Child Abuse in the Hare Krishna Movement:1971-1986

E. Burke Rochford, Jr. with Jennifer Heinlein

[continued]

A second factor that played an especially important role in limiting the possibility of abuse had to do with the level of parental involvement in the gurukula. While the leadership and the gurukula staff each pressured against parental involvement, some parents found ways to remain involved nonetheless. In some cases this was made easier as parents resided in the same community as their child/children's gurukula. In other cases parents wrote letters, made phone calls, and visited their child or children on a regular basis.

The sad irony is that parents who accepted the ideological justifications offered by the leadership and chose to remain ‘detached’ and minimally involved in the lives of their children, effectively left them vulnerable to neglect and abuse. Simply put, children without involved parents became ready victims for abusers. As one second generation devotee concluded:

Usually, if our parents showed an interest in us, by sending us mail and gifts, visiting us, and maintaining a tight bond, the abusive teachers would view that child as a liability to them. (Hickey and Charnell, 1997)

To assure regular involvement with their children, some parents especially mothers chose to work in the gurukula as teachers. As the Headmaster of one school commented, ‘Practically every teacher had their children in the school. And that was an important factor [limiting the potential for abuse] that those parents' eyes were there. It was important.’ As this suggests, the presence of parents working in the gurukula served to protect all children against abuse, not simply the child of the teacher. Because mothers were much more likely than fathers to have a position in the gurukula, girls more so than boys gained parental protection against abuse. As one woman teacher recounts:

With my daughter it was a little different because I had some ability and determination to keep my daughters with me. So I was a teacher and I taught my daughters, or at least I knew where my daughters were being taught. But with my son it wasn't allowed. He had to be removed from my presence. (Interview 1997)

A child also gained protection against abuse if he or she had a male parent who was an ISKCON leader, or was otherwise recognised as important and influential within the movement. For an abuser, these children presented substantial risks and thereby were less likely to be targeted. Even in India, where abuse was more commonplace, children with influential fathers normally escaped being targets of abuse. As one mother whose son spent years at a gurukula in India reported.

My son tells me that he didn't get abused. And it’s funny isn't it in light of his [activism over the abuse issue]. But this is because of who his father was [a member of the GBC].29 (Interview 1997)

For children whose parents remained largely uninvolved in their lives, there was one available means to create a protective resource against abuse. Again, India was the context. Apparently adolescent boys in the gurukula were less subject to abuse if they received initiation from one of ISKCON's gurus. In effect, initiation created an interested and powerful ally who could expose or punish an abuser. Initiation thus served as a means to create an interested party in the absence of involved and/or influential parents.

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