. He’d grown close to John Lennon and George Harrison, who donated a 17-acre estate outside London to the movement in the early 1970s. The Krishnas purchased large tracts of land in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, a building in midtown Manhattan and nearly a block of Watseka Avenue in Los Angeles-largely with money from the sales of Prabhupada’s translations, which also fueled a successful book publishing business.
By the time Prabhupada blessed a bowing Faust and renamed her Bimala–which means spotlessness in Sanskrit his movement was opening nearly a dozen new temples each year in American cities. (At its height, there were almost 10,000 devotees living in the temples and on the farms.) Bimala initially shared a bedroom in the Dallas temple with her husband and two other young couples. She went to ritual ceremonies at the temple’s altar, beginning at 4:30 a.m., attended daily scripture class and chanted for the requisite hour and a half.
Bimala started typesetting and designing little booklets that her “godbrothers” pressed into people’s hands at airports. Work was unpaid, in the service of Krishna. She lived and ate at the temples and if she needed anything extra, such as toothpaste or tampons, she’d ask the temple treasurer to add it to his shopping list. The mundane things of life–tax returns, grocery shopping, career, even news from the ongoing war–had ceased to be a concern. Being a full-time monk was far more meaningful, she thought, than her former job teaching junior high school English. This life seemed like bliss.
In that same submissive spirit, Bimala sent her 5-year-old son, Ish, to a Hare Krishna school in 1977. “It hurt to be separated from him,” she says, “but it was just what you did in those days.” The schools, scattered across the country and in India, combined round-the-clock child care with spiritual training. The idea was to keep the children safe from the influences of the outside world while their parents were freed up to work for the movement.
In Autumn of that year, the movement fell into crisis when Prabhupada died at age 81. In his will, he’d appointed 11 loyal young men to take over for him. Each was to run a zone of the country, in which he would be responsible for the welfare of all devotees. These “zonal gurus” reported to a board of directors, called the Governing Body Commission (GBC). Unfortunately, the personal qualities that attracted devotees to Prabhupada’s movement-and his strict daily regimen of rituals and work-were not necessarily leadership assets. His followers, finding themselves without a spiritual guide, had difficulty maintaining the Eastern structure of gurus and disciples that Prabhupada had established. Bill Ogle, 54, a former GBC member, noticed it right away. “You have some guy from Los Angeles who grew up surfing and went to a university,” says Ogle, in his smooth, Southern drawl, of one of the successors. “He’s thirty years old and he’s been a devotee for five or six years and suddenly he’s an enlightened guru? It’s just farcical.”
Ogle, then head of the Atlanta temple where he lived with his wife and young daughter, saw difficulties ahead in raising a family within the ISKCON structure, which was geared to single devotees and led by celibate men who were both zealous and inexperienced. “Economically the society couldn’t support everybody anymore. As you got married and had children, your costs increased tremendously. It just wasn’t reality,” he says. “There was a lot of idealism, and there still is in the minds of many of the devotees, but realistically, people like me needed to find a way to live in the larger society.” So Ogle, while remaining a devotee, went off to law school.
In the next few years, tensions rose within many major temples. Some gurus became autocrats, harshly intolerant of any deviation from the rituals; others buckled under the stress of trying to keep their ashrams alive. Families found themselves unwelcome; children were expected to behave within the temples as little adults. One vocal dissident was found dead on the grounds of a West Virginia temple called New Vrindaban and, in 1990, the zonal guru there, Kirtanananda, was charged with using murder, kidnapping and fraud to protect an illegal enterprise (he was selling caps and T-shirts with pirated NFL and “Peanuts” logos).
By the 1990s, people were trickling away. Those who remained realized they had to learn to co-exist with the mainstream. Ogle’s friend, David Roberts, had spent most of his 20s and 30s as a Krishna missionary to Brazil. He took a job delivering newspapers at 2 a.m. before he found work running a small manufacturing firm. Roberts was then almost 40 years old; like others in the movement, he had no formal work history and he’d never even owned a credit card. “People returned, thinking, I gave my life to the mission and I don’t have anything now. What am I going to do?” Roberts says.
Some devotees hung on in the temples, selling books, but most moved on with their lives–returning to the degrees they’d abandoned, training as nurses and teachers. Bimala ran a computer store in Pennsylvania, then began designing silver jewelry. Ogle set up a successful law practice in Ormond Beach, Florida. Many of those who pulled away kept a connection to the movement, building shrines in their homes, donating money, chanting at the temples on Sundays or major Hindu holidays.
Their hard-won maturity actually advanced the movement. In Philadelphia, David Dobson took the local Hare Krishnas away from bookselling and missionary work and into Food for Life, the Krishna’s global social service organization. Dobson, 48, a slight, frizzy-haired man with boundless energy, was a member of a small group that set up a soup kitchen in a storefront near Philadelphia’s city hall. He also drove to deserted areas of the city with his portable stove to cook for the homeless. In the mid-1980s he won city contracts to open homeless shelters, and in 1991, he persuaded the state to fund a halfway house where he and other Krishnas helped ex-convicts ease back into society.
Dobson’s chapter of Food for Life, incorporated in 1983, has grown into a full-fledged agency that receives several million dollars in funding a year from the government. Dobson has proven so adept a manager that city officials treat his group no differently from Catholic Charities or Volunteers of America.
“We had to go from being a missionary movement to an institution,” Dobson explains. “There’s been internal soul-searching about how to do this and to keep the integrity and purity of the religious tradition and not water it down to attract new members or revenue.”
The movement’s new stability began to waver in 1996, when some grown members of the “second generation”-as the children of devotee baby boomers call themselves-asked to speak before a meeting of the GBC in Alachua, Florida, the largest Hare Krishna community in the U.S. Several hundred families live in and around Alachua, reintegrated into regular society around a modified temple (leaders are elected, not appointed; there is no ashram). Real estate is cheap; most of the families were able to buy modest ranch homes in the neighborhoods that have sprung up among the old horse and cattle ranches. They work regular jobs and shop at Food Lion like everyone else.
Standing on the temple’s marble floor, these young adults told stories of their school days. They described the emotional devastation of being separated from their parents at age 5, as well as being regularly beaten, terrorized and preyed upon sexually by teachers night after night. The teachers, untrained and uncertified, lived with them 24 hours a day. Both girls and boys were raped and forced into sexual situations; girls as young as 12 or 13 were “given” to older men in the movement; one boy was raped by at least 10 different men. If they wet their beds, their faces were rubbed in the dirty bedding; if they soiled their underwear, they had to wear it on their heads.
Larry Shinn, president of Berea College in Kentucky, has studied the Hare Krishnas for 20 years, and he attributes what happened in their schools to the fact that the teachers were “young celibate men with an overabundance of enthusiasm about religious teachings and much less knowledge of child psychology or the emotional needs of children.” The cruel behavior that resulted has similarities to that in the Catholic Church; in both situations, Shinn says, “monastic males took advantage of their position of authority to abuse young boys.” As he sees it, this particular kind of abuse occurs “throughout the world.” In the ensuing two years, hundreds came forward to testify, and the newly formed child protection office found itself with a list of almost 250 suspected sex offenders. Dhira Govinda, the office’s director, soon learned that many perpetrators had fled the movement and that the statute of limitations prevented prosecution in most cases. Still, he was instrumental in getting several separate convictions of abuse. In 1996, another organization, Children of Krishna, began doling out grants for therapy and college tuition to the second generation and educating temple presidents on ways to prevent child abuse.
The elders feel strongly that they worked to heal the children as soon as they found out what had happened. There was no cover-up. But the members of the second generation were unappeased and filed the civil lawsuit that is now pending.
The depth of their bitterness has something to do with the fact that many are only now beginning to deal with the events of the past. Just like the abused Catholic children, they were too self-doubting and guilt-ridden, too scared to speak out against the authority figures who’d molested them. Jahnavi, 30, the director of Children of Krishna, explains: “When you don’t know anything about the world, it’s hard to recognize you’ve been abused,” she says. “Then at 30, you finally understand that your childhood was robbed and you get angry that you also spent most of your twenties trying to deal with your pain. And you’ve got this voice inside your head screaming at you all the time.”
As their pain surfaced, it took the form of fury at the adults for failing to protect them. “I blame them for setting up the structure that allowed the abuse,” says Jahnavi. “Parents were naive and trusted people, who on the surface, spiritually, were doing all the right things,” says Sad Krueger, 27, a fellow devotee and friend of Bimala’s son, Ish.
In the living room of Ish’s yellow ranch house on one of Alachua’s new cul-de-sacs, Ish and his mother talk over everything that happened. Bimala flips through a photo album to find a snapshot of Ish in 1983, the “zealous days.” There he is-a 10-year-old boy, freckled and grinning in a white robe with a shaved head. That year, Ish’s teacher-someone Bimala knew and respected-sexually abused him on many occasions. As soon as Bimala found out about it, in 1986, she put him in a public school and arranged for therapy for her son and herself.
Unlike many of the baby boomers, Bimala says she understands the anger that led to the lawsuit and acknowledges her own guilt. “I’ve cried for years and years over what happened,” Bimala says. “But at least I can talk about it now. There are other women around here who can’t.” Women’s “inferior role” in the Krishna movement, Shinn points out, had a harmful effect. As in other male-dominated religions, the women had to accept the movement’s practices unquestioningly, making the children’s disclosures even harder to handle.
Pranada, 44, has a 24-year-old son who lost his front teeth as a child after being slammed to the floor by a teacher. Like many other mothers, Pranada chose to ignore the signs of abuse. Faced with the revelations, “we were in tears,” she says, “and just dumbfounded that these things had happened.” She feels desperately guilty, she says, for sending her little boy away but is deeply opposed to the lawsuit, insisting it’s wrong to hold the system liable for the actions of individuals. That position disturbs the younger generation. Over 6 feet tall, with a trim beard and thoughtful manner, Ish is 28 and a lab technician at the University of Florida. He and many of his peers remain committed but casual Hare Krishnas. Being close to his mother, he says, helps him deal with mistakes made by her generation. “I went through some intense feelings as a kid–loneliness, really intense isolation,” says Ish. “But now I have an appreciation that all these things wrapped up together make you who you are. Sure, I wish that things didn’t happen the way they did, but I am happy with who I am now. I like to consider myself lucky. Other people had it far worse.”
Ish knows of former classmates who committed suicide and others who are emotionally crippled, so he supports those who filed the lawsuit, though he didn’t join them. He and his friends attribute the abuse to the older generation’s “hard-core philosophy.” They don’t want to destroy the movement, but they do want to clear out the cliche-spouting devotees, those “still on their trip.” “We’ve already had one set of victims come through-the kids,” he says, “and now it’s almost like irony that a lot of people are looking to create a whole new set of victims-those [baby boomers] who gave up their lives for the Hare Krishnas,” he says. “Some in my generation are saying, `Let them be. They’re not our responsibility. They didn’t stick up for us.'”
As of April, the lawsuit was still pending. The older generation, complaining about the “unfocused anger” of the children, has tried to avoid selling temple assets. They dissolved the Alachua foundation, and ISKCON’s press office sent word to newspapers to expect bankruptcy filings. But the far-reaching apology the younger generation craves seems unlikely to come from this court action.
“The way it’s being fought is really unfair,” says Dobson, who sees the bankruptcy strategy as a necessary act of self-defense. “The serious allegations should go through the criminal justice system. The society can’t be responsible for everything that goes on.”
Ogle, a defendant in the lawsuit because he was on the GBC board when the Krishna schools operated, says the victim’s rage is justified but misdirected. “I don’t think that the society as a whole was at fault, even though some of them see it that way. As some of them mature, they will see that it wasn’t.”
Maybe, maybe not. Ish almost never visits the lovely marble temple in Alachua that sits on a small rise shaded by live oak trees, where you can hear the rhythmic beat of drums and a harmonium throughout the day. In the faces of some of the older generation who worship there Ish does not see peaceful spirituality. He sees harshness and disapproval, and he can’t stay long before the bad memories return.
Hare Krishna Schools Sued
Federal Suit Involves 44 Plaintiffs (91) Alleging Abuse
abc.NEWS.com
June 13, 2002
By Julia Campbell
Hare Krishna Schools Sued
NEW YORK, June 13 — Greg Luczyk was 9 years old, attending a Hare Krishna boarding school in India when he made what the religious community’s leaders apparently considered a grave mistake: He found money on the streets of Mayapur and spent it on chocolate for himself and his fellow classmates.
His punishment: Luczyk, now 30, says he was locked in a room for three days without meals and subjected to regular beatings by a Krishna minister.
Luczyk, who lives in Vancouver, is one of more than three dozen former students of Hare Krishna boarding schools to file a $400 million lawsuit on Monday against leaders of the religious organization. The 44 plaintiffs allege years of sexual, physical and emotional abuse at the hands of their religious teachers at boarding schools in the United States and abroad.
“We had so much innocence at that time,” said Luczyk, who was placed in a Dallas school at age 4 and later transferred to a school in Mayapur, India. “It was just robbed from us. We’ll never experience childhood again.”
Allegation: Closets With Rats
The federal lawsuit, filed in Dallas, names the International Society of Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) as well as several members of the organization’s governing board and the estate of the movement’s American founder, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. Among the allegations are charges of bizarre cases of emotional torture in which children were made to stand in dark closets they thought were crawling with rats.
“This was some of the worst mistreatment of children that I have seen in working with cases of this nature,” said Windle Turley, the plaintiffs’ lawyer who has also represented alleged victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests. “This went far beyond sexual abuse and rape. There was extensive daily and physical abuse and beatings.”
A Hare Krishna spokesman in Washington, Anuttama, told The Associated Press that Krishna leaders have acknowledged abuse in the boarding schools and have worked to provide counseling and financial support to the victims. ISKCON’s Child Protection Task Force, formed in 1998, has investigated 50 cases of alleged abuse and raised $250,000 to aid victims, the spokesman said. Turley said he believes the abuse could have involved as many as 1,000 children.
One Hare Krishna devotee who asked not to be identified said she thought many of the movement’s members are now relieved that victims of the abuse are speaking out.
“For the last 20 years it has been kept under the covers,” said the devotee, a 53-year-old mother of a child she says was verbally abused at an upstate New York ashram. “There is a lot of fear involved in telling about these things. It takes a lot of strength to go through this and to tell about it.”
Son Belittled
The woman said her son was continually belittled, controlled by his teacher at the ashram and that he was kept from interacting with her as he grew up. “He said he felt like he was in a prison,” she said. He is not a plaintiff in the federal lawsuit.
The Hare Krishna spiritual community took off in the late 1960s when Prabhupada brought his form of devotional Hinduism to the United States. Prabhupada said children should be sent to Hare Krishna boarding schools at age 5 so their parents could devote their time to selling devotional books and chanting on street corners. By 1978, 11 of the schools, known as gurakulas or houses of the guru, were operating in North America.
From 1972 to 1990, the lawsuit alleges, children were subjected to repeated abuse at many of the schools. Children often went without food or were forced to eat spoiled food and did not get proper medical care or basic clothing during the winter months, Turley said. In some schools, children were forced to lick up their vomit from any foul food they may have thrown up, the complaint said.
“Among the worst things,” Turley said, “was the terror that little children were forced to live in. For years at a time they were literally tortured.”
Turley said the adults charged with caring for the children were often the devotees who were deemed unfit for other duties in the movement, such as selling devotional books and proselytizing on the street.
“Some of the people running theses schools had no earthly idea what they were doing. They had no idea how to manage children, how to discipline them or how to take care of them.”
“The philosophy is pure,” the Hare Krishna woman said of the movement to which she still belongs, “but the people have misused it and gone to the extreme and even perverted it. (My son ) just feels like he has been betrayed by his authorities. They are preaching the philosophy, which is to be pure. We take vows of no illicit sex and no intoxication. You can see the dichotomy: They are preaching one thing and than breaking that principle.”
Schools Now Shut
On Monday, the Hare Krishna boarding schools in the United States have been shut down and many Hare Krishna children are home-schooled, the Hare Krishna devotee said. The younger generation of devotees, she said, is committed to making the movement safe for its children. The gurakulas Luczyk attended in Mayapur and Vrindaban no longer exist as children’s facilities.
“For leaders of the movement it is very painful,” the devotee said of the lawsuit. “In their own ways, they tried to rectify things — but they didn’t. People have gone to the leaders and said ‘Please, do something’ and there hasn’t been any significant result from that. That is why these people are taking action.”
Luczyk said that until a few years ago he could not speak about the horrors he says he experienced at the hands of the Hare Krishna teachers. He said the abuse has had lasting effects: He is unemployed and has trouble finding work because of what he describes as a lack of self-esteem. “I just have a fear of people,” he also says.
“I always thought that this stuff would never come out,” Luczyk said. “A lot of suffering and internal pain does not always come up to the surface. For me, it was just blocked right out.”
http://www.harekrsna.org/gurupoison/support/turley-case.htm
http://www.harekrsna.org/gurupoison/support/turley.htm
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