AUSTRALIA
7 News
By Claire Aird
December 2, 2014
Children were groomed and physically and sexually abused at a yoga retreat on the New South Wales Central Coast, a witness at a child sex abuse inquiry has said.
Bhakti Manning will give evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse over the response of the Satyananda Yoga Ashram to allegations of child sexual abuse by the Ashram’s former spiritual leader in the 1970s and 1980s.
Ms Manning was just 14 years old when she first attended the retreat located in bushland at Mangrove Mountain in 1974 with a group of other children, some as young as five, who were separated from their parents there.
“We were children who were groomed to be used by those who had power,” she said.
“There were methods of making us feel we were special.
“Not only was there sexual abuse, we worked for nothing – our whole lives were controlled.”
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.