Girl, 7, subjected to sex ritual: inquiry

A WOMAN has told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Sydney she moved into the ashram in the foothills of Mangrove Mountain on the NSW Central Coast with her mother and sister in the 1970s.

At a public hearing on Thursday, she recalled the initiation in a hut across the river from the ashram. The woman, given the pseudonym APR, said five or six male swamis were there. The man who raped her was the spiritual leader and founder of the Mangrove Satyananda ashram, Swami Akhandananda. Akhandananda was jailed in 1989 for indecent dealings with four girls, but was released when the High Court overturned the conviction in 1991. He died six years later. APR told the commission of the fear and hardship she endured at the ashram where her mother was a devotee of Akhandananda. "Her personality was so enmeshed with what was going on in Mangrove I felt I could not reach her," she said. APR said she also had a memory of Satyananda, the founder of the worldwide yoga movement, lying on top of her. He visited Australia and she felt he chose her as his favourite and at times, he would say she was the only child allowed to touch him or sit with him on his special seat. APR is the second witness to recount sexual abuse by Satyananda, whose yoga movement had millions of followers and thousands of ashrams across the world. He was looked on as an enlightened god-like figure on his annual visits to Australia in the 1970s and 80s and preached abstinence from sex as a path to enlightenment. He died in 2009 at the age of 85. On Thursday, Bhakti Manning who lived at his ashram in India told the hearing she was just 17 when he had "violent, aggressive sex" with her. Other women were in the room when this happened and she understood he had sex with them too. She has only spoken out this year because in ashram society, if she spoke out, she would be considered the criminal "for being a bad disciple for not accepting that what the guru had chosen to do to me for my own good". She tried to get the Satyananda movement to address the child abuse issue in the 90s. Witnesses have told of violent beatings inflicted on children by Akhandananda and his partner Shishy, who became their legal guardians when parents signed over rights. Tim Clark, who was a child at the ashram in the 80s, said he was violently beaten and sexually abused by some of the female swamis.