Child Abuse in the Hare Krishna Movement:1971-1986

E. Burke Rochford, Jr. with Jennifer Heinlein

[continued]

The question of ‘What to do?’ only intensified as ISKCON in North America faced growing economic decline. By 1982, the level of ISKCON's book distribution in North America was less than half its 1978 peak (Rochford 1985, 1995c). The corresponding drop in sankirtan revenues had a devastating effect on ISKCON's communities. It also had a dramatic impact on the gurukula, which, even in the best of economic times, faced hardship. As the Headmaster of one school made clear, ‘Even at the peak of our movement's resources . . . the gurukula was getting barely anything. Anything. And so as soon as there was less to go around it barely got anything at all’ (interview, 1997). Below he describes the financial difficulties encountered by the Lake Huntington gurukula just prior to its closing in 1986.

More difficult was our financial situation. And what happened. When New York was broken up, Lake Huntington, Long Island, New Jersey, and Manhattan each of these areas was assigned a certain number of collectors, . . . sankirtan devotees. Four months after the break-up I was shifted from Long Island to Lake Huntington and I took over the project. Within a few months I became the Headmaster. We had eight sankirtan devotees. We were struggling but were making it. But the zone was collapsing [financially]. So the new GBC man . . . came in and took all the sankirtan devotees and centralised it. The plan was to just give money to the different temples in the zone. We lost our eight sankirtan devotees and we were promised $8 000 a month, which we got for one month. They reduced and reduced the amount until we got $2 100 to pay the mortgage. When we asked what to do they said take more students [thereby gaining more tuitions]. And that's what we did. Until finally it dawned on us that we were killing our teachers and cheating our students. We can't run a school like this. That was the environment we were actually functioning in.25 (Interview1997)

A final issue here has to do with the apparent lack of oversight the gurukula received by ISKCON leaders. While it is true that there was a Minister of Education whose responsibility was to provide guidance and leadership for ISKCON's schools, it appears, nonetheless, that the gurukula failed to gain the attention and supervision required. And, without it, the likelihood of child neglect and abuse grew. As one teacher described, the leadership simply placed too little importance on the gurukula.

I have come to the conclusion that they [the leadership] aren't going to do anything; at all, not anything. They should have done something twenty years ago, or fifteen years ago. They had plenty of opportunity. They had money. They had manpower. They had Srila Prabhupada right there behind them. Why didn't they take it? I can tell you why they didn't do it. They didn't think it was important. Obviously. (Interview, 1990)

One indication of the leaders' disinterest can be seen in the way ISKCON's renunciate leaders responded when parents complained about the mistreatment of children in the gurukula. As a second generation youth recounts:

When I was five and a half years old, I'd been in gurukula (Dallas) since its insemination (about three years). My dad had gone to Dallas (against the wishes of his temple authority who only cared about my dad's money-making ability on sankirtan) after discovering bruises all over my body on a Rathayatra [festival] visit. After much discussion with the school authority he found that he could not get them to change the policy of daily beatings. He removed me from the school. Very disillusioned he nearly left ISKCON. On hearing that Prabhupada would be in LA, we went there. When Prabhupada saw me he asked why I was not in the gurukula. My father told him that he'd removed me because of the daily beatings. Prabhupada told him that I belonged in gurukula and that if my dad had a problem with the treatment he should work to resolve it . . . [Prabhupada] did nothing to resolve the situation. Instead of going himself or sending one of his top people to resolve the problems he sent my dad who had never had any power. Needless to say when my dad returned to Dallas nobody listened to him. If a problem arose at some temple or other, Prabhupada was more than willing to go or send someone effective to handle the situation, but for the kids he sent my dad who was effective at getting people to give him money. (Anonymous b 1996) (See footnote 26 for further discussion of Prabhupada's response to allegations of child abuse.)

After Prabhupada's death, the response of the newly appointed gurus was apparently much the same.

Kutila [woman gurukula teacher] was furious when she saw the cuts and beating marks and she ran to tell Bhaktipada who coolly said, ‘Don't complain, do something about it, if you think you can do any better.’ (Devi Dasi, K. 1990:1)

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