Child Beater Dhanurdara Swami Welcomed Back in Isk’Con

Child Beater Dhanurdara Swami Welcomed Back in Isk’Con

Stop Dhanurdhar Swami from being reinstated in ISKCON

Dhanurdhar Swami, Denis Winiker, was the head principal of the Vrindavan Gurukula Boys School from 1979 to 1986 and again from 1989 to 1995.

During that time, his violence was extreme and extensive against the boys, breaking bones and spirits of children, instilling terror and trauma into their growing child bodies.

I know boys (who are now men) who have permanent hearing damage from the blows to their heads and eardrums. When their beatings were too visible, he consciously held the boys back from the temple morning programs. When boys reached out for help through letters to their parents, all communications were censored and punished! Within an atmosphere of terror, he forced boys to finish all their food, and if they vomited as a result, they were forced to eat their own vomit from the floor! These are just a few stories that have all been testified to repeatedly!

Within his reign of terror as the head administrator, Dhanurdar maintained teachers who would also beat the children, not simply “corporal punishment”… heavy-handed, angry beatings that have lead to permanent physical and psychological damage. He allowed pedophiles to beat and rape the boys. Negligence of authority doesn’t even come close to covering it!

Most of his victims have spiritual scars that prevent them from returning to this special pilgrimage place of Krishna, due to the life-long trauma inflicted upon them. Until they can return, justice has never been served.

ISKCON Child Protection Team sought extensive testimonials, many of which were not included in the public record of their final ruling to BAN DHANURDHAR from ISKCON, removing him from all positions of authority and leadership. In 2006, he voluntarily chose to leave ISKCON, with his “disciples” and followers.

He is a SELF-APPOINTED GURU who answers to no authority. He continues to make “disciples’ and people continue to give him a platform, even though ISKCON has clearly stated that he should not have this role.

He has sidestepped ISKCON to come to MVT  Guesthouse and Restaurant, with the primary purpose of cultivating his followers. He is becoming a very visible fixture in the ISKCON Vrindavan community, recently initiating another batch of “disciples” and conducting programs within MVT residences. MVT should be upholding the lifetime restrictions on him.

2007 GBC Resolution: “Whenever the ISKCON Central Office of Child Protection rules that an offense is such as to restrict a person from serving in ISKCON in positions of leadership (including but not limited to offices of GBC, minister, zonal secretary or temple officer), the restriction must include the position of initiating guru. This restriction shall apply to all previous and future decisions of the Central Office of Child Protection.”

2018 GBC Resolution: “No person, who has been determined to have engaged in severe maltreatment of children, will be allowed to remain active in a position of authority or trust* within ISKCON, this includes activities such as leading kirtan, giving class, speaking publicly at any ISKCON event or representing ISKCON in official capacities.” “*Position of trust or authority include any of the following: 1. Having any position of leadership within ISKCON. 2. Giving class or leading kirtan in the temple or at any ISKCON related program/festival. 3. Having any service that involves contact with children.”

He has committed extreme Vaisnava Apharadh, period. He is a symbol of the cancer of child abuse perpetuated in Srila Prabhupad’s movement & anyone who continues to offer him a platform is perpetuating abuse culture, and causing continued pain in the hearts of those who suffered from his violence against children.

NOW! Dhanurdhar wants to be reinstated into ISKCON! The entire GBC: Governing Body Commission Of Srila Prabhupad, are meeting now on this on this topic in Mayapur.

He has never shown remorse and continues to initiate “disciples” and walk around in the sacred saffron robes of a sannyasi, as a representative of Srila Prabhupad, while a number of his victims have committed suicide, others are lost in many ways. We are left with a society that has normalized, minimized and silenced the abuse culture that Dhanurdhar represents.
I urge the MVT Guesthouse & Restaurant & MVT Restaurant to follow existing ISKCON laws that ban him from Srila Prabhupad’s society.

I urge the Governing Body Commission to uphold their existing laws to continue an effort of healing and reparations for those who have suffered.

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The terror and damage Dhanurdhar inflicted on his victims has left them with scars that will never go away. Now ISKCON is considering adding to their pain by allowing their tormentor to visit the temples where they are worshiping and seeking refuge, trying to cope with the damage he caused them? Not only that, but are they seriously considering allowing him to occupy an exalted position, where he gets privileged treatment? It’s worse than a slap in their faces. It’s violating them all over again and it’s sending the message that they don’t matter, that the friendship of their tormentor is more important to those in charge.

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VOICE: what the abused children have to say:

2.4 Dhanurdar Swami

Dhanurdar joined the Dallas temple as a neophyte (Bhakta Dennis Wiener) around 1972. Around 1975 he became an ashram teacher at the Vrindavan Gurukula and by 1981 he was the Principal of this gurukula. He was made a guru sometime in the late 1980’s.

Dhanurdhara Swami 2008 — child abuser beater

As the Principal of the Vrindavan Gurukula he made the decisions to engage teachers knowing their history and encouraged severity in all of our treatment. The atmosphere that Dhanurdar created for the Gurukula was one of cold hard “discipline,” based on his philosophical attitude that there was no such thing as “love” in this “material world”. We existed in a very cold uncaring environment, where there was no love or sympathy toward any of us. No attempt was made to act with compassion, empathy and fairness. We were under a nonstop onslaught of spiteful and abusive tactics intended to destroy and control our will.

Dhanurdar defended this Gurukula from anything that could threaten it’s existence. This included preventing us from saying anything about the conditions and treatment at the Gurukula. The method he and the teachers used was surveillance and tyranny; all of our correspondence was censored, inspections of our belongings, and monitoring of conversations were constant. If we even insinuated that we were being mistreated, the result would be severe and public (amongst your peers) punishment.

We were forced, through fear, to keep up the appearances and be on our best behaviour when our parents or any other guests visited. Dhanurdar and the rest of the teachers would also be very friendly with visitors and parents and made arrangements to give them all kinds of nice treatment. This was all done in such a way as to give the impression that this was the normal condition.

A memory of his stupidity, was he would want to punish one of us, he would order you to “go wait outside my room!” then you would go there and wait. You would wait there anticipating that he was going to come back and hit you or yell at you or tell you what your punishment was. Then he would come back ten minutes later, or a couple hours later and he would say, “what are you doing here?!” You would be like, “you told me to wait here.” And he was like, “no I didn’t, don’t lie.” Then he would get really pissed off at you and tell you to get out of there. It was just stupid. He was just really stupid.

There may be some question as to wether Dhanurdar knew about all of the sexual abuse perpetrated by his ’employees’ on the children. It appeared to us that Dhanurdar either didn’t know about it, or chose to ‘act’ ignorant.

Regardless, he is responsible for creating and maintaining the environment that allowed, and even encouraged sexual molestation of young boys by the teachers and supervisors. Throughout his years as principal, he took to active steps to change or improve the conditions for the children under his protection.

Indeed, he totally advocated and participated in the use of violent discipline and mistreatment to make us submit. He never allowed us to speak in our defense against accusations. He was in favor of hitting us and other forms of humiliating punishments. All of his actions engendered a great deal of anger and distrust toward him, our teachers, and even our parents because of their having put us there. A side of me is very reluctant to believe that he was totally unaware. This is because they had regular meetings where they discussed their strategies and policies.

One perception of many of the boys’, was that Dhanurdar was really stupid and naive. It was common knowledge among us that the teachers like Ananta Rupa and Niragadev were abusing children and having sex with each other. Dhanurdar seemingly acted as though he knew nothing of these abusers’ pedophile history and their on going abuse at his school. An aspect about this that doesn’t make sense to me is that Dhanurdar must have known about the allegations of child abuse on Ananta Rupa and those older boys before they came from Mayapur. The only explanations I can assume, are that Danurdar either knew but didn’t care or choose to acknowledge the information, or he was just really naive or stupid.

We referred to him as stupid because for him to be unaware, we felt, would have required a certain amount of stupidity or naivete. If, in reality, he wasn’t aware, even though it was going on all around, these teachers must have been glad to use this to their advantage.

Dhanurdar reserved preferential treatment toward the few students whom he thought could effect his status in the Indian community. There was one child, for example, who was the son of a mayor or some other district official, who Dhanurdar was extra attentive. He was also preferential to initiates and to some of the children from poorer Indian families. To the children from the west, it was clearly interpreted that Dhanurdar and the teachers paid extra attention and care for the Indian children.

Isthaghosti 1990 at Gita Nagari, Pennsylvania

In 1990 there was a community meeting, an Isthaghosti, at the Gita Nagari farm attended by Dhanurdar, Ravindra, Satsvarupa, and around thirty five devotees.

The subject of child abuse came up. Dhanurdar mentioned an incident about a couple of teachers namely Ananta Rupa and Manihar. After 1986, ISKCON finally started to slightly admit that there was a problem with abuse in the gurukulas. By that time the molestation had become soo blatant. It was also around this time when the guru Bhavananda’s pedophile behavior could no longer be covered up. Dhanurdar, then principal of Vrindavan gurukula, recalled that he had made those teachers leave the Vrindavan temple. He sent Ananta Rupa to Bombay. Not surprisingly, Ananta Rupa was later appointed vice president of the Bombay temple and allowed to open an orphanage, where he undoubtedly continued his molestation of young boys.

Some time later, Dhanurdar recounted that with some effort he had gone to the Bombay temple and had Ananta Rupa removed. Subsequently this man was forwarded to another temple where he continued to sexual abuse boys until Dhanurdar told the temple authorities the man’s past and again with considerable effort had him removed.

In Dhanurdar’s narration of this story, he did not appear agasted or appalled with the cyclic nature of these events. He did not seem to recognize that he was responsible for informing the new authorities of Ananta Rupa’s past history of molestation, and that he, Dhanurdar, should have made sure that his previous ’employee’ was not around children. It was as if the crime of child molestation did not merit punishment or even an effort to prevent it from happening again. Dhanurdar even seemed pleased that the ‘problem’ was solved ‘in-house’ and didn’t warrant contact of outside authorities. Dhanurdar’s main point in his narration was to emphasize how he prevented further bad publicity.

I will grant Dhanurdar one concession, his behavior did present a marked difference from the absolute complacency of the past, although his motivation was to me distorted.

I raised my hand and said that during ancient Vedic times such a crime would probably be punished with death. I continued that we are not in that time, so we should use the legal means and go to the police and let the law take appropriate measures. The response from the panel and the audience was one of horror and repulsion. Everybody there looked at me like I was some lunatic radical person. As if to say, “how dare you even mention that?” I seemed to be immediately written off as some angry, dramatic kid. — nch

http://www.iskcon-truth.com/childabuse/childabu.htm

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PSA & open memo to the International GBC and ISKCON MVT Guesthouse.
(child abuse)

I have been making a concerted effort to not allow the known, violent abuser of children Dhanurdhara Swami ruin my experience of Vrindavan.

Yet, I literally have to cross his path, just a stones throw from where he committed atrocities against innocent children, as he comes to MVT regularly to eat and cultivate his followers. Every single time I come to Vrindavan, I have to face the horrific history that he created here!

I know boys (who are now men) who have permanent hearing damage from the blows to their heads & eardrums. When their beatings were too visible, he consciously held the boys back from the temple morning programs. When boys reached out for help through letters to their parents, all communications were censored and punished!

Within an atmosphere of terror, he forced boys to finish all their food, and if they vomited as a result, they were forced to eat their own vomit from the floor! These are just a few stories that have all been testified to repeatedly!

Within his reign of terror as the head administrator, Dhanurdar maintained teachers who would also beat the children, not simply “corporal punishment”… heavy-handed, angry beatings that have lead to permanent physical and psychological damage. He allowed pedophiles to beat and rape the boys. Negligence of authority doesn’t even come close to covering it!

Most of his victims have spiritual scars also that prevent them from returning to this special pilgrimage place of Krishna, due to the life-long trauma inflicted upon them. Until they can return, justice has never been served.

NOW! Dhanurdhar wants to be reinstated into ISKCON! The entire GBC: Governing Body Commission Of Srila Prabhupada, are voting on this now on this topic in Mayapur.

He has never shown remorse and continues to initiate “disciples” and walk around in the sacred saffron robes of a sannyasi, while a number of his victims have committed suicide, others are lost in many ways. And we are left with a society that has normalized, minimized and silenced the abuse culture that Dhanurdhar represents.

Those who follow him have to choose willful ignorance, cognitive dissonance, denial of facts OR lose faith in this path. I urge the MVT Guesthouse & Restaurant & MVT Restaurant to follow existing ISKCON laws that ban him from Srila Prabhupad’s society.

I urge the Governing Body Commission to uphold their existing laws to continue an effort of healing and reparations for those who have suffered.

I have been pausing on public comments about this, in hopes to more officially contact the MVT Trustees, but this current vote in Mayapur is urgent and currently relevant.

Please contact your local GBC, share and inform publicly and remain informed as compassionate to those who have suffered from his torment.

Thank you

https://krishna1008.blogspot.com/2020/02/gbc-considers-reinstating-dhanurdar.html
http://www.harekrsna.com/sun/editorials/08-06/dhanurdhar.pdf
http://harekrsna.org/iskcon-child-abuse.htm
http://www.iskcon-truth.com/childabuse/abuse.htm
http://www.iskcon-truth.com/childabuse/childabu.htm