AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun
JANET FIFE-YEOMANS THE DAILY TELEGRAPH DECEMBER 03, 2014
Dressed in faded orange robes and running across fields, these are the first pictures of life inside the isolated Mangrove Mountain ashram where parents thought life would be ‘Utopian”, but where their children were raped by the guru.
One of the young girls in these pictures, now aged 47, has told the child sex abuse royal commission today how when she left the ashram at the age of 18, she had no idea how to live in society, use cutlery or wear a bra.
She said the children were sent out on sex patrols at night to catch any adults breaking the celibacy rule.
But at the same time, their guru, Swami Akhandananda Saraswati, was having sex with his partner, known as Shishy, and raping some of the teenage girls.
The woman said she joined the ashram at the age of 11 with her nine-year-old sister and their parents who had separated.
“He and Shishy would send some of the children out on what we called f*** patrols,” the woman, 47, told the commission today.
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