Employee tells royal commission yoga ashram should not be 'held to ransom' by compensation demands

By Nicole Chettle
ABC News
December 9, 2014

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-09/royal-commission-yoga-ashram-should-not-be-held-to-ransom/5955732

The Satyananda Yoga Ashram on the central coast of New South Wales.

A worker at a New South Wales yoga ashram who denies fetching teenage girls from their beds at night and taking them to their spiritual leader, who sexually abused them, says the organisation should not be 'held to ransom' by people seeking compensation.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is looking at the handling of 11 complaints made against Swami Akhandananda Saraswati over the past 40 years, relating to abuse that happened in the 1970s and '80s.

Muktimurti Saraswati told the Sydney hearing that she joined the ashram at Mangrove Mountain on the New South Wales Central Coast when she was 17.

She worked as a secretary and assistant to a woman called Shishi who has already appeared before the royal commission.

Muktimurti rejected earlier evidence from a victim, Alecia Buchanan, who said Muktimurti took her to Akhandananda's room where she was repeatedly abused.

"I can recall absolutely and categorically it never happened," Muktimurti said, adding that she did not believe the allegations of abuse when they first emerged.

"After Akhandananda went to jail I have to say I think we all became disillusioned with him," she said.

"But I stayed in the ashram not because I dedicated my life to him but to the ideal that is expressed within the ashram."

Last week the lawyer representing the ashram apologised to the victims and acknowledged they might view efforts to make amends as "too little, too late".

Muktimurti said she still does not know if the abuse occurred but said: "It looks rather likely."

"If the accusations are true that is a dreadful thing but if it is not then the alleged victims are being venal," she said.

"So many people are being hurt by this.

"So many innocent people's lives are being adversely affected by the fact the royal commission is on.

"The publicity I have seen in the media, it's appalling.

"It's all over the world ... people who are associated with our tradition are having to face horror and suspicion.

"I've never experienced it myself, I've never witnessed it, I've never observed it.

"My life has not touched any form of things like sexual abuse and I'm absolutely horrified by it."

In a statement tendered at the commission Muktimurti said: "I find it morally questionable for compensation to come up as a demand and I don't agree with the ashram being held to ransom for something that none of us currently in the ashram had anything to do with."

Lawyer Peter O'Brien suggested that Muktimurti did play a role because she was an adult at the ashram when the abuse happened.

"I was certainly in no position to do anything but I tell you if I'd known about it I would have tried," Muktimurti said.

"You were blind to it?" Peter O'Brien asked.

"The parents of the children. None of us knew - none of us. We were totally unaware of it. There was nothing to give any indication," Muktimurti said.

Earlier the commission heard from a former resident, Jyoti, who said that as an adult in about 1997 or 1988, she revealed the abuse to the leader of another ashram at Rocklyn in Victoria, Swami Atmamuktananda Saraswati.

Jyoti told the commission Atmamuktananda said: "Well, the girls were very provocative" and that she was horrified to think this woman was suggesting the victims brought the abuse upon themselves.

Giving her evidence, Atmamuktananda tried to clarify the comments: "I didn't use the word provocative I used the word flirting" she said.

"I said he tried to proposition me and I left," she said.

Lawyer Peter O'Brien asked if she was condoning Akhandananda's actions by suggesting that he had succumbed to the temptation of flirting girls.

Atmamuktananda declined to respond and said "I don't understand what you're trying to get from me".

In a statement, Atmamuktananda said "Swami Akhandananda and Shishi were not the ashram and their mistakes were to do with them only".

The royal commission is expected to hear from two more witnesses who live and work at the ashram.