Secrecy Needs In Exposing A Top Global Cult
Posted by Barry Pittard on August 19, 2007
Former followers of Sai Baba and his other critics have found a vital need to exercise a certain, and indeed regrettable, secrecy. Of course, a lot of our secrecy evaporates – in a fortunate manner – when we deal with bona fide, respected media like law firms, the BBC, Times of London, Telegraph, UNESCO, etc., etc.
But only – I hasten to add – with the full and informed consent of those primary and other witnesses who are prepared to share their accounts with competent authorities and investigators
Curiously, here were we – noting how the core leadership of the Sathya Sai Baba cult was so extremely secret. To the less analytic, our position can but appear to be a blatant contradiction. But it is an irony, not an hypocrisy.
Our security needs are pragmatic, and are not in the nature of the secrecy and cover-up of scandals so endemic to an authoritarian cult that has so much to hide. The BBC’s own experience in investigating his cult and the testimonies of those who have left it led to its calling Sai Baba ‘The Secret Swami’, and the somewhat Soviet-style secrecy and authoritarianism of Sai Baba’s religious cult have been repeatedly observed by media, institutions and academics who have attempted to examine this founder and his organization.
Regrettable Secrecies
The need for sensitive non-disclosure of the accounts that came to us of sexual abuse by Sai Baba and some around him in his education wing, and other alarming information, was rapidly apparent to some of us, but – rather disturbingly! – to others came only slowly and, astoundingly, to yet others scarcely at all.
If there was an extenuating circumstance for bewilderment at all it may be this: suddenly, to our great surprise, we found ourselves cast in the role of activists and crusaders. What does the layperson know of sexual abuse? The exceptions in our midst were those such as Shirley Pike and (the late) Elena Hartgering, Dave Brandt and others who were mental health professionals of various kinds. We were entering a world of anguish and complexity. What we learnt was that the first requirement is to listen with compassion. It is the opposite of what cultic defenders show, who race to judgement, leap to the worst imaginable conclusions, and condemn any who should dare to attempt to communicate their account of abuse.
Males from various countries - in some instances many years later (as in the case of Mark Roche in appearance in the BBC television documentary The Secret Swami) – have attempted to give their accounts of sexual abuse at the hands of Sai Baba. Those devotee apologists for Sai Baba and his Sathya Sai Organization (or rather, cult) who make ready and cruel assumptions about the abuse survivors might well contemplate on a saying of the English philosopher, scientist, statesman and essayist Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) adding the word ‘hear’ and, ‘view’ in the case of television footage from The Secret Swami, and Danish national broadcaster DR’s Seduced (in Australia, Seduced by Sai Baba, SBS) to Bacon’s ‘read’:
“Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted… but to weigh and consider”.
For Viewing
Video clip of Mark Roche interview from The Secret Swami, BBC 2, This World
The Secret Swami. 1. Broadband. 2. Modem (Both .wmv)
Seduced (version in English over-dub) 1. Broadband. 2. Modem (Both .wmv)
Ullrich Zimmerman Interview, Part 2., Broadband.
Further Reading
