Child abuse royal commission: woman admits having sex with a 14-year-old boy at Satyananda Yoga Ashram
A woman has broken down while admitting to having sex with a 14-year-old boy at a yoga ashram on the NSW central coast.
The woman, now in her mid 50s and known as Shishy, is central to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse hearing into the Satyananda Yoga Ashram during the 1970s and 1980s.
Shishy was second in charge at the commune at Mangrove Mountain. She was also accused of physically assaulting child residents.
Today she apologised for failing to protect the children and betraying them by summoning them for sex with her partner, the Indian director of the Ashram, Swami Akhandananda.
Shishy said she started a sexual relationship with the 14-year-old boy, known as APQ, when she was 24 and said Akhandananda made her do it.
"He told me that I should start initiating him in the same way he did the girls. He became extremely violent toward me when I refused," she said.
Shishy later left the ashram, fell in love with APQ and they have a daughter.
Shishy had secret sex with guru as a teenager
Shishy met Akhandananda when she was about 16 and soon began a sexual relationship with him.
The Satyananda movement preached celibacy and chastity and Shishy said Akhandananda told her to keep it a secret.
"It was always, you [are] a very advanced being, you are a chosen one and this has to be between us," she said.
Shishy said she was also expected to have sex with the leader of the movement, Satyananda Sawaswati, on his regular visits to Australia.
"I would describe my experience with him sexually between bland and quite perverse," she said.
"He said that all these things were to break down my barriers against anything to do with the guru-disciple relationship so there was nothing that couldn't happen in the guru-disciple relationship," she said.
The Royal Commission heard how Shishy was a mother and goddess-type-figure to the children who lived in the ashram, separated from their parents.
But instead of caring for them, she beat them and witnessed their abuse by Akhandananda.
"I would like to say that I deeply, deeply regret and feel quite desperately sorry for anything that I did or didn't do that has caused these people and their families any pain whatsoever," she said, weeping.
Victims who have previously told the inquiry about the physical violence Shishy inflicted and her knowledge of the sex abuse, walked from the Commission hearing room, some in disgust.
Despite witnessing the abuse, Shishy never contacted police.
Counsel assisting the Commission, Peggy Dwyer, put it to Shishy, "Is it the case that you didn't think to report the abuse to anybody at that time because you didn't see it as abuse?
"No I didn't", she answered.
"You thought it genuinely was for these children's spiritual enlightenment?" Ms Dwyer asked.
"Yes," Shishy replied.
Victims describe severe bashings
All of the victims giving evidence at the Commission this week have described severe bashings, including one specific incident when a child, known as APA, was slapped so hard her head ricocheted off the wall and back into another slap.
Shishy denied the incident happened.
"She (APA) launched herself at me and I slapped her hard and we kind of fell over," she said.
Shishy also denied an incident recollected by another victim that she woke the children in the middle of the night by striking them.
"It's hard to feel a sense of shame for something that I have absolutely no recollection for," she said.
Ms Dwyer put it to Shishy that she might have blocked some of the more troubling memories.
"I've considered it. I don't know whether I'm really qualified to make that decision," she said.
Shishy left the ashram in 1984 and said she travelled to India the next year to disclose the abuse to Swami Satyananda.
She said Satyananda refused to intervene and told her whatever happened was for spiritual enlightenment.
When Shishy returned from India she cooperated with police and gave evidence against Akhandananda in court proceedings.
Akhandananda was charged in 1987 with more than 35 sex offences against four teenage girls.
Before he went to trial there were changes to NSW laws and the charges were reduced to the much lesser offences of acts of indecency.
Akhandananda was jailed in 1989 but his conviction was overturned when his lawyers argued the indecency charges were only laid to avoid the statute of limitations.
He died six years later.
The hearing continues.
