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Hare Krishnas Acknowledge Child Abuse at Schools in '70s, '80s

Associated Press
Saturday, October 10, 1998; Page A07

For years, rumors circulated about child abuse at Hare Krishna boarding schools in the 1970s and 1980s. But ultimately it was the group itself that confirmed the problem, exposing many of the details this week.

In an extraordinary display of candor by a religious group, the Hare Krishna movement published the findings in an official journal, recounting sexual molestation, beatings, public humiliation and isolation in roach-infested closets. Teachers, administrators and monks were among the abusers.

The report was written by an independent sociologist, Prof. E. Burke Rochford Jr. of Middlebury College in Vermont. He said yesterday he did not know how many children were abused mentally, physically or sexually, but his interviews of parents and children showed it was a sizable number.

One girl recalled she was spanked and made to wear dirty panties on her head as punishment for bed-wetting: "I would cry . . . for my mom, but that wasn't allowed. So I would say I was crying in devotional ecstasy."

A young man said eventually he became unafraid of being sexually molested: "Sexual molestation, all of us, man, we'd just take it, you know. We didn't even consider it abuse back then."

For more than two decades, Rochford studied the sect's devotees, known in the 1970s for shaving their heads and handing out flowers and literature at airports. He said he has a fondness for many of its members, even agreeing to serve on its North American board of education. So when he uncovered the abuse, "I was devastated."

One of the sect's official publications, the ISKCON Communications Journal, reported Rochford's findings in its current issue.

"We want people to be aware of the depth of the problem and do everything possible to protect kids in the future," said Anuttama Dasa, the movement's North American director of communications.

Rochford said the stage for abuse was set by the Hare Krishna's elevation of celibacy and its belief that only the spiritually weak pursue sex and marriage.

"Children were abused in part because they were not valued by leaders and even, very often, by the parents who accepted theological and other justification offered by the leadership," he wrote.

Many members of the sect, he said, were unaware of the mistreatment because the estimated 2,000 children who passed through the schools were removed from families at an early age -- some as young as 4 -- and sent to institutions. Children had only occasional visits with their parents, and letters home were often censored by school officials.

By 1986, all but one boarding school in North America was closed.

At its peak in the early 1980s, the sect estimated 5,000 U.S. members lived in communities centered around their temples, Anuttama Dasa said. Today there are about 90,000 U.S. members, with 800 living in the spiritual communities, he said.