AUSTRALIA
The Guardian
Australian Associated Press
Tuesday 2 December 2014
An ashram where children were sexually abused has apologised to the victims, eight months after threatening them with legal action for damaging its brand.
Aaron Kereghan, solicitor for the Satyananda Yoga Ashram, on Tuesday apologised to the victims at a royal commission in Sydney, and said his clients realised an apology sent electronically to victims earlier this year would be seen as trivial.
In March this year, a number of victims sent letters or posted comments on the ashram’s website about the abuse inflicted on them. They were threatened with legal action for defamation.
But on 2 March, one of the victims, Alecia Buchanan, received her first communication from the ashram – an email apology sent to all victims.
“We recognise and acknowledge that there has been child abuse in our history and that it has inflicted profound grief and suffering upon vulnerable children,” Kereghan told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse on Tuesday.
Buchanan, who went to live at the ashram when she was 13, told the commission she was groomed and sexually assaulted by Swami Akhandananda Saraswati, founding director and former spiritual leader of the yoga retreat in the foothills of Mangrove Mountain on the New South Wales central coast.
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