Public Petition On Sathya Sai Baba (1)

There is a Public Petition calling for official probing of Sai Baba and his Sathya Sai Organization. (See website details at the end of this post).

The JUST (Just Seekers of Truth) petition is presented by a globally networked group of former followers of Sathya Sai Baba. In the ranks of both devotees and dissenters, there are those who say that Sai Baba is history’s most powerful guru. Some critics regard him as one of history’s arch deceivers - highly charismatic, highly flawed. He may brilliantly inspire good social uplift works, which is why so many earnest and good people are attracted to him, but profoundly conceals, along with his core servitors who keep an vice-like grip on his global organization, what is morally loathsome and criminal.

Allegations Far Exceed Issue of Sexual Molestation

At first, the overwhelming thrust of the Sathya Sai Baba exposé related to the perfectly normal and profound human shock at the disclosure of threats to the innocence of the young - in this case males. As investigation proceeded, and with rapid swelling of the ranks of leave-takers from Sai Baba, the volume of other types of evidence and allegation arose. In retrospect, it was to the Australian scholar and former devotee Brian Steel’s credit that from quite early he insisted to some of us that there were also other and formidable types of anomaly and evidence for wrongdoings. One of the strengths of Steel’s work was to expose many grave inconsistencies in Sai Baba’s discourses over a considerable time. He also, for example, highlighted the dubious nature of many alleged predictions of Sai Baba’s so-called ‘Advent’, and revealed Sai Baba’s own, and his movement’s generation and propagation of demonstrable myths that have come to be believed as truths by his devotees. These myths are typically sustained via his costly, so-called spiritual museums - ostensibly respectful of major world Faiths but which glorify Sai Baba beyond all. A small selection Brian Steel articles I have personally found useful are listed below under Further Reading.

Sai Attack on Integrity of Petition Authors

I was personally involved in the drafting of the JuST Petition, to the final product of which 32 signatories gave their contact details publicly. It was but an early example of how cautious networked Sai Baba former devotees have to be - if they speak out.

Value of Speaking Out Great But Cost Is High

However, conscience demands that former devotees who have personally investigated the claims of many primary witnesses speak out. We face an extremely powerful, wealthy and influential global organization. Therefore, one must, sadly, expect the distortions and vilification of those who, in the name of Sathya Sai Baba, would presume to defend him with tactics of a kind that deprives the Internet of civil decency and self-condemns any organization calling itself spiritual. Our contact with those who have exposed other famous gurus reveals copious examples of the same sinister types of defensive behaviours by those who cover up their gurus’ corruptions.

The Eternal Disjunct Between Practice and Precept

Strange indeed it is that Sai Baba’s much vaunted pillars are: Truth, Right Conduct, Peace, Love and Non-violence (Sathya, Dharma, Shanti, Prema, Ahimsa)

The merest glance at the search engines reveals the shocking language used to constantly attack and slander former devotees and other critics who have called for proper investigation of the many, varied and most serious allegations facing Sathya Sai Baba and his organization.

In stark contrast to the case of the few hotheads among former devotees who seem to relish Internet clashes, the overwhelming number of former devotees are the majority of those we have long known  in the Sathya Sai Organization who utterly disdain such behaviour.

Sai Baba has warned his devotees, via his Sai Center leaders throughout the world, not to look at the dissenting views contained on the Internet. As his organization is extremely controlled from ‘above’, it is difficult for dissenters to message to the more honest leaders and rank-and-file that the truth is not being told to them.

Cyber Combattants - The Unedifying in Full Pursuit of the Unedifying 

The best we have been able to do with former devotee hotheads is (many times!) privately and patiently to prevail upon these very few irresponsible individuals to stop altogether or else to greatly moderate their language.

Networked former devotees are not a cult, and believe strongly in working on the basis (for all that it can be demanding on international coordinators at times) of consultation and consensus. On a rare occasion, there is the case where an individual’s exceptionally good commentary has sometimes been sadly blemished by returns to nasty name-calling language and other immature self-indulgences. This shabby behaviour is to be deplored, from whatever side it may come. At the same time, however, the rest of us refuse to act like some sort of police heavies. Even if we wished to do so, we are often too busy with life’s many other calls to go hunting down unseemly comments amid the vast output that the Sai Baba issue has provoked. Nor is the reading of toxic writings good for digestion, mental or physical. Thank heaven for better things to do, because they help to balance and beautify life.

Core Sai Cult Leaders Fail Their Own Rank-and-file

One of the foremost untruths of the Sathya Sai Organization is that various of its leaders know extremely well that there has been a formidable exit of excellent members from it around the world, and that those, like Dr G. Venkataraman, the Deputy Chairman of the world Sathya Sai Organization, a rare case of a Sai Baba leader who is allowed to write publicly (if  limitedly) in relation to the allegations, have profoundly defamed the many wonderful and decent people who have left it. (This should not to obscure that there are wonderful and decent people remaining in it). For Robert Priddy’s and Barry Pittard’s four-part article, which give further important hotlinks to other material, dissecting a seriously defamatory article by Venkataraman - see, Sathya Sai Organization’s Deception and Propaganda Exposed.

Once they have identified themselves, former devotees and other critics of Sai Baba are attacked, slandered and demeaned - absolutely breaking teaching after teaching of Sai Baba, who forever speaks of love, compassion, peacefulness, and forebearance.

Further Reading

1. The JuST Petiton is HERE

2. Brian Steel’s writings are typically exacting and detailed, and require, if any response were at all reasonable, a careful, ruthlessly honest reply by any writer of comparable integrity. That no such Sai Baba writer of intellectual note has emerged to challenge what Steel has written, makes it all the more deplorable that he has been assailed by Sai Baba forces whose one métier is the superficial rush to carping judgement. Dr G. Venkataraman, the former Indian nuclear scientist and Sai Baba’s head of propaganda organ Sai Global Harmony via WorldSpace Satellite Radio Service, who is beloved of sweeping (and untrue) generalizations, seems incapable of uttering response, reasoned or otherwise, to any part of Brian Steel’s many articles, so freely available on his extensive and highly researched website, the Index page of which is HERE.

Select articles by Brian Steel

B.D. Steel is a semi-retired linguist specializing in Spanish language and translation research, and the author of several advanced textbooks and dictionaries. During his twelve years as a devotee of Sathya Sai Baba, he compiled two hagiographies which were published in USA by Samuel Weiser, Inc and in New Delhi.

The Truth Resuscitated: Suppressed Evidence Reappears
(A Brief Update on the Packaging of SSB’s Discourses)
Discrepancies in the Official Sathya Sai Baba Story: The Early Years
An Annotated Bibliography for Research on Sathya Sai Baba. Part 2. Work Critical of Sathya Sai Baba and his Mission by non-devotees (including ex-devotees)

Robert Priddy (2). The Protection of the Young and Innocent

Disaffection from a powerful belief system is often a slowgoing process, particularly when there has been adherence to a charismatic figure. And this, moreover, when many followers experience states difficult to understand for those who undergo them as it is for even sympathetic scientists. Going on then, to expose to the public an institution’s and guru’s corruptions and other major shortcomings, no matter how determined the activist, is an often an extremely uphill journey.

This is a note on but a small aspect of the work of a valued colleague in the exposure of Sai Baba and his worldwide cult, Robert Priddy, now a retired lecturer in philosophy and social science from the University of Oslo. He was a long-term follower of Sai Baba and national leader of the Sathya Sai Organization. He makes the big effort, and stays the long haul, no matter the strenous demands, as a duty of conscience.

Protecting the Young First Imperative

The overwhelming concern of many disaffected, now former, Sai Baba followers was - as it is for adults the world over - the protection of the young and innocent. Comparing notes with Robert Priddy over time has only reinforced my repeated discovery that disaffection from a powerful movement is a slowgoing process, not least for those who are investigative by bent and training. (See, Robert Priddy (1). Erosion of Trust in Sai Baba Over Time).

Priddy, former head of Sai Baba’s Norwegian organization, and I were both strongly commited to work inspired by Sai Baba - he for nearly two decades, and I for 25 years. He ended his affiliation with the Sathya Sai Organization in 2000. My own leave-taking of Sai Baba occurred in October 1999, after my having been lengthily blind to quite a number of situations that for the less blinded would have been warning flags of something deeply amiss. I now begun to contact primary witnesses and/or their families in various parts of the world, with their reports that Sai Baba sexually abused boys and young men, and other allegations of profound misconduct - in regard to him, and - a later development - to certain Staff in his educational establishments. There was repeated evidence of cover up by leaders close to him, and by core leaders of his wordwide Sathya Sai Organization. Ever and again came the gutwrenching accounts, and these from people not remotely connected with each other.

Opposing Cover up That Is On A Grand Scale

This massive cover up prevails  irrespective of which political forces have ruled India at any given time, and which protect Sai Baba. Apart from our own researchers, of whom Robert Pridddy is one of several, information highly adverse to Sai Baba and his ashrams has long been known to professionals in Indian journalism, police, government and politics. See, for example, my articles:  Indian Ex Top Official Dogs Sai Baba On BBC. ‘Cold-blooded Murder’, and The BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’ - A Revision.

Websites like those of Robert Priddy (Norway), Brian Steel (Australia), Lionel Fernandez (Mexico), www.Exbaba.com (Holland) reflect the far wider concern of former devotees of Sai Baba, and indeed other critics, that there be proper third-party investigation of the many and serious allegations.

Thorbjörn Meyer et alia.

Sathya Sai Organization’s Absence of Transparency, Accountability, and Duty of Care

Robert Priddy has published his Februry 2002 email exchanges with one of Sai Baba’s foremost leaders, Thorbjörn Meyer, HERE. In his introduction to the email exchange, Priddy wrote:

“I decided to approach Mr. Meyer, whom I have known somewhat in the past, with information that might help him investigate better. His response to this confirmed my worst suspicions about his bombastic refusal really to investigate the many and varied allegations about murder and ‘dirty’ play in Sai Baba’s ashram, Prashanti Nilayam. His failure to retract his own groundless allegations against victims of sexual molestation also confirmed and decisively documented, as is seen below, his refusal in fact to do what he falsely promised to do, namely to investigate the allegations properly … He did not even put to me a single question regarding any of these serious matters, which he claims to wish to investigate!”

Priddy comments:

“He stuck himself firmly on formalistic grounds. Extraordinarily, Mr. Meyer repeated that it is all ‘undocumented’, like a mantra to ward off evil! As if statements made by victims on film were not of ‘documentary’ status”.

When Minors Report Sexual Abuse Adults Must Heed and Act

Absurdly far out of line with contemporary public attitudes in more democratically advanced societies, some of Sai Baba’s leaders - like Thorbjörn, Meyer, Professor Peter Pruzan, Steen Piculell - have condoned Sai Baba’s practice of ‘oiling of genitals’ of young males. With absolutely no sanction from Hindu or any other religious authorities, Meyer calls this an “age old Indian anointing oil ceremony”.

It is important that Indian religious leaders speak out on this issue. But will they? Might one be too far out in guessing that they, like the various churches in the West have a great deal to cover up? Although he is not a religious authority, at least the reknowned Indian journalist and writer Khushwant Singh told the interviewer Tanya Datta in the BBC’s The Secret Swami (2004):

“There’s no Indian tradition to support the fact that, you know, worship of the Lingam includes also doing the blow job, if that is what you are referring to. I don’t think there’s any basis for that whatsoever”.

The Robert Priddy-Thorbjörn Meyer Email Exchange

In one of the emails, Priddy wrote to Meyer:

“Your cavalier attitude to ‘oiling’ overlooks the fact that any physical intrusion on genitalia without explicit consent beforehand - even by doctors - is a punishable offence in civilised countries!”

But Thorbjörn Meyer derides the accounts such as those of British musician and former Sai Baba university teacher and global ambassador David Bailey, which include genital oiling but extend far beyond it. Bailey had disaffiliated himself from perhaps the foremost role that Sai Baba has ever conferred on a Westerner. In replying to Priddy, Meyer spoke of “Bailey’s many second hand stories”, saying “Nothing of what Bailey writes is first hand. Nothing is confirmed, everything is blowing in the wind”.

Indeed, some individuals and families did go to leaders of the Sathya Sai Organization. They were, in country after country, shocked and mortified with the lack of humane (much less spiritual!) response.

To Defame Serious Second Hand Accounts of Sexual (and other) Abuse Is Wrong

Here is precisely the point at which Thorbjörn Meyer, together with many other Sai Baba devotees, departs from one of the greatest ethical imperatives. Accounts do not have to be other than second hand. It is entirely absurd to think that they should be. When a young person approaches an adult with a plea for help, citing sexual or other serious abuse, it is the duty of that adult to act on behalf of that individual, ensuring that the individual is accessed to a proper and professional proceedure.

This great responsibility is exactly what so many who are now former devotees have excercised - only to be shunned, ostracized, demeaned, and some threatened, and outrightly slandered.

To be sure, the Board of Church of Christ Grammar School, Perth, one of the leading private colleges in Australia did not cancel the Sai Baba national conference booked at its prestigious venue. However, the message to the conference of Garth Wynne, the Principal (who acted in handling the Sai Baba matter on behalf of the then Anglican Archbishop of Australia, Dr Peter Carnley) was this - as he himself told me:  the accusations against your founder have kept on coming year after year. It puts an institution like ours, as well as your own organization, in a difficult position if you do not follow the appropriate procedures of investigation and accountability.

Failure of Duty of Care and Transparency

This failure of duty of care was the case of the now deceased leader in the USA, Dr. John Hislop, and has all along been so with Sai Baba’s foremost leaders such as Dr Michael Goldstein, Robert Bozzani, William Harvey, Phyllis Kristal, J. Jagadeeshan, T. Sri Ramanathan, and others. They were informed of ‘oilings’ and of worse sexual abuses. In purging the cult of those who raised voices of conscience, Meyer, Indulal Shah (then Sai Baba’s world coordinator) and Steen Picullel were responsible for evicting one of the finest leaders from organization, Serguei Badaev (Russia), just as was T. Sri Ramanathan in getting rid of Stephen Carthew (Australia). These fine men had raised absolutely proper and quintessential questions on matters of conscience.

The like reaction is duplicated by Sai Baba’s top leaders in various countries. For example, when I suggested the wisdom of instituting transparency and accountability processes to Sri T. Ramanathan, then head of Sai Baba’s organization in Australia, he replied that matters only need to go to him. After I had succesfully persuaded a number of foremost Australian religious and political religious leaders not to accept the Sathya Sai Organization’s invitations to appear at the 2003 national conference, Ramanathan phoned me on April 3, 2003 - first to sweet-talk me “I know that you’re a decent man”, and then to threaten legal action. He said “I have only one simple mechanism which I have applied down the years” which is to “deal with complaints personally.” “Your thinking is cloudy,” he said and stated that there was no need for a complaints mechanism in the Sathya Sai Organisation, which is “special and different to any other organisation… and a divine organisation”. (See, HERE and HERE).

Loose Lips Sink Ships

Sai Baba’s networked former followers face a formidable adversary. We do not cry our plans to expose him and his worldwide cult from the rooftops.

Our security of communications - in a word, secrecy - has been vital. Most of our networked former devotees had never in our lives been party to a public campaign. The complex steps of the ‘dance’ between private and public had yet to be learnt, and to be learnt on-the-hop. 

We found ourselves in a role in which atmospheres of readily-given love, trust and the easeful flow of information were not germane - indeed, could prove dangerous - to our task. Our adversary was a global organization, with billions in its exchequer and devotees in many of the highest positions of power. The Sathya Sai Baba Organization - or cult - was, and is, formidable - and long-practiced in the modes of high secrecy and subterranean influence, including in the worlds of power brokerage even well beyond India’s shores.

Thus, any sincere error on our part could have painful consequences. Survivors and other witnesses come to us with a trust that we should never endanger - for example, with a careless remark, the accidental sending of an email, or the answering of even certain fair and reasonable questions raised on the Internet or shopping mall, etc.

Of course, most human beings are social and gregarious by nature - an often pleasant fact of life, but every bit hazadous in our peculiar circumstances. We do not wish to parade in the marketplace those who come to us with tragic accounts of having been sexually abused by Sai Baba and certain of his teachers or subjected to other abuses within his cult. Those who have done so have been mercilessly attacked and derided, one after the other.

Secrecy Needs In Exposing A Top Global Cult

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

• Sai Baba. Some Dissenting Themes and Resources
• The BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’ - A Revision
• BBC’s ‘Secret Swami’ Clip. Man Claims Abuse When Young
• Psychotherapist’s Note On Ullrich Zimmerman’s Sexual Abuse Allegations Against Sathya Sai Baba

Some Key Cultic Responses To Critics

I think that the following list - which is suggestive rather than exhaustive - will contain pointers to behaviours repeatedly found by any who expose a powerful cult.

* Legal manipulations, so that a leader or his organization cannot be further proceeded against

* Use of a cult’s considerable financial resources and political, religious or civic clout to suppress testimony, rather than to address the issues honorably, compassionately and responsibly

* Production of false witnesses and a connived avoidance of legal accountability

* Ignoring the sheer weight of the evidence, and strong, psychological denial

* The claim that criticism is coming from only a mere handful of malcontents

*  The attribution of mental illness to those who criticise

* Misconstruing what is being alleged, distorting it; ignoring it; laying a worst-case interpretation on virtually every word of critics, bending words in a procrustean way to suit the purposes of the cult’s protagonists and to belittle those who speak out

* Missing the points being urged and instead highlighting peripheral issues

* Derision, defaming and shunning of former followers, no matter how well their character and integrity were regarded when they were members, and still is so regarded in their professions, trades, wider communities, etc

* Use of guilt-by-association, ad hominem arguments, infraction of the ‘Aristotlean’ law of the undistributed middle, argument from a low poll, misinterpretation of facts that have another explanation altogether, tu quoque retorts, and other impoverished forms of argument …

 * Terrible and relentless vilification of primary witnesses and of those former followers who attempt to bring the allegations to light

* Threats of litigation - that can prove to be sheer bluff

*  Stalking and harassment. Attempting to blacken the characters of critics in their workplaces, families, friendships, universities, and so on

* In some cases, threats against life or limb

* Muckracking. Keeping of dossiers against critics, with the intention of harming them

*  Interference in the private, personal lives of those who have spoken out. Intrusions are sometimes pursued against others who know the former members but who are only most peripherally and tenously involved

* Depictions of hell (whether psychological, real or both), shockingly bad ”karma” for those who have made revelations of improper conduct within a cult

* Cult members can ignore those who criticise the cult but this means that the abuses being reported ever more seriously unadressed

 * Spurious justification of the teacher’s misdeeds. E.g., claiming that he is raising the kundalini; balancing the devotee’s sexual energy; ‘ironing out sexual kinks’; rapidly expunging the devotee’s bad karmas; stating that, as we are not our bodies, the guru has not violated anybody; disporting in the divine role as Shiva the destroyer

* Blaming of the Media or any institution in every instance where it writes critically of the cult

… And so, woefully, on ….

Further Readings

International Cultic Studies Association

The Genesis of the BBC’s The Secret Swami (Sai Baba)

Guru Sex Abuse Testimony to BBC - After Years of Silence

Subscribe in a reader

Subscribe to Call for media and government investigation of Sathya Sai Baba

↑ Grab this Headline Animator

Cost Of Cover Ups Can Far Exceed Hoped-for Benefits

A great irony of cover-ups is this - that once they have been exposed, the initiators of the abuses sustain a cost far greater than would have attended the prompt admission of the initial misdeeds - and genuine, exhaustive measures to address the abuses. Tragically, “cost” may be multiply defined - and in far from money terms alone.

                             

And is there any Faith, major or minor, that is not sorely complicit in profound cover up of systemic sexual abuse?

                             

The present repercussions of the Los Angeles Catholic Diocese afford us a ready example. Questions are being raised about whether there is enough - after insurance and money from other Orders have been paid - for even a rich Diocese’s coffers to afford such a vast pay-out. This is but one diocese, and yet many others face, or have already faced, a similar predicament. Is there even a single one (as a BBC television news report would indicate) in which such allegations have not been raised?

The Editorialist in The Boston Globe, July 17, 2007, writes:

“The Los Angeles and Boston money could have been spent on other important projects if Mahony and Law had adopted a zero-tolerance policy against abuse when it first became a national issue for the church in the mid-1980s.

Catholic dioceses across the nation, including Los Angeles, have initiated thorough policies to prevent future abuse, and Mahony apologized to the victims on Sunday. Yet new policies and regrets aren’t enough. In the eyes of victims, the scandal will never be fully resolved as long as bishops who put the interests of their fellow priests over the protection of children remain in positions of leadership”.

‘Or who shall ’scape whipping’?

But is there any organization - anywhere - which has not covered up serious allegations? Can it be a good thing that when exposure of sexual abuse is discussed the Roman Catholic Church is so often the tarnished exemplar?

Another irony is that first whistleblowers are scapegoated but then public scapegoating can too easily turn on discretely ‘easy’ targets. And what more ‘easy’ than arguably the biggest religious monolith on the planet?

Does convergence of attention on a big institution help to prevent a much wider focus?

Naturally, of course, there is, at least, a chance for other organizations - before it is too late (if it is not already far too late!) for them to act without the courts forcing them to act - to learn from the fate of those churches or other organizations already strongly exposed?

Today, most societies are multicultural. Would it not make sense to take the broad approach, with not a single organization acting as though it, too, is unaffected? Or a wider public permitted to think that it has not its own accountability?

Further Major News Media Readings on the LA scandal and pay0uts are HERE, HERE and HERE.  Website of SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) is HERE

See, Robert Priddy’s article ‘Spiritual’ Abuse. Quote:

“One US lady who has been raped by a priest broke down in tears on worldwide TV News (22/7/2007) while telling how she was not believed by her very own church community, which ostracised her. This ‘turning a blind eye’ has been very common, also in the Sathya Sai Organization”.

Subscribe in a reader

Subscribe to Call for media and government investigation of Sathya Sai Baba

↑ Grab this Headline Animator

Judge warned: Crippling disease won‘t stop pervert

Some devotees of Sathya Sai Baba - the ’God’ worshipped by so many of India’s top power brokers (and others beyond) who faces worldwide accusations of large-scale, serial sexual molestation of boys and young men - claim that he could not possibly offend, if he ever did, because of his age and physical incapacity, and that therefore his current accusers are caught in a palpable deceit. 

L. Ageing multiple rapist Wayne Chapman still Dangerous. (Boston Herald Photo Pool). R. An Ironside Sai Baba - not one to easily push around.

They offer no evidence concerning the nature of sexual capacity and ageing. Yet there is a mass of readings on the topic ‘ageing and sex’ in the popular press, let alone a wealth of information from Gerontology and Geriatrics. As ever, the Internet is an abundant source.  But why go looking for facts when there is a guru to defend at all costs? And the word ‘costs’ is more than appropriate, since Sai Baba’s worldwide cult has to defend many billions of dollars of investment in its notion that Sai Baba is about to rule the earth. Any dear reader who happens to be a billionaire, watch your money - Sai Baba is a consumate master in extracting it from you - without seeming to want it. See my article: Sai Baba, Kubla Khan, Citizen Kane, Bill Gates et alia

Of course, making Champion of the World may require Sai Baba to take a little more than Viagra or Cialis. 

Extract from: Judge warned: Crippling disease won‘t stop pervert
By Laurel J. Sweet
Boston Herald. Friday, March 23, 2007

‘Aging and Sick Sex Offender to Be Civilly Committed?

Whatever the wisdom of civil commitment laws it would seem that this fellow might qualify.  Increasingly, though, the states are going to have to contend with the high cost of health care in keeping aging and sick convicts behind bars.

Even though his aging, bloated body is confined to a wheelchair, a judge was warned yesterday a 59-year-old convicted sexual predator remains dangerous to children. A forensic psychologist assured Lawrence Superior Court Judge Howard J. Whitehead that convicted child rapist Wayne Chapman, who bragged he had sexually molested between 50 and 100 boys and even fantasized about killing some of them, “presents a high and unacceptable risk to re-offend.” “It just doesn’t go away,” Christine Schnyder Pierce testified. Chapman, an interstate predator, has been incarcerated for 31 years. Having served his time, he is hoping to retire in Massachusetts, but the Essex District Attorney’s Office is fighting to have Whitehead civilly commit him for life as a “sexually dangerous” person’.

Further Resources

Wikipedia, Sexuality in older age

Subscribe in a reader

Subscribe to Call for media and government investigation of Sathya Sai Baba

↑ Grab this Headline Animator

The Decline and Fall of the Showman Empire

Sai Baba’s ’showman empire’ is worth many highly unaccountable billions. Frequently, they pour to his Sathya Sai Central Trust from your country and mine. (See Rediff.com reference in my note, Sai Baba Exchequer Worth Billions. Many Countries Donate)

Media Empires Are More Effective

R to L. Media mogul’s mogul Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner, a slight competitor, (Jane Fonda’s sweet Ex), Zee TV’s Subhash Chandra, Time Warners Dr Richard Parsons

But now, Sai Baba has been increasingly exposed to the world on television by the BBC, DR (Denmark), AZUL (Argentina), CBC (Canada), ABC,  SBS (Australia), and in the press - India Today, Times of London, Telegraph, Guardian, Age, Australian Financial Times, and newspapers in several parts of Europe, Canada, and elsewhere. This does not mean that any of these major institutions did a perfect job, or that there do not abound plenty of compelling stories, some of them tragic indeed.

We are now better able to see the Decline and Fall of the Showman Empire. But the core leaders of the ‘Secret swami’ (as the BBC has named him) are immensely powerful, and won’t go down without a fierce fight. Secret fierceness excercised by a cult connected with powerful and corrupt political figures is immensely devious, and consitutes a fine opportunity for crack investigative journalists.

No Edward Gibbon To Chronicle Sai Baba’s Decline and Fall - Yet

Surprising openings in a long-muzzled Indian media occurred November 2006, when Paul Lewis’s story broke in The Guardian - The Indian living god, the paedophilia claims and the Duke of Edinburgh awards. It raised concerns about the nexus between the Duke of Edinburgh Awards and the UK Sai youth, on their way in large numbers to see Sai Baba.

Awards, owing to, in this sort of issue, a not very experienced or competent UK CEO, Peter Westgarth - see HERE - was slow off the mark. However, after very high level representations from our side, the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme trustees and Prince Philip’s Private Secretary, Brigadier Sir Miles Hunt-Davies KCVO, CBE,

realized that a serious matter was at hand. Questions were also raised by some powerful citizens, including a former Home Minister, Tom Sackville. The Duke of Edinburgh Awards required of Dr G. Venkataraman, at an official Sai Baba website to take down the triumphant - but absurdly mistaken - information that the Duke of Edinburgh Award had been awarded to Sai Baba himself.

G. Venkataraman, formerly a member of India’s highly secret nuclear establishment, is Sai Baba’s deputy world head, who also directs Sai Baba’s international 7 days 24 hours satellite radio service via the WorldSpace international corporation. According to the Wikipedia entry for ‘Sathya Sai Baba’, its Director Dr Michael Nobel is “one of the patrons for the radio network” and “said that the radio network would spread Sathya Sai Baba’s message of global harmony and peace”. (With little sense of time’s passage the Wiki article says, absurdly, that Michael Nobel is the son of Alfred Nobel, who founded The Nobel Foundation and after whom the Nobel Prize is named)

An Imperial Puttaparthi Wishes To Penetrate Every Corner of Globe

Dr Venkataraman states:

“Sometime in September 2001, two distinguished visitors came to Sri Sathya Sai Super Speciality Hospital in Bangalore. They were Dr. Noah Samara, CEO, WorldSpace Corporation, and Dr. Michael Nobel, Chairman, Nobel Family Society, and a Member of the Board of Directors of WorldSpace. Dr. Nobel is the great grand nephew of Dr. Alfred Nobel, the founder of Nobel Prize … Who can deny the play of the “hidden hand”? Dr. Samara and Dr. Nobel were duly blessed with a Divine Interview, in the course of which Dr. Samara offered at the Lotus Feet an entire digital radio channel for broadcasting Swami’s Message of Love and Compassion to the entire world”.

Duke Versus Emperor. Edinburgh Beats  Puttaparthi

On November 4, 2006, The Guardian ran Paul Lewis’s story (see above). In a development that occurred quite without (a story perhaps to be told one day) The Guardian seeking it, in November 2006, The Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) managed to get a few major Indian media to take the feed on the Paul Lewis story. There have been decades of censorship of material adverse to the politically and religiously too-hot-to-handle Sai Baba and his vast and, in India, extraordinarily powerful Sathya Sai Organization. This feed also went to parts of Asia and the Middle East. It has been an absurd situation that NRI’s (Non Resident Indians) have been accessed in the media of many countries with large Indian diaspora to critical information about Sai Baba, when Indians in their own country have been denied.

Investigative Opportunities

The present writer (email:  bpittard(at)optusnet.com) can provide journalists and other investigators with a slew of media and academic contacts who can verify that the Sathya Sai Organization is a prime example of a cult in hiding from the media and others wishing to examine it. This is why the BBC obtained a difficult to gain sanction from its senior managment and Legals to use a hidden camera on the world chairman of Sai Baba’s orgnanization, Dr Michael Goldstein of Covina, California. (See BBC video footage HERE)

Without hazard to life and limb, astute, seasoned, well-briefed journalists should be able to slip unnoticed into Sai Baba ashrams and centers and other meeting places, and those of other cults. One financial journalist was about to investigate the vast money trails but got reassigned. Another, an award winning journalist from an Australian newspaper was, after weeks of intense investigation, about to front page when, at the last moment, his Editor-In-Chief spiked the story. A Can-West journalist had to modify his piece after heads of his newspaper got ensconced for hours with lawyers of a multi-millionaire advertizer with the same newspaper. However, many media have stood up to pressures from the Sathya Sai Organization senior brass.

Any temptation to obtain a good laugh from silly beliefs or practices should at all costs be avoided. It is no laughing matter that, for example, young people can get themselves horribly enmeshed in cult life, just as we can lose them via drugs and alcohol. Trustfully, by better awareness among broadcasters’ of their journalists getting too close to their stories, (BBC) John Sweeny-like confro