This text comprises distressing content material.
Bec Sonkkila was in her late 20s and newly in love with yoga when she first heard of the Mahasiddha yoga college within the Indian metropolis of Rishikesh and determined to go to for a month.
Mahasiddha is certainly one of scores of yoga faculties all over the world related to the Atman Yoga Federation, often known as the Motion for Religious Integration into the Absolute (MISA).
“Numerous it was very stunning and superb,” Sonkkila instructed Crikey. “The actually messed-up stuff is hidden so nicely, you simply don’t actually see it till you’re round some time.”
Sonkkila quickly returned to Australia to start working workshops alongside different adherents, which is when she mentioned she began to expertise a number of the “poisonous stuff of the organisation”.
It took lower than three years for her involvement with MISA to render Sonkkila — a as soon as energetic, high-functioning and social particular person — incapable of strolling a block from her home with out having a panic assault.
“If I hadn’t lived this, I wouldn’t consider it,” she mentioned.
In November final yr, MISA’s chief and founder Gregorian Bivolaru was arrested in France, dealing with preliminary fees of human trafficking, organised kidnapping and rape. Fourteen others have been handed a shorter record of preliminary fees and in whole 40 members of the organisation have been arrested as a part of the identical investigation.
Bivolaru based MISA in Romania in 1990. As journalist Anke Richter detailed in her 2022 guide Cult Journey, after years of authorized points in his house nation, Bivolaru fled to Sweden in 2004, the place he was granted asylum on the grounds that he had “been persecuted for his spiritual beliefs”.
In 2013, Bivolaru was sentenced in absentia by a Romanian courtroom to 6 years’ imprisonment. He was arrested in Paris in 2016 and extradited to Romania. He fled Romania once more in 2017 after he was conditionally launched. Every week later, Finland filed a global arrest warrant, looking for him for human trafficking and 9 circumstances of sexual assault. By the point of his 2023 arrest in Paris final yr, he had been on Interpol’s wished record for years.
MISA has issued statements calling the costs “absurd”, a “witch hunt” and a part of a long-running marketing campaign to “discredit and slander” Bivolaru. A press launch attributed to the MISA Yoga College (additionally posted on Atman’s web site) insists the French college on the coronary heart of the allegations, whereas a part of the Atman community, is an “unbiased entity, with its personal administration and organisation”.
A number of ladies round the world have reported to worldwide media that, whereas learning at yoga faculties related to MISA (the precise connections between MISA, Atman and particular person faculties are sometimes opaque), they have been coerced and manipulated into sexual relationships with instructors, in addition to stripping, intercourse work and performing in pornography. Richter wrote in Cult Journey that in accordance with MISA: “Intercourse with the septuagenarian [Bivolaru] is seen as a sacred act and the very best honour his devotees can attain.”
“Quite a few the ladies [involved] in MISA have been professionals — like accountants, authorized clerks, psychologists,” Sonkkila instructed Crikey. “After which, comparatively shortly, they’re satisfied that doing on-line porn or strip tease or erotic therapeutic massage is extra helpful to their non secular path than residing with their household and practising yoga at house.”
Sonkkila shared her expertise with Crikey forward of her look at DECULT — convened by Richter — the primary cult convention in Australasia, taking place in October in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Richter instructed Crikey one trait all cults shared was making inconceivable guarantees to, and calls for of, their adherents, and blaming the person when issues inevitably fail.
“It’s at all times on you,” Richter mentioned. “You haven’t labored exhausting sufficient.”
Sonkkila was first struck by the obvious disorganisation she got here up towards whereas making an attempt to run the early workshops in Australia. She has come to consider that it was a deliberate tactic.
“They discover a method to get you to do an increasing number of and extra, to maintain you so busy you don’t look underneath the covers. You don’t have time or sources, you don’t have further vitality to suppose ‘What about these women like, you already know, that woman that used to come back to class, that now doesn’t come to class, however what occurred to them?’”
When she did ask questions, she mentioned she was publicly “raged at and shut down”.
“What grew to become clear over time was that these have been manipulation techniques,” she mentioned. She discovered an growing variety of younger feminine college students who instructed her that they had a sexual relationship with an teacher from MISA (not Bivolaru).
“They have been very upset once I hunted them down, [they were] a large number, unable to place sentences collectively in a transparent approach,” She mentioned. “And for one woman, you might be like, ‘Okay, nicely, it’s simply, you already know, one upset, unstable one who was in search of love within the incorrect place’ … however when it’s a second and a 3rd, then it’s not a coincidence, it’s not an accident.”
Sonkkila mentioned she would share her issues informally with the opposite members of the organisation who have been organising the yoga workshops.
“What I didn’t perceive was that the entire approach cults work is these individuals, the lieutenants, the individuals who run the issues, everyone seems to be skilled to do injury management, to close down the narrative of something being incorrect,” she mentioned.
“I additionally had a pure sense of belief with them, as a result of that’s how we’re as herd beings: ‘I such as you, I belief you, [so] I share with you what’s incorrect.’ After which that one who’s a part of the organisation downplays the problems, and the entire thing retains going.”
Sonkkila mentioned she was drawn in additional and additional.
“You begin to put your self out on a limb,” she mentioned. “You’re requested to do a bit greater than you’re comfy with, and slowly you lose the sources to remain related to different individuals.”
Over her years at MISA, she mentioned she noticed individuals pressured to interrupt up with companions on the behest of the organisation, or moved to MISA ashrams in international international locations the place they have been remoted, mendicant and often in peril of being deported. She (and different survivors) have described how ladies have been coerced into gaining weight to adapt to Bivolaru’s tastes.
“After somebody has performed one thing like that,” she mentioned, “there’s no going again.”
In 2015 Sonkkila moved to Finland, and the dynamic — veering between livid public humiliations by the hands of management figures, adopted by non-public reward — continued. Sonkkila has come to understand this was a conditioning of her worry response in order that she might extra simply “be gotten out of the way in which” when she would try to intervene in what she believed to be inappropriate sexual behaviour from figures within the organisation, comparable to what she noticed because the coercion and manipulation of a younger girl right into a sexual relationship with one of many instructors.
“And that’s the way you turn into complicit,” she mentioned. “I left her there with him. After which how do you reside with your self? How do you begin to clarify what you’ve seen to the skin world?”
She spoke to individuals within the organisation (she calls them “confidants” not “mates”) and commenced to understand simply how widespread the abuse was.
Sonkkila mentioned she started writing letters concerning what she had seen — to police and journalists in India (she mentioned she obtained no reply) and, decisively, to MISA management. She claims she was publicly shamed inside the organisation and her accusations dismissed as baseless. Finally, in 2016, she was expelled.
The message each Sonkkila and Richter emphasise is that this will occur to anybody. Richter mentioned there was a “nonsense” stereotype that cults predominantly prey on the weak or the misplaced.
“There isn’t any clear profile of what an individual who will get sucked right into a cult appears like, as a result of it may be anyone,” she mentioned.
Sonkkila agrees.
“I imply, the depth with which I reply to that [implication] … I ask, ‘is there nothing you lack? Is there nothing you’re looking for?’ Don’t inform me that in search of one thing is an indication of weak point,” she mentioned. “That’s coming from a place of energy. I’ve the fundamentals of Maslow’s wants met. I’ve cash, I’ve time, I’ve sufficient energy to really feel like I could make decisions. Now what I would like is a way of peace … That’s truly a strong particular person as a result of they’re questioning who they’re and the way they relate to the world.”
Sonkkila factors out that cults take our deepest human wants — for connection, neighborhood, goal — and deform them.
“Probably the most poisonous factor about these cult organisations is that they break the very cloth that makes you a practical member of society, as a result of you’ve got been manipulated by all the individuals that you simply trusted,” she mentioned. “Everyone has manipulated you into one thing that was unhealthy for you. Irrespective of what number of instances you mentioned it was unhealthy for you, you’ve got been pushed and pressured and angled and positioned.”
Richter mentioned one of many principal goals of DECULT is to result in extra specialised remedy companies for cult survivors in New Zealand.
“It’s desperately wanted,” she mentioned. “This may very well be a place to begin.”
Sonkkila mentioned it had taken “a superb 10 years” asking herself “How might I not see it? How might I not act sooner? How might I not have shut it down?” to make sense of what occurred to her.
“It took [that long] to get to a degree the place I had self-forgiveness — ‘I’m not guilty. I used to be not silly’,” she mentioned. “The primary factor that I really feel is vital is to understand that this will occur to you.”
The DECULT convention will happen from 19-20 October and might be dwell streamed.
If you’re affected by any of the problems on this piece, you possibly can contact CIFS Australia, the Survivor Hub or Cult Consulting Australia.
If you happen to or somebody you already know is affected by sexual assault or violence, name 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or go to 1800RESPECT.org.au.
For anybody looking for assist, Lifeline is on 13 11 14 and Past Blue is on 1300 22 4636. To talk to a First Nations disaster supporter, name 13 YARN (13 9276). In an emergency, name 000.
