Restoring Legitimacy to the Review of Keshava Bharati's case
Keshava Bharati now joins Lokanath as the second ISKCON sannyasi and guru against whom an ISKCON body made a finding of child sexual abuse, and who is nonetheless free to continue serving as guru and sannyasi.
PADA: This is great news! Gonorrhea Pada's position as ISKCON's messiah of the jagat has been restored. He is back to absorbing sins like Jesus. Get your kiddies to line up so they can drink his foot bath water.
Where do I sign up! All those crying people who missed him can rejoice, Gonorrhea Pada is back in the messiah's Vyasa post! Urmila's Gonorrhea Pada pals in Hillsborough North Carolina can quit crying, he is back as the saddle as the successor to God and Jesus and overall messiah of the jagat. Jesus can take sins, and so can "diksha guru" (absorbs sins like Jesus) Gonorrhea Pada, just ask the ISKCON SABHA folks!
Someone asked me, don't these Urmila ilk folks in Hillsborough North Carolina know that worshiping Gonorrhea Pada is bogus? And very likely, he cannot absorb sins like a diksha guru and Jesus? Well any village drunk knows it is bogus, so why don't they know?
M dasi says -- they ALL know it is bogus, but they want your kids to worship deviants -- so they can burn up and destroy your kid's faith in God. That is the general consensus developing.
Another person asked PADA, how can we sing the guruvaskatam guru glorification prayers, to -- Gonorrhea Pada? Good question, ask Urmila's SABHA folks. But yeah, a drunken bum person on Market Steet knows worshiping Gonorrhea Pada is not bona fide, but they don't? Or they know and they are doing this on purpose to contaminate ISKCON and destroy its children?
ys pd
angel108b@yahoo.com
An Open Letter to the GBC and the Devotee Community
Respected Vaishnavas,
Please accept my obeisances, All Glories to Srila Prabhupada.
The Child Protection Oversight Committee (CPOC) has just set aside the CPO's decision on Keshava Bharati “Swami” (KB), citing a "gross miscarriage of justice."
The original CPO adjudication had found that, on a balance of probabilities, it was more likely than not that KB sexually abused a 10-year-old girl.
The CPO adjudication imposed that KB could not visit any ISKCON centre or project, including nama-hattas, festivals, or ISKCON-organised or affiliated programs in Spain. He could not hold any position of leadership or management, even in an advisory capacity. He could not give class, lead kirtana or harinama, or do any public preaching, including recording audiobooks or editing work for which he is publicly credited.
He could not perform brahminical services or public worship, such as offering arati, going on the altar, or offering a garland to Srila Prabhupada. And per the 2007 GBC resolution #312, Clarifying Leadership Standards, Part B, he could not give first, second, or sannyasa initiations or accept new disciples for siksa.
He was also required to write a letter of apology to the victim and pay a token $1,000 to support ISKCON youth.
Now the apology and the payment are gone. Two restrictions survive, no service involving children and no presence where the complainant or her immediate family are present.
A September 20 addendum states that there is no remaining institutional restriction on KB holding leadership or management positions, teaching, leading kirtana, performing public worship, giving initiations, or accepting new disciples.
The GBC resolution #312 states that anyone found responsible for child sexual abuse by the CPO is barred from serving as a guru or in any managerial capacity.
Given that there is a CPO ruling against KB and that CPOC has not explicitly re-investigated the merits of this adjudication and deemed them unfounded, how is the decision to reinstate KB legitimate?
The request for a review was filed by Jayadvaita Swami, Mayapur Shasi das (a disciple of KB), and Gita-Govinda dasi (Sharanagati Watson), on KB's behalf.
When the GBCs were discussing measures to address the child abuse perpetrated by Dhanurdhara, Jayadvaita Swami was one of his most vocal defenders. As a disciple, Mayapur Shasi is hardly an objective party, and Sharanagati has also advocated for Laxmimoni, another individual that was found responsible for extreme child abuse by the CPO.
To the best of my knowledge, the track record of these devotees does not show any significant interest in championing the protection of children. A brief note on Jayadvaita Swami's involvement. He is one of a number of very senior ISKCON leaders who, in my view, have repeatedly used the full weight of their status and influence to shield friends and peers from accountability in matters involving allegations of child abuse.
It is extremely rare to see a devotee of that standing use the same influence to protect the victims. The contrast is painfully obvious, and it points to a deeply problematic cultural trait that helps minimize the abuse of Vaishnava children and shield those who perpetrate it. Given the clear bias of the team requesting the review, the professional thing to do would have been to verify that the evidence they provided was accurate and complete.
Instead, the CPOC review document states that they worked from the exhibits the petitioners supplied and the two written decisions, and that it was never given the CPO's internal case file. CPOC did not reach out to the devotees who conducted the original adjudication or to the victim.
The review identified some procedural failures. They claim that the CPO admitted not sharing certain statements with KB, that the case was not fully investigated, that confidentiality was breached, and that a restriction on his residence was added by the Director in a way the Guidelines do not authorize.
I don't dismiss these. But the review is also more mixed than its outcome suggests.
Given that CPOC did not have access to all the original case files and did not confer with the former CPO team, it is difficult to establish how they substantiated any of these claims. On several of the twelve issues raised by the CPOC review document, including the right to assistance, the interim restrictions, and the Vyasa-puja intervention, CPOC found no violation of a specific provision, and on one point it said it could not conclude bad faith on the part of the former CPO team.
It then folded these into a cumulative finding of "gross miscarriage of justice," I want to reiterate that this is a conclusion reached without the CPO's complete case files. The real question here is how these failures justified wiping out the entire adjudication, including the sanctions, or whether the proportionate remedy was to establish the validity of any real defects and fix them, re-investigate properly, while keeping protective restrictions in place in the meantime.
The CPOC document says that its decision is without prejudice to a properly conducted re-adjudication, but as far as I can see they have no plans to re-adjudicate. What troubles me most is that the process has turned into a bureaucratic game in which nobody takes responsibility.
The CPOC set aside the CPO's decision but said it takes no position on whether the restrictions on leadership, initiations, and public worship were warranted, and referred that question to the Leadership Conduct Office, the Sannyasa Ministry, and the Guru Services Committee.
Those bodies then told the CPOC they had never imposed any restrictions of their own, and the Leadership Conduct Office said it had no objection to KB resuming his services because the restrictions originated with the CPO. The addendum then declared that, with the CPO's decision set aside, no institutional restriction remains.
Each body points to another, and no one has decided whether a man the CPO found more likely than not to have sexually abused a child should be representing Srila Prabhupada, initiating disciples, and holding leadership positions. The outcome is the same as if someone had ruled that he should, except that no one is answerable for it.
There is also the question of KB's own words. Early in the process he wrote a detailed letter, which was part of the original adjudication, expressing guilt and remorse. For context, here are some excerpts: "I apologize if I misled you or anyone else, especially xxx, into thinking that I feel or ever felt that my offense against x was a simply part of other mistakes I made in xxx.
My face to face apology to xxx was a very deep thing to me. I understood and still understand how serious my behaviour toward her was."
And: "In the beginning, I thought of you like a daughter. Your father was my xxx and xxx and with time I felt close to your family. I began to play with you in that mood, and then I lost control. I'm so sorry, truly sorry."
Later in the letter he went on to write that at one point his guilt was so extreme that it had brought him close to taking his own life. I know that KB later recanted, and that two doctors have stated that he was seriously ill and cognitively impaired during that period.
It is however also important to note that the letter itself is clear, well articulated and suggests that he was fully cognizant at the time, but more importantly it confirmed the allegations made by the victim. CPOC claims that the original decision did not engage with that medical evidence or with his final statement. But, if true, that is a reason to have the evidence weighed properly, not a reason to set the whole adjudication aside without any reassessment of his confession.
KB was adjudicated under the 2018 Guidelines, which clearly state that the appeal panel's decision "will be final" and that there is "no further process of appeal."
The 2018 Manual states that the GBC "firmly stands by, supports and confirms the evaluations and decisions previously made and rendered by the CPO."
His appeal was denied in June 2024. The route the CPOC used to reopen his case, review by an oversight committee for a "gross miscarriage of justice," appears only in the 2023 Guidelines, which I understand were ratified in December 2023 but not published until mid-2025. CPOC says it judged the case against the 2018 rules and used the 2023 Guidelines only for its authority, yet the standard it applied also comes from the 2023 version.
I support fair process, but a system that lets closed cases be reopened should apply equally to complainants, and I would like to know who made the final decision here.
After the review, Nityananda-Kari dasi, one of the CPOC members, wrote to the victim to inform her of the outcome of the review: "It is merely a procedural decision and doesn't change absolutely anything about the substance of your case."
Given that the review set aside the requirement that KB apologize to her and dropped most of the restrictions, this letter grossly understates the changes. It is unprofessional, it feels highly disrespectful to the victim, and it adds insult to injury.
It's also worth looking at who is on this committee. The CPOC was set up to ensure that CPO adjudications comply with CPO policy, and it was designed to have five members: three with a mixed legal and child protection background, an independent member who is not part of ISKCON, and a child protection expert. Their website says that it has three full-time members. Govinda Lilamrita dasi, the chair, who primarily has a legal background, Atmarama das also has a primarily legal background and Nityananda-Kari dasi who also has no significant child protection qualifications listed on her bio.
It is be reasonable to question the wisdom and rationale that led the Child Protection Oversight Committee to be designed to have 3 lawyers and only 1 child protection professional. At any rate, the team was never completed, the legal profession is nonetheless still over-represented, and the independent member and the child protection professional do not exist.
Another important structural problem with CPOC is highlighted in the KB review document. Its reviews and recommendations go to the GBC Executive Committee, which in 2023 interceded with the previous CPO administration requesting a mitigation of the sanctions imposed on KB. They are on record to have requested that the CPO to allow KB to reside at his palace in Govardhan.
There is no acknowledgment of the problem posed by the conflicts of interests of all the different parties involved and consequently no system in place to address them. This is a pervasive problem in ISKCON management.
That hasn't stopped them from getting to work. They have already overturned two cases previously adjudicated by the CPO and fully closed, plus one that was still in appeal. In all three, the CPOC ruled in favor of the accused. Three cases are a small sample, but that record deserves scrutiny, two can be a coincidence, but 3 starts to look like a pattern.
A few months ago, the CPOC's review of the Sapna case made headlines across ISKCON. It has been analyzed in depth, and several aspects of it suggest the outcome was neither professional, balanced, nor credible. The KB case follows a very similar pattern. Both cases raise serious concerns about the commitment of the CPOC team to advance child protection.
The CPOC also got off to an inauspicious start. From the outset, there was no appreciation, consultation, or even acknowledgment of the selfless years of service the outgoing CPO team had given.
The relationship between the two teams suffered, communication broke down, and the transition lacked a proper handover, both teams blame each other. It feels to me as though the new team is more concerned with undermining the professional integrity of the outgoing team than with upholding child protection. The greatest casualty of this clash is child protection.
What concerns me deeply is that the direction of the new ISKCON child protection office is making our society more dangerous for children and more friendly to abusers. And yet the international devotee community is supposed to have faith that this new system is a more professional approach and an improvement.
Keshava Bharati now joins Lokanath as the second ISKCON sannyasi and guru against whom an ISKCON body made a finding of child sexual abuse, and who is nonetheless free to continue serving as guru and sannyasi. In KB's case the finding was made by the CPO. In Lokanath's case it was made by the GBC.
I request that the CPOC publish its full reasoning, that an independent review be conducted of its three decisions, that Sapna and KB's cases be properly re-investigated and re-adjudicated with protective restrictions in place in the meantime, and that the composition of the CPOC team be restructured to have a majority of child professional child protection specialists.
AD: Guru's and sanyasis should not be leaders; that is the first point. The leaders at present practically answer to no one. We know it is brainwashing when you hear 'do not criticize, only praise.' Only a naive, gullible individual would listen to this. Many of us have fallen for this trap because we were young and impressionable. Action has to be taken—it is all well and good having a little moan on Facebook. Email Keshava Bharati (Kenneth Beck); his CPO report can be viewed on this page, search for Keshava Bharati. Email him to beg forgiveness from his victim (kbdgoswami@icloud.com)
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THE GREAT PANDEMIC HOAX
PADA: Thanks prabhu for your question. Does PADA avoid the pandemic issue? Well here in the USA people were told they had to show proof of vaccine or they were not allowed to go to work. They would be fired. So if I tell people go ahead and get fired from your job, who is going to pay them if they do not have a job? I have no facility to care for people like that. It is not something that I have the capacity to fix.
I can barely fix ISKCON, never mind the entire mundane society. So it is not my function to make devotees lose their jobs and have no income. I had a devotee lady friend here who was all paranoid about "the pandemic hoax" and she got VERY sick, could not breathe, and she was literally dying. Her blood oxygen was near death, but she did not want to go to the hospital.
But sad to hear that you are not convinced that it was a hoax ... because it was for sure. Of course something was in the air, some poison was spread, most likely toxin made in Isr lab, so people got sick and suffer, cannot deny it!
And "vaccine" is the solution! (vaccines were most likely prepared before this global psy op). So out of fear - and symptoms of disease which was real but not any "covid" they allowed to be jabbed, few times even, allowed to take paranoid and fake pscr tests only to get more poison into their bodies: "covid" was a thought construct and Iskcon gurus fell for it , most of them! The big difference it makes to understand that some strange virus was presented in mainstream media as covid and solution were "vaccines": but sadly you still do not get it, that's why you try to undermine the importance of this global genocide.
I never said that the pandemic was either valid or not valid. I dealt with it the way I thought was practical and best result. Some friends of mine had to get the shots for their job, they have never had any problems from it ever since. Why would I panic these persons now that they are part of a genocide? That makes no sense.
