AUSTRALIA
ABC News
By Brad Ryan, Nicole Chettle and Emily Bourke
Tue 2 Dec 2014
The spiritual leader of a New South Wales yoga retreat sexually abused child residents after summoning them to a hut and asking them for a massage, an inquiry has heard.
Children were also allegedly directed to travel around Australia with the man, known as Swami Akhandananda Saraswati, and perform sexual acts in his bed.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has opened its 21st case study, focused on the the Satyananda Yoga Ashram at Mangrove Mountain in the hinterland of the New South Wales central coast.
The commission is examining allegations from the 1970s and 1980s involving the ashram’s former leader, Akhandananda, who was jailed for sex offences in the late 1980s but had his conviction overturned before his death in 1997.
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