Life At An Austin Ashram, A First-Person Account

Outlook India

Karen Jonson

The author of Sex, Lies and Two Hindu Gurus shares her experiences

September 16, 2013

In 1991, American writer Karen Jonson wasn’t in love and was in a dead-end job when she joined an ashram, the Jagad­guru Kripalu Parishat (JKP) in Austin, Texas, attrac­ted by local guru Prakashanand Sara­swati’s talks “about god and loving god”. The JKP proclaims the divi­nity of Kripaluji Maharaj. In the beginning, she was happy to be among a group of people who had the same feeling and purpose, picking green beans by the moonlight, cooking meals, acting in skits. After living in the ashram for 15 years, she quit in 2008, three years before Prakashanand was found guilty on 20 counts of child sex abuse. Jonson published a tell-all book, Sex, Lies and Two Hindu Gurus, which JKP followers dismiss as a ‘Christian conspiracy’. Here Jonson tells Debarshi Dasgupta how her spiritual quest went awry:

In hindsight, I always had some small doubts about both Kripalu and Prakash. But I had no proof of anything. I was also very religious and wanted to believe what they were telling us, about achieving God realisation and becoming a gopi in divine Vrindavan. All we had to do was ‘surrender’ to them, they said. So I tried really hard to do that, and whenever I stumbled, I believed it was because of my own lack of devotional qualities. So whenever I had doubts, I would push them back into the corners of my mind.

But the major onset of scepticism occurred when Kripalu was arrested in Trinidad for raping a young woman in May 2007. It was while he was on a ‘world tour’ that year for a few months. He had just spent about four weeks in the JKP ashram in Austin where I had lived full-time since April 1993. His plan was to go to Trinidad, then Canada, then come back to Austin.

Some uncomfortable events took place when he was in the Austin ashram, called Barsana Dham at the time (the name was changed to Radha Madhav Dham later, after Prakashanand fled to Mexico on his own cases becoming public). For the first time ever, I was invited to Kripalu’s bedroom to perform a secret ritual they called ‘charan seva’. I had never heard of it before. But I later learned that many of the women in JKP’s ashrams participated in this ritual, which took place several times every day at specific times.

During this ritual, 5-6 women are brought into the guru’s bedroom. He is lying on his back in the middle of his bed on several pillows with his arms and legs spread out. The women each climb up on his bed and kneel near one part of his body, the thigh, calf and feet. (At that time, one foot was not available for massaging due to an injury, which I later learned was tuberculosis that had gone into his bone.) We had been instructed to “press him very hard.” So we just pressed hard on whatever body part we had.

My first time was his left thigh. The room is very dark so it was hard to see what else was going on. Also, my attention was very focused on massaging him correctly, as instructed. While pressing him as hard as I could, his hand reached down to mine and tried to nudge my hand up to his groin. At the time, I naively thought he wanted me to massage him higher on his thigh, so I tried, but there was really nowhere else to go. He nudged me again. And again I went a tiny bit higher, but that was it. Then it was over and we were told to leave. “Jao!”

I had four more pressing sessions. In two, nothing that I know of happened. But then I wasn’t really expecting anything. But one time, when I was on the left thigh again, I saw movement on his groin from the opposite side. While focusing on my pressing, I also kept glancing over. It looked like another woman, who I knew, was massaging his penis. I really could not believe my eyes. I kept glancing, but was in shock. But I now knew that is exactly what was happening.

Another time I was on his left calf, and out of the corner of my eye I saw some movement. When I glanced up, I saw that Kripalu’s hand was up the woman’s blouse. I knew this woman too. Again I was in shock. Each of these three times, I tried not to think about the incidents. I still tried to believe that Kripalu was God and that I could not understand God’s actions. Plus, with him in residence there is way too much work to do and no one gets enough sleep, so we are sleep-deprived every day. I was constantly exhausted trying to keep up with the brutal satsang schedule from 4 am to 10 pm. Plus the work we had to do. My job was baking “birthday cakes”. They offered a thing called a “birthday seva”, where an interested person paid US $2,500 for the privilege of having Kripalu acknowledge their birthday—even if it wasn’t the person’s birthday. I baked over 50 cakes in four weeks for this!

About a week after his arrest in Trinidad, one of the preachers gathered us together one night to inform us. After spinning the story in Kripalu’s favour (she didn’t use the word rape), she told us: “Do not go on the internet and read about this.” I think that was the exact moment I got my mind back under my own control and snapped out of my cult delusion. Because I decided that is exactly what I was going to do: I went online, typed in ‘Kripalu’ and ‘Trinidad’, and started reading. I was in complete shock.

That’s when I learned the truth. So many people from around the world were commenting on the real JKP and Kripalu. I just knew they were telling the truth. Everything. The sex, the money collection, the abuse. That’s when I started putting together pieces of the puzzle—including my past doubts and recent experiences during “charan seva”.

It took me a little more time to accept that Prakash was as bad as Kripalu, because I knew Prakash first and had hardly known anything about Kripalu until the fall of 1999. Prakash had stopped talking about him after Kripalu’s first arrest for raping two underage girls in India in the early 1990s (I joined in 1991). That case has never been resolved. He ‘reintroduced’ us to him in late 1999, saying he was the fifth jagadguru, an incarnation of Radha-Krishna and Chaitanya, and a lot of other fairy tales.

One day, I realised that Prakash had to be as bad as Kripalu, because he served him and brought us to him. Within a couple of months, I heard from the young women who had been molested by Prakash as children while living in the ashram.

I’m not sure why certain people calling themselves “gurus” in India are so popular among Indians. I don’t fully understand the beliefs, culture and history surrounding this relationship. I’ve been told by some of my Indian friends living in the US that to worship so blindly is an aberration of the traditional guru-disciple relationship. In fact, an Indian man living in Austin wrote a chapter in my book on that subject. He stressed that there should always be an element of verification on the student’s part. In other words, be sure the person is a true guru. But it seems that some people have completely abandoned this step.

I believe that conmen gurus don’t leave any room for verification. In my case, Kripalu and his preachers went out of their way to teach that it’s a sin to doubt the guru, question him or second-guess him. The only option is 100% unquestioning belief. I now know that this is a red flag. Only a cult would not want a person to use their reasoning mind to make an informed decision.

If a person stays in such a situation, well then they are just sitting ducks. This unquestioning attitude gives the conmen complete control and allows them to shape the followers’ minds anyway they choose. The conman has effectively stolen the individual’s personal power and used it for their own purposes, much like a vampire sucks a person’s blood to stay alive.

At the same time, they claim a kind of shield. Just before his arrest in Trinidad, one day at the Austin JKP temple, Kripalu said: “The actions of a saint may seem more worldly than the most worldly person’s actions. But you cannot judge them, because you are worldly and a saint is divine.” That’s the kind of thinking that gives a person a licence to kill. Very scary.

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?287715

Wanted Hindu guru escaped to India, officials say

By Eric Dexheimer

Austin Statesman

Two days after a Hays County jury convicted Prakashanand Saraswati of 20 counts of indecency with a child for groping two teenagers who lived at the Hindu ashram he'd founded, newly filed court documents say his followers met in a devotee's home a mile up the road in Driftwood to plan how to spirit him out of the country before his sentencing.

Later that night of March 6, 2011, or early the next morning, at least one of them accompanied the guru, who uses a wheelchair, over the Mexican border to Nuevo Laredo, according to the documents. After secretly moving just south of Tijuana in mid-2011, Prakashanand — who'd shaved his long white beard and cut his shoulder-length hair — then used a fake passport to escape to India in November.

The information, as well as other details of how Prakashanand's followers in Texas and across the country clandestinely moved the spiritual leader while evading law enforcement, is included in court documents filed in Hays County. An affidavit in support of a search warrant signed last week by a Hays County judge seeks access to Yahoo email accounts of a preacher and close associate of the guru's who lives in India.

Although many of the assertions in the document came from law enforcement interviews with devotees, much also was obtained from cellphone records and private emails written between Prakashanand's followers.

Deputy U.S. Marshal Robert Marcum, who has been leading the effort to track down the 83-year-old guru known to his followers as Shree Swamiji, confirmed details of the agency's efforts to monitor and track Prakashanand during the past year and a half.

The operation planned and carried out by Prakashanand's followers to keep him hidden from police and move him among the three countries involved his spiritual devotees from Pennsylvania, California, Florida, Texas and Mexico, according to the court filing.

Individual tasks were divided among the devotees so that each could minimize his or her culpability, Marcum said. "It is the most sophisticated scheme I've seen as far as fugitive investigations go," he said. "They were very smart about what they did."

Still, he added, the U.S. Attorney's Office is investigating several of the guru's supporters, and it is likely some will be charged with harboring a fugitive, aiding and abetting an escape or making false statements to a government agent. Daryl Fields, a spokesman for the Western District of Texas's United States Attorney's Office, which would bring any such charges, declined to comment.

The news that Prakashanand was able to sneak into India almost certainly decreases the likelihood he will be captured and returned to San Marcos, where a state district judge on March 7, 2011, sentenced him to 14 years in prison on each of the 20 counts.

He also forfeited $1.2 million in bonds and promissory notes when he went on the lam.

Although both countries have extradition treaties with the United States, the U.S. Marshals doesn't have an active office in India, as it does in Mexico. That means Prakashanand would have to be apprehended and adjudicated by Indian authorities.

Meanwhile, Marcum said, all indications are the spiritual leader is being protected and cared for in India by Jagadguru Kripalu Parishat — JKP — the large and wealthy umbrella organization of which Barsana Dham, the ashram he founded in 1990, was a part. The ashram, located on 200 acres in South Austin, was renamed Radha Madhav Dham a month after the trial. Shyama Rose, one of the girls who was kissed and groped by the guru, said his escape to India effectively ends the case against him. "I feel the door is closed on it," she said. "There's nothing more to be done."

She added: "I'm sure we'd all sleep better if he were locked up. But he's in his own little prison."

Karen Jonson, who this year published "Sex, Lies, and Two Hindu Gurus," a book about her life at the ashram, said: "While a measure of justice was served by his conviction, it would still be the right thing for Prakashanand to have to endure the result of his crimes against children, to serve his punishment as determined by the courts of this country." Still, she added, "As long as he is

alive, there will always be hope for his capture and return to Texas."

According to the affidavit, three days after Prakashanand disappeared, marshals interviewed a Florida devotee, who said that he had been contacted by a temple employee in Nuevo Laredo "pleading for him to come to Mexico to assist her in helping Saraswati evade law enforcement."

The man, Ethan DeMitchell, said he also had been instructed to "purchase a fake passport so that Saraswati could flee Mexico to India," and to start contacting private charter jet companies to explore how to hire a plane to fly the guru out of Mexico. DeMitchell, who according to the affidavit also told marshals he spoke with Prakashanand on the phone from Mexico, didn't immediately return phone calls.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection records, various ashram employees crossed the Texas-Mexico border numerous times throughout 2011, the affidavit said. When contacted by marshals investigators, most either declined to be interviewed in detail, or "stated that they did not believe Saraswati was guilty of the convicted offenses, and they hoped he would evade capture and never go to prison."

One of the devotees named in the affidavit, Jenifer Deutsch, also called Vrinda Devi, has been a spokeswoman for Radha Madhav Dham. She traveled from Austin to Nuevo Laredo and Tijuana a half-dozen times between March and November 2011, according to the court filing.

Deutsch didn't return a phone message left at the ashram. But Chirag Patel, the ashram's managing member, said, "We have no knowledge of anyone at the ashram supporting (Prakashanand's) escape."

Late last year, federal investigators began to receive hints that Prakashanand was no longer in Mexico, the court filing shows. In December 2011, for example, marshals learned that his personal aide, Vishwambhari Devi, who seldom left his side, "had recently activated a life insurance policy in India," the affidavit said.

Six months later, Marcum said he heard from two confidential sources that Prakashanand had made it safely to India. Over the following months, the affidavit said, two other sources confirmed that the spiritual leader had successfully fled Mexico sometime in November.

"We were about a week behind him" when he escaped, Marcum said. "We were pretty close."