Bhagavan Das (William Erlichman) And ISKCON Child Abuse (pt. 1)

 

https://krishna1008.blogspot.com/2017/03/bhagavan-das-and-his-daughter-manjari.html

http://www.bhagavanacbsp.com/biography.php?

"Unless we are ordered by Kṛṣṇa or Kṛṣṇa's representative, we cannot violate the morality of this world. That is not possible. It is a great philosophy. It requires little brain to understand." - (Srila Prabhupada, May 6th 1973 LA)

Bhagavan Das (William Erlichman)

Giving up a medical career in 1969 to establish K.C. in America, nine years later, renouncing family life to enter the sannyas order, were sacrifices he felt at the time were necessary to move forward in spiritual life. He would later come to re-examine these choices and with new insights, redefine himself.

[PADA: To become an artificial sannyasa or guru is often described around ISKCON as "making lots of sacrifices." Whereas Srila Prabhupada describes artificial sannyasa and especially false gurus as "cheaters" who are destined for a lower birth. Indeed scripture says these false gurus "are destined for the most obnoxious regions of the universe." 

It is not "a sacrifice" to cheat others -- that one is more advanced than one is. Same holds true in the material world. Sometimes it is discovered that some person with no medical degree or training is claiming to be a full fledged PHD surgery doctor, and he is caught performing botched surgeries. 

No one thinks this artificial and cheating doctor has "made a lot of sacrifices" to better the world. Rather the false doctor is declared to be a dangerous criminal and he is handed over to the courts for prosecution. The same thing happens in God's justice system, cheaters are known to be criminals, and they have to suffer severe consequences. 

This is not "a sacrifice" to move things forward, this process is moving the cheater and everyone of his victims -- backwards. "Cheaters and the cheated -- all go to hell" is Srila Prabhupada's basic take on this. A few of Bhagavan's ex-disciples told PADA that their whole experience with Bhagavan was totally devastating, and they doubt they will ever recover in this lifetime. Basically, his personality cult destroyed lives, and many lives evidently. And his whole program ruined the name of ISKCON and Krishna and thereby blocked millions of people from taking to Krishna consciousness, seeing it as a bizarre cult.

And did we forget to mention his whole zone was devastated when he "blooped out" leaving behind many of his "disciple" dependents in a dire situation, and causing a lot of financial problems for his zone and these devotees, never mind many other problems. Never mind Bhagavan does not seem to ever explain, what exactly is a "blooped guru" in the first place? He just leaves all this mess unresolved. The guru is the successor to God, and then, he bloops?

When Bhakti Tirtha swami got cancer, some of his followers were saying he got sick from taking our karma, and they thought he was making great sacrifices. Nope, we were all told NOT to take karma because we would suffer. Violating the order of guru is not sacrifice, it is deviation. At some point, Bhagavan and others who unauthorizedly took karma from their disciples will have to take responsibility for these sins. And no, they are not as good as Jesus who is qualified to take these sins. They will have to suffer for violating this system. Of course a lot of them already are suffering, if not dead.]  

One of the principle waves that began to dislodge the way he saw himself and the society he was an integral part in directing, was the unfolding of perverse physical and mental child abuse that in time began to surface everywhere. As the years passed, it became more and more flagrant, to the point where it had taken root amongst his peers at the highest levels of authority. 

[PADA: And where did Bhagavan come out strongly to alert the parents, the police, the FBI, the public media, or anyone else about this issue on a large scale? Is there any record of his making a public objection / alert to this issue? Did he write a public "position paper" about the abuse to alert the ISKCON citizens of the abuse crisis? None that we know of?

Did he make a PADA type web site which exposed the molester infrastructure? Or make leaflets to hand out at Krishna festivals before there was the internet (like we did)? Or help us with a lawsuit once the suicides started, like what we did? 

It looks like instead, Bhagavan has been promoting Narayan Maharaja, chief "rasika guru" for the molester messiahs project. Tamal used to say his two favorite people are Narayan Maharaja and (molester webs and nests orchestrator) -- Bhavananda. And then Bhagavan starts to promote the NM program, and gets his daughter to promote that program. Lets promote the biggest cheer leaders of the molester messiahs project? 

In sum, Narayan Maharaja was well known to be constantly promoting the leaders of the GBC's molester messiahs project and giving them "rasika classes." Yes, there is banning, beating, molesting, lawsuits and murders going on -- left, right and center, and that program is coming from the "rasika" associates of God? 

And NM is the darling "rasika guru" of their group. And NM is criticizing us dissenters as "ritvik poison," because we are protesting his molester messiah's rasika club. How is this helping contain the molesting, when we are saying the leaders of the molesting program are "rasika" level and God's successors aka gurus? The leaders of the banning, beating, molesting, lawsuits and orchestrated murders project are -- God's "rasika classes" devotees? Even BV Puri said that teaching rasika to these folks is "worse than any sahajiya."

Some other ISKCON leaders also had their children molested, but we won't mention their names herein to embarrass their children. Therefore, various leaders including Bhagavan knew their was a molesting program, yet it seems self evident -- almost none of this was reported to the authorities by these leaders, nor were there big temple meetings being held to alert the parents of this issue etc. "Monkey On A Stick" book authors cited that the GBC are "gutless wonders." 

Maybe a few reports were made here and there, but not a coordinated effort, and not to a significant enough degree to really confront the issue. Nor evidently did any leader hold a public istagosthi meeting with the devotees, or a public news media conference etc. to signal an alarm for the citizens of ISKCON. At least none that we heard of, and / or arrange to pull these kids out of that process. 

Nor were hardly any perps ever arrested and charged with a crime. "As the years passed it became more flagrant" and that means there was simply one wave of victims on top of the next wave, with little actual administrative oversight to fix the issue. Nor did Bhagavan make his own justice steering committee with his own disciples to investigate the issue and make a report to the GBC, and confront them with the issue, with a threat to go public or make a lawsuit if they did not act, at least none that we ever heard of.]

His departure was a rejection of the current denials of the status quo way of thinking about the pervasive child abuses within ISKCON… and it was indeed a blow to the functionality of the institution as a whole. 

[PADA: If rampant child abuse is the "status quo," then someone needs to raise the alarm to help the current victims and prevent further victims. Simply walking away is not fixing these issues. And it is enabling further victimization. When we were addressing this issue with the lawsuit in 1997, no one ever even mentioned Bhagavan's name to us as a person who was trying to address the issue at the time. 

The house is on fire, people are dying, so let me -- walk away? How does that solve the crisis? All kinds of GBC folks "resign," but then they do not really come out and explain the bad situation, or come up with a realistic plan to fix it, so it remains "status quo." I walked away, to enable the status quo? 

Many victims said there has been "a conspiracy of silence," and that seems to be the case overall. Or worse, a conspiracy to shut down us protesters. We have been harassed by GBC people, Sridhara people, and the Narayan Maharaja people who said for example that we are "offending the dear Tamal tree of Radha." The same "dear virulent tree" -- that has been sprouting the leaves and fruits of their poisonous molesting process all through the society -- using their agents like Bhavananda.] 

However, after he left, instead of the focus being on the real issues of child abuse, which many in ISKCON were trying to brush under the rug and even defend against, the focus and mis-information perpetrated, became about his “fall down with a woman” and his failure as a guru and the failure of all the gurus…

[PADA: Bhagavan was not known to be publicly blowing the lid off the corruption in ISKCON, including the molesting, that we know of? His fall down with a woman is simply apparent evidence he was avoiding dealing with the molesting crisis -- and so many other crisis -- on a meaningful basis -- and he was instead taking advantage of some female. 

He and most other leaders were basically avoiding confronting these problems wholesale. Again, Narayan Maharaja was Tamal's biggest defender at the time. Our associates were in Dallas telling Narayan Maharaj -- Tamal is not a guru, and he was angry at our associates. 

Meanwhile at that very exact time, the courts were preparing to sue Tamal in Dallas for the molesting. Narayan Maharaj was propping up the leaders of the molester infrastructure -- even Tamal -- the leader of Dallas. Later on Bhagavan's daughter became a huge local promoter of Tamal's bucket boy -- BV Narayan Maharaja. Evidently Bhagavan thought the cheer leaders of the Tamal / Bhavananda regime were some sort of saints, when they are actually persons who helped prop up the molester messiahs regime. 

And then NM said the children are just getting karma, as if NM is authorized to hand off children to a molesting cult. And he thinks he is not part of the karma of supporting a criminal regime. Sorry, NM is FULLY implicated. Srila Prabhupada says the supporters are implicated.

The children are "getting their karma" from BV Narayan Maharaja through the regime he is aiding and abetting. And BV Narayan is authorized to assist the molesting guru regime, because he is free of karma? Sorry, no one is authorized to cause children to suffer, and all the adults should have taken action to fix the problem. And saying "this is all karma" is a cop out from taking responsibility.

I was ordered by Jayatirtha to go to France to pick up a baby girl whose mother had left Bhagavan's zone and she fled back to UK to live with her mother. The father then came back and kidnapped the baby and took it back to Bhagavan's zone. So I had to go and rescue the baby girl, and all of this was widely reported in all the public newspapers at the time. 

Then the mother made a detailed newspaper account of how terribly women and children were being treated at Bhagavan's farm, while he was living in four star hotels like a Saudi Prince. When I got to the customs gate in UK, they knew that I did not need a passport for the baby girl. They knew right away who the baby was because -- her story was all in the newspapers. "Oh righty then, that is THE BABY."  

This is not the way to treat the citizens, plain and simple. Bhagavan also kicked out maybe 20 couples from his zone, with their babies, and they were left stranded at the Paris train station with no money. Jayatirtha had to rescue them as well. They told me they had no diapers and baby food and were left there by Bhagavan because they failed to recognize he is the new messiah on planet earth. Now all of a sudden, he has repackaged himself as the biggest caring devotee, claiming others were heartless. This is why a devotee told me -- there is a denial epidemic in ISKCON.] 

For him, these abuses began from the very inception of the gurukula system in Dallas in 1973 and ended with his leaving the movement in 1986, after finding out that even his own children were being abused. He left with a mother who was coping with the fact that her children had also suffered abuse. To this day, he considers these children to be his immediate family.

[PADA: And evidently little was ever reported to the authorities, few perps were arrested, and Bhagavan has been promoting the biggest bucket boy of Tamal and the whole molester regime, BV Narayan Maharaja.]

His son Vaisnava entered the Dallas ‘gurukula’ at the age of three and a half. He returned to France, 3 years later with unsettling stories of children regularly being beaten and made to eat spilled food off the floor; violently awoken early in the morning to attend spiritual programs and forced to fast, to the point that spiritual life was becoming tasteless. Upon returning to New Mayapura, in France he found little relief in the new ashrams, where unqualified ashram teachers perpetrated terrible abuses.

[PADA: So France was little relief, but it was Bhagavan's zone. How was he correcting things on his own territory? Bhagavan evidently did not know about all sorts of problems when I went there. He was living in a four star hotel while there was a huge pile of stinky trash at the temple foyer and the shower was full of dirty water because the plumbing was broken. Krishna lives in the dirty ghetto, Bhagavan lives in a fancy hotel?]

Vaisnava recalled: “When I told my father what Sudarsana was doing - locking us up for days in closets as punishment for minor disobediences, hitting some boys so hard he would break broomsticks over their backs and then later, turn around and perversely try to touch them… he was in shock. He called Sudarsana into his room with us present. After it was apparent that what we were saying was true, in a rage he pushed him against the wall, grabbed his throat, lifted him off the ground and kicked him out of New Mayapura for good.” Unfortunately that was too mild a punishment.

[PADA: Well yes, no criminal charges were made evidently?]

Guru Gauranga: What other incidents came to your attention?

Bhagavān: After Prabhupāda’s departure I was traveling in America with Ramesvara Swami. We met at the Denver temple and it so happened that when we arrived, it came to the surface that the ashrama teacher Chakradara, was abusing the boys terribly. The fathers approached us angered and confused. 

I asked myself how had this cannibalistic behavior taken root within our ashrams? I was shocked and disturbed, overall troubled by this level of darkness. I told the fathers to take him into the woods and beat him.

[PADA: But not calling the police and have this perp arrested? And when perps were kicked out of one place, they could move to another ISKCON place. There was no coordinated process of administration of the issue. Nor did Bhagavan make any such program that we know of. So they are cannibals, but no strong action is taken to contain them?]

GG: What went through your mind when you began to hear these stories?

B: For me, shock and disbelief how anyone could get twisted pleasure from the sexual abuse of children - especially from people for whom self-control was supposed to be a way of life. In the beginning it wasn’t something we were on the lookout for. The first knee jerk reaction was to get rid of the symptom by expelling the perpetrators and making them feel some level of pain. Unfortunately, in other places, the incidents along with the perpetrators were minimized or ignored to avoid embarrassing public attention.

[PADA: OK that is what was the real problem, these issues were being swept under the rug, not being prosecuted or made public info to the devotees in istagoshti meetings, and so it was becoming a sort of haven for deviants.]

In the name of being spiritually advanced and determined, detachment from family life - from affection for wife and children, was a Spartan regime that crippled relationships. Few recognized the denials and dangers in that thinking, which weakened the firewall of a parent’s natural protective powers and left children vulnerable, exposed and subjected to demented caretakers. 

We were up in our ideological heads with no feeling or intuition that our own children were in danger. Fear of physical and emotional intimacy provided an opening for un-lovingness to enter. Far from being a gurukula, it was in many cases becoming a cesspool of perversion, spawned by deep-rooted sexual misunderstandings.

[PADA: The leaders were at the head of this "weakened firewall." They should have set the example of taking strong criminal prosecution on any criminal activity, especially regarding children. The parents were weak. Fine, but that is another issue, the leaders are the persons primarily responsible to see to the welfare of the citizens, especially vulnerable citizens like children. Instead the leaders are having affairs (which is a form of child molesting). 

Srila Prabhupada says when a guru has sex with a follower it is the same as a father having sex with his daughter. And Bhagavan was part of that regime. People were then worshiping sexual predators as their gurus, which spread the molester beeja all over the society. And Narayan Maharaja was mixing the molester beeeja with conjugal rasika beeja of pure devotees, making a full blown sahajiya molester cult. And he was saying the ritviks are the problem, and they are the main group protesting his molesting messiah's process. 

And this is the same type problem we are having with Sanat / Steve Voith. He knew there was a molesting problem and he also did not report it. But it is the duty of all human adults to report and contain that problem, whether they are leaders or peons. That is the duty of all adult humans, whatever their position is. Notice, all of these people, including the GBC cult, Sridhara cult, Narayan cult, Sanat / Mukunda / Prahlad / Janardan / Krishna Kirtan / HKC Jaipur cults et al. ... all of them opposed PADA? Is there an echo around here? ys pd 

ys pd]

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