by Karen Jonson
Clearly, the grandmother was supportive of the “relationship” between her granddaughter and Kripalu. In the summer of 2008, she escorted the child on her first trip to India, along with two other women from Barsana Dham. One of the women told me the grandmother said: “Don’t let any Indian men near her. She belongs to Maharaji.”
Later, during that trip, the young girl told this same woman what she did with Kripalu in his bedroom, including oral sex and intercourse. The girl believed she was a gopi sharing intimate activities with Krishna.
I also learned about two other girls who had been taken to Kripalu in 2005—both of whom contracted infections. One of them was crying bitterly about her experience to her mother, who had known Kripalu since she was a young girl.
She told another woman: “I had to go through the same thing when I was her age.”
85
Ana’s Horror Story
A Mother’s Nightmare
Author’s Note: I wrote this chapter for the first edition of my book. But after Prakash’s trial, a young girl, “Ana,” who had been raped by Kripalu in India decided to sue JKP. Her mother, Rachel, asked me to remove this chapter until after the trial, so as not to give away any information in advance to the cult.
The pre-trial phase dragged on for three years as each party executed the typical steps to prepare for trial. I was interviewed over the phone by the lawyer, and later scheduled for a deposition. However, it kept getting rescheduled. In the end I was not deposed, but I was ready to be a witness at the trial if they needed me. Meanwhile, a number of JKP people were deposed, including Prabhakari.
Finally, the trial was scheduled for late August 2014. I’d always assumed JKP would settle out of court before allowing Kripalu’s secrets to be exposed in a court of law. And that is exactly what happened just weeks before the trial date.
Naturally, the settlement offer came with a confidentiality clause. So I don’t know how much the young woman received from the cult. Whatever it was, it wasn’t enough. Here is her story, entwined with her mother’s. (Names have been changed to protect her and her family’s privacy.) At the end of this chapter, I share excerpts from the trial documents, including some of Ana’s own words.
* * *
RACHEL AND HER FAMILY STARTED VISITING the ashram in the mid-1990s—her vivacious and adorable two blonde daughters where just four and six. Rachel and her husband were enamored with Prakash from the start. Their daughters steered clear of him, often hiding behind their mother in satsang.
Originally from Eastern Europe, the family had moved to California. They traveled to the ashram regularly, including for the annual Intensives in the fall. They became model devotees, even turning one room of their home into a prayer room and hosting twice weekly satsang meetings. They had Radha-Krishna deities in the room, and their daughters served them food. The girls took Indian dance classes, and the whole family studied Hindi. The girls always performed at the Intensives’ closing ceremonies and other ashram events throughout the year.
One day in early 2004 I realized I hadn’t seen the family in a while. I asked Lois where they were. “They left Swamiji,” she said.
“What happened?” I asked, shocked that such a devotional family would ever leave.
Lois hesitated for a few moments. Then she said conspiratorially: “They went to India by themselves and did a lot of seva. When they were told how much they owned Maharaji, they got angry and left.”
I was lost in thought at the revelation. It made no sense. After all, by this time everyone knew about the money sevas and how quickly they added up. It seemed a strange end to what seemed like a perfect devotional family life. There was not much more I could do with the information, except forget about it and move on. I personally did not know the family well. I’d never really spoke to Rachael in those days. It was only later, when Eric was looking for women who’d been sexually abused that I learned her horrifying story.
It happened after Kate talked to Eric. He asked her if she knew of any other women he could talk to, and she gave him Rachael’s name. Eric called her, and she told him her story, including an incident that happened to her youngest daughter. She also said she feared something worse had happened to her oldest daughter, Ana. But she told him she did not want her children’s story told in the newspaper, only her own. Then she asked him if he knew any other ex-devotees she could talk to. He emailed me the next day:
“I spoke to a couple in California. She has a very compelling story to tell, and is eager to find people to talk to about JKP. Her experiences - both her and her then-10-year-old daughter’s - happened about eight years ago, but she’s still quite angry about it. We spoke for over an hour, and she was very forthcoming. I told her I’d spoken to several other women (anonymously, of course) who’d had negative experiences (her’s were with Kripalu) and she begged me to pass along her name/contact info to former devotees.”
I was happy to talk to her. I wanted to reach out to every ex-follower of these two men, so none of us would ever feel alone again. I called her that evening. We had a six-hour conversation, which didn’t end until 4:00 a.m. What she shared with me was stomach churning.
It all started for Rachael and her family in the summer of 2000 in India. That was their first trip to India and mine too. Rachael and her daughters always sat near Kripalu during satsang. Her oldest daughter was 10 and the youngest was eight. Rachael was one of the women on that trip who had been invited into Kripalu’s bedroom for “private time.” I didn’t even know there was such a thing, as I was among the women who had not been invited.
Rachael was concerned about what it meant to be alone with Kripalu in his bedroom. She asked both Vishi and Sureshwari, but only received the party-line answer: “He is Krishna in human form. You’ll receive Krishna’s divine love.” Rachael delayed the encounter to the point of missing out before she and her family returned to the U.S. that summer.
Her family returned to India for the Intensive in 2002. Ana was 12 and her sister was 10. This time Rachael was lured into Kripalu’s room for the charan seva pressing ritual, along with several other women. She was mortified when, while pressing his thigh, Kripalu tried to reach up under her blouse in the dark room. She “gently moved his hand away.” But he tried again. She firmly moved his hand away. He abruptly ended the pressing session.
She spoke with the preachers again asking them: “What does this meant?” They again gave her vague answers about how Kripalu was bringing Krishna’s divine love with gopis to the Earth.
The next time she went to India was December of 2003. She stopped there with her daughters on her way to see her parents. She couldn’t help but notice that Ana, who was now 13, would not leave her side. Along with being uncharacteristically clingy she was also more mopey and somber than usual. But Rachel was not particularly worried, because the child had become dour in the past year. Rachael chalked it up to her teenage years. However, what did worry her was that Ana had become anorexic, anti-social, and had developed a disturbing habit of drawing images of people without heads and arms and with blood everywhere. Rachael hoped it was just a passing phase.
One day Rachael decided to take a walk after lunch. Her youngest daughter did not want to go, so stayed behind sitting in a chair near the prayer hall entrance. Ana stayed glued to her side. When they were far down the dirt road, she heard her youngest daughter calling out: “Mom. Mom.” She turned to find her running at full throttle toward her. When she reached her, she said: “One of Kripalu’s helpers asked me if I wanted to go into his room and ‘make love to him.’”
She said she asked the woman: “Aren’t I a little young?”
The blood drained out of her body as a light bulb switched on in her mind. “She turned to Ana: “Has this ever happen to you?” The girl shook her head no and looked down at the ground. Rachael did not believe her.
Panicking at the implication, he took her girls back to their bedroom and locked the door. She called her husband and said they needed to get out of there imm
ediately. Their flight out of India wasn’t scheduled to leave for three more days, and he couldn’t find an earlier flight. For the next 72 hours, Rachel never let her daughters leave their room. She would bring them meals, locking them in while she was gone. “We were in prison. I was scared to death,” said Rachael. “But I no longer trusted anyone there, including Swamiji and the preachers.”
When the three of them were finally out of India and back in California, she called Prakash and told him what happened to her youngest daughter. She said she feared something worse had happened to Ana. He screamed at her. “You have an evil, dirty mind and you’re going to burn in hell.” Then he said the most disturbing comment imaginable: “What’s the big deal? There wasn’t any blood was there?”
“What the hell did that mean?” she asked me.
When she got off the phone with Prakash, she called Sureshwari and told her what happened. Sureshwari began crying, but offered Rachael no help. “Sureshwari left the organization within weeks of our phone conversation,” Rachael told me.
Oh my god! I’d always suspected something horrible and dark was behind Sureshwari’s sudden and unexplained departure. Now I finally knew what it was.
I told Rachael everything I had discovered about the organization since Kripalu’s arrest in Trinidad. Before we got off the phone she said with determination: “I’m going to talk to Ana again, and this time she is going to tell me exactly what happened to her.”
Despite everything I now knew about these two soulless men, my next conversation with Rachael absolutely ripped me apart. She had talked Ana and entered a mother’s worst nightmare. During their first trip to India, one of the preachers had taken Ana into Kripalu’s bedroom, where he attempted to kiss and undress her. But the 10-year-old resisted. Finally, he gave up and ordered her out of his room. A preacher told her pointedly not to tell her parents.
On their next trip when the girl was 12, Kripalu finally got what he wanted. In fact, he repeatedly raped Ana during that trip. Prabhakari had taken her to him and stood outside the bedroom door. Inside the chamber of horrors, Kripalu forced the girl to take off her clothes. Then he mounted her, shoved his semi-hard erection inside of her using his fingers to force it in. He then lay on top of her and moved his hips around. As the child cried, the wrinkled, sweaty, old man wiggled on top of her.
Now Rachael understood why Prakash had said: “There wasn’t any blood was there?” It was because Kripalu was too old to get a full erection, so he was incapable of making her bleed. She also knew why in some of her daughter’s drawings there was a person who resembled Prabhakari, often with her head cut off and blood dripping to the floor. Ana told her Prabhakari was standing outside the bedroom door when she left his room. She told the child: “Consider this your wedding night with Krishna. Don’t ever tell anyone. Even your parents.”
Rachael also now knew why her daughter periodically received phone calls from Prabhakari: She was constantly reminding the girl not to tell anyone. Rachael asked her daughter why she didn’t tell her any of this when it happened. Her answer was devastating: “I thought you knew and approved.” In her child’s mind, she figured since her parents were such good, dedicated devotees, who believed Kripalu was God incarnate, they were fully aware of what was expected of her.
Now Rachael realized why Ana had changed so much. She immediately took her daughter to a therapist. She knew she faced a long uphill battle to help her daughter heal. She also realized it would take time to earn back her daughter’s trust. Rachel and Edward also tried to take legal action against Kripalu. But every lawyer told them some version of the same thing: Since the rape had taken place in India, there was little they could do legally about it from the U.S. Then after Prakash’s trial they found a lawyer in Texas who specialized in clergy sex abuse. And he had a clever angle. He would not go after the rapist: He would instead go after the organization and people who created an environment that allowed the rape to occur and didn’t protect the child. He would charge JKP, Prakashanand, Prabhakari, and Marsh Kent (a devotee who was “very close” to Prakash for decades) with gross negligence and vicarious liability for aiding and abetting a known rapist and not protecting the child.
Three years later, in August 2014, Ana won an out-of-court settlement.
* * *
Here are a few excerpts from the case’s legal documents filed in the Hays County Courthouse. The following is from the plaintiff’s original petition to the court outlining the facts of the lawsuit:
The instant lawsuit arises out of the repeated episodes of sexual molestation Ana… suffered because of the negligent acts and omissions of JKP Radha Madhav Dham and JKP Foundation, Inc.
Leaders of the Hindu temple… would make arrangements for female members of the Hindu temple to be molested by Kripaluji Maharaj. On many occasions, they would solicit underage girls, such as Plaintiff, to be molested by Kripaluji Maharaj. Marsha Kent was one of the leaders that would make arrangement for women to be molested by Kripaluji Maharaj. Also, Prabhakari Devi would make arrangements for women to be molested by Kripaluji Maharaj… Plaintiff… notified Prabhakari Devi that she had been molested by Kripaluji Maharaj. Instead of reporting the abuse, Prabhakari Devi told her that she was “lucky” and not to tell her parents. Prabhakari Devi instructed Plaintiff to permit Kripaluji Maharaj to further molest her. Prabhakari Devi justified the rape as a religious experience. At the time of these actions, Prabhakari Devi was vice-president of JKP Barsana Dham.
Several leaders in the Hindu Temple, including Prakashanand Saraswati, Prabhakari Devi, and Marsha Kent knew that Kripaluji Maharaj sexually molested underage girls. Prabhakari Devi knew this information when she was vice-president of JKP Barsana Dham. Prakashanand Saraswati knew this information when he was the leader and chief guru of JKP Barsana Dham. Marsha Kent knew this information when she served as a leader at JKP Barsana Dham.
Despite knowing of Maharaj’s tendencies and past actions, Defendants encouraged Plaintiff and her family to make church sponsored trips to meet with Kripaluji Maharaj, failed to warn them that he had a propensity to molest young girls and that he had done so in the past, failed to tell them that the Hindu Temple encouraged underage girls to have sex with Kripaluji Maharaj, and permitted Plaintiff to be left alone with him unsupervised. After Kripaluji Maharaj molested Plaintiff, Defendants Prakashanand Saraswati and Prabhakari Devi instructed Plaintiff to keep this information from her parents, not to report the abuse to authorities, and to continue allowing herself to be molested by the guru. The Defendants justified Kripaluji Maharaj’s action with religion.
Defendants knew that due to the position of power, authority and trust bestowed by them upon Kripaluji Maharaj and the Hindu Temple, he would have a tremendous amount of influence, authority and control over the children and families involved with the Hindu Temple, including Plaintiff… Moreover, Defendants knew or should have known that Kripaluji Maharaj presented a great risk to the children to whom he was exposed and Defendants plainly had an obligation to protect Plaintiff and other underage girls from molestation.
Defendants knew that Kripaluji Maharaj had sexually assaulted children in the past. Still, Defendants placed and maintained Kripaluji Maharaj in a position of authority over those involved with the Hindu Temple.
Exhibit K of the document included the following words in Ana’s own voice from her deposition regarding what Prabhakari had told her:
“And she told me that I should not tell my parents, that I should consider myself lucky, and blessed, and that Maharaj said that it’s a secret, and not to tell your parents, and you should, definitely, not tell your parents, and that I should consider that day when I was first molested as my marriage — day of my marriage to Lord Krishna, and she asked whether he had been inside me yet.”
The following excerpts are from the deposition of an Indian man who had accompanied Ana’s parents to Prakash’s room to discuss rumors they’d heard about rape and sexual abuse by Kripalu. The man had received a packa
ge of information from India about Kripalu’s first arrest for raping underage girls. The conversation occurred before Ana’s parents fully understood exactly what she had experienced while they were visiting the ashrams in India.
Q: Did he ever make any reference to if there wasn’t any blood, it was divine, or this was an act blessed by God, or anything like that?
A: Yeah.
After a break:
Q: We’ve been discussing the conversation that you and… (Ana’s father) and other members were having with Prakashanand Saraswati in Los Angeles regarding the events on the India Trip in 2003/2004. Do you recall that conversation?
A: Yes.
Q: Can you give us your best summary of what the confrontation was like from your and (Ana’s father’s) end? And what Prakashanand Saraswati’s official response was.
A: His response was that the touching that occurred was devotional, and that we shouldn’t make a big deal about it. And I believe they did go into details, but we kind of kept it - our main focus was to get an answer why it occurred, and he kept saying that it was a devotional action, and that we were thinking mainly with our material mind, and we need to focus on our devotional, and forget about everything else.
Q: Did he ever explain what he meant by, you’re thinking about this with your material mind?
A: No.
Q: Did Prabhakari Devi or Marsha Kent or anybody else that was in the room chime in and try to explain what had happened?
A: No.
Later in the conversation:
Q: A moment ago, you were asked about why you didn’t inform the… family before they went on their 2003 trip what you had heard from the priest from the Yuba temple.
A: Yeah.
Q: Had you been instructed by members of the organization about what you should do with that information?
A: That’s correct. They asked me to not share with anyone to the extent they told me not to share with my wife.
Q: And so by not sharing that information with the… (family) before they went on that trip, were you following exactly what the representatives of the organization asked you to do?