By Karen Jonson (Rishika)
Published: 25 March 2008
Updated: 22 March 2025
Note: On May 23rd, 2008, I started my first blog called My Life in a Cult using the nom de plume Freedom Writer. It was my first time being completely free to speak out about my years inside the cult. After making 13 posts, I decided to block the blog until after the criminal trial of Swami Prakashanand Saraswati. I will repost all of the blog posts here as an archive. The following was my second blog post on My Life in a Cult.
Learning Your Guru is a Rapist
It was exactly one year ago today (Friday, May 25, 2007) that I learned I was in a cult. After years of believing I was on a pure and true spiritual path, it was a huge blow to learn the truth.
It all started when devotees of Jagadguru Kripalu Parishat-Radha Madhav Dham (formerly JKP-Barsana Dham) were gathered together for a meeting and told us that the main guru who goes by the name Jagadguru Kripalu Maharaj, who was in the middle of his second “world tour,” had been arrested in Trinidad and Tobago for rape one week ago on May 18. However, the word the preacher used was not “rape,” she said he was arrested for “assault.” We were told very few details. But we were pointedly told not to talk about it and not go on the Internet to learn more about it.
Although, according to the powers that be, to be a good devotee and attain God realization, you have to follow the leaders’ every instruction without question, this time I decided I had to know more. I just knew there was a lot they were not telling us and, clearly, that they did not want us to know. After the meeting, I went straight to my computer and Googled “Kripalu Maharaj” and “arrest.” The first thing that popped up was an article stating that he’d been arrested for rape. Can you imagine the shock I experienced? The man who I believed was a very high entity, even a god on earth, was actually just a criminal. It’s devastating.
Why they used the word “assault” instead of “rape” makes no sense to me. After all, according to the FBI, an assault is a crime that technically means “an unlawful attack by one person upon another for the purpose of inflicting severe or aggravated bodily injury.” Both assault and rape are listed in the same crime category: violent crimes. They should have been honest with us. But they were duplicitous as they always are.
But from that day forward, I learned that truth was not a strong suit of JKP. Along with over a dozen news reports about Kripalu’s arrest for rape, I read thousands of comments from people telling shocking stories about this organization. They are comments you’ll never find in the organization’s vast range of promotional materials or hear about from its spokespeople.
Among the insights I learned after Kripalu’s arrest is that he had been arrested for rape charges in India in the early 1990s. Further, many women wrote they have known about his secretive, behind-closed-doors activities for decades. And people were revealing that Swami Prakashanand Saraswati also has his own secrets to hide. I had a few of my own experiences and had heard several stories over the years. But because I was sincerely seeking God realization above anything else, I pushed disturbing information out of my mind and lived in denial about the truth. However, until Kripalu was arrested for rape in Trinidad, I had not heard about raping children.
Once the crack in the façade appeared, it was crystal clear to me that JKP is not a spiritual organization. It’s a crime ring that got away with heinous crimes for decades.
I’ll report on the truths that I have learned about the JKP organization in upcoming posts on this blog.
Please feel free to share your thoughts and experiences about the other side of this organization. This blog is going to be a safe place for all of us to speak out freely about our personal experiences.
Comments from my former blog, My Life in a Cult:
yojimbosanjuro: You had your senses to look on the internet. How many people didn’t do that I wonder? Everyone else? This power of suggestion is frightening.
FreedomWriter: Thank you Yojimbo, You are 100% right on ALL points! Thanks for sharing. Keep in touch.
rajabd. I agree with FreedomWriter. This place is a cult. We were involved with this org long time. It took us a little time to realized it. It started after coming back from their India center. We got letters and calls from different people in the country warning not to get involved and warning us about the rape and money laundering by this org. The two self-proclaimed masters are doing this openly after brainwashing the devotees. The Master in Barsana Dham is very eogistic and angry man. As long his ego is fed by money and women, otherwise he goes ballistic. They are trying to cover up the mess they created but the truth has to come since the can of worm is open. This is the sign of the cult. We got hurt we want other people not to get involved in this org and regret it later on.
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