Clarification on Gurukula Closings
BY: HG URMILA DEVI DASI
Aug 16, NEW ZEALAND (SUN) — The recent article by Gopinath das, entitled "Religious Integration of ISKCON by Academia, Part Two", has some misleading information in it.
During the 23 years that I was involved with a gurukula (Detroit and North Carolina) the only sexual abuse cases we dealt with involved children with children. There were three cases. Two were boy-boy, and one was boy-girl. In all three cases the abuser child had also been a victim of abuse in ISKCON schools. In all three cases we did not know of the previous abuse so that we could have taken precautions, arranged for counseling etc. One case took place off school property. We did our best to deal with those cases according to the advice and evaluations of professionals, both devotee and non-devotee. The suitable ISKCON authorities were also involved.
One of the things that professionals stress is that child-child abuse must be handled carefully and confidentially in order to protect both parties, since generally no crime has been committed. Such careful and confidential handling of minors should not be confused with cover-ups that hide adult crimes. The details of child-child sexual activity should not be a subject for the public forum, unless all the parties involved, when they are adults, wish to have it so. Certainly it is important to understand the workings of the CPO and to have transparency in leadership. Neither of these should be at the cost of harming victims, or the whole point is lost.
Personally, I would like nothing better than to exonerate myself by giving you all the details, dates, and places of everything that happened so you could judge that I acted in good faith in a difficult situation. But, doing that would violate promises of confidentiality and discretion that I made to minor children and their families--promises that these now adults are asking me to continue to honor.
Your servant,
Urmila devi dasi
