Hare Krishnas file for bankruptcy 'One less cult'
07 Feb 2002
Hare Krishnas to file for bankruptcy
Feb. 6, 2002 | LANHAM, Md. (AP) --
Hare Krishna congregations named in a $400 million lawsuit alleging sexual and
emotional abuse of boarding school students will file for bankruptcy to avoid
being sued, a spokesman for the Hindu sect said Wednesday.
About a dozen congregations will start filing for Chapter 11 reorganization
next week in several states, said Anuttama Dasa, a Maryland-based spokesman for
the International Society of Krishna Consciousness, or ISKCON.
"We don't believe that innocent members and congregations should be held
accountable for the deviant behavior of individual acts committed 20 or 30
years ago," he said.
The group hopes that if their plan is approved by federal bankruptcy judges,
the lawsuit filed in Dallas by former boarding school students will be
dismissed.
ISKCON also plans to set up a fund to compensate children who may have been
victimized in Hare Krishna schools during the 1970s and 1980s.
The Texas lawsuit alleges young children at Krishna schools in India and the
United States were terrorized by their instructors. There are 94 plaintiffs in
the lawsuit, according to the office of Windle Turley, the Dallas attorney who
filed the lawsuit.
They allege that young girls were given as brides to older men who donated to
the religious community. Children also allegedly were deprived of medical care,
scrubbed with steel wool until their skin bled, and prevented from leaving the
schools.
Turley has said the abuse started in 1972 at ISKCON's first school in Dallas,
and continued in six other U.S. schools and two in India. He said ISKCON knew
that sex offenders were working in their schools.
ISKCON formed a "Child Protection Office" in 1998 to investigate allegations of
abuse and some members have been removed from the Krishna community as a result
of the probes, Dasa said.
Turley was not available for comment Wednesday and his legal assistant, Michael
Fitzgerald, said the firm wouldn't comment until it had more information on the
planned bankruptcy filings.
A devout branch of Hinduism, the Hare Krishna spiritual community grew quickly
in the United States during the 1960s.
The faith's spiritual leader believed children as young as 5 should be sent to
boarding schools so they can learn to be pure devotees.
Roughly a dozen schools operated in North America by the late 1970s, but all
have since closed. There are currently 75,000 Hare Krishnas in North America.
Associated Press
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