AUSTRALIA
The Guardian
Australian Associated Press
Wednesday 3 December 2014
Children whose parents sought a utopian life at an ashram became subject to physical abuse and depraved sexual practices by a yoga master and his partner.
On the second day of a royal commission hearing into an ashram at Mangrove Mountain on the NSW central coast a woman has told how she was forced from the age of 15 to have sex with the spiritual leader Swami Akhandananda when she lived there in the 80s.
The woman was 10 or 11 in 1978 when she and her parents went to live at the ashram. Her parents were sent away to set up other yoga centres and the swami and his partner Shishy became the carers of about 18 children.
The witness, referred to as APL at the commission, said facilities at the Mangrove Mountain ashram were very basic, with children often going hungry. She later discovered that the swami and Shishy had a hot tub, a television and drank alcohol.
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