The allegations
Ananda’s detractors want you to believe that many women claim sexual abuse by Swami Kriyananda. In fact, in the last forty-four years, five women say they have had sexual contact with Swami, and three more claim he invited them to have sex, but they declined. All eight stories are told on the SRF/AAN website.
The time span from the first claim to the present is 44 years. All the alleged incidents took place in a span of only five years, in two distinct, very stressful periods of Swami’s life:
1) 1967-71: The founding of Ananda
2) 1981-1982: Meeting Kimberly Moore, renouncing his vow of celibacy, and the period immediately after she left.
The true story
“There is no one without faults, not even men of God. They are men of God not because they are faultless but because they know their own faults, they strive against them, they do not hide them, and they are ever ready to correct themselves.—
”Mahatma Gandhi
Swamiji acknowledges he did have sexual contact with the five women—consensual, though, not abusive as they describe it. He then adds, “If any of my accusers was really hurt by me, that is a sin for which I myself will pay, and want to pay, that I may cleanse my soul of this stain. I know I have always tried sincerely never to hurt anyone.”
As for the other three, two of the women he doesn’t know at all, and the third incident, he says, never happened.
So the much-touted “pattern and practice of sexual abuse that has gone on for decades” is actually five sexual encounters over forty-four years, involving only five years of Swami’s life. All the other so-called “charges” against Swami are rumor and innuendo, posted on the website by anonymous third parties. Another example of how the “Big Lie” is spread.
Here you’ll find Ananda and Swami’s side of these eight stories.
Part I - The Story behind the story
Yogananda’s instruction to Kriyananda
At a certain point in the Bertolucci case deposition, Flynn began asking Swami direct questions about his sexual activity. No one, not even his closest friends and students at Ananda, knew that for Swami to answer would be to disobey Yogananda’s explicit instructions to him, instructions he had followed for 45 years.
PART II - Kimberly Moore: The key to untangling the web
(Woman #3 on the Ananda Awareness Network site)
Kimberly Moore’s coming to Ananda is so different from the story she tells in her declaration, that it has left us speechless for years. Hers was no private liaison. Her relationship with Swami was a national event, acted out in front of hundreds of Ananda members. It marked a radical change in lifestyle for Swami, and had the impact of a small earthquake on Ananda community life.
Part III - A difficult time in Kriyananda’s life
After the marriage to Kimberly Moore ended in 1981, Kriyananda was deeply saddened, and withdrew for a time to seek guidance and clarity. It had seemed divinely inspired; why had it ended as it did? He was particularly vulnerable at this time, and inasmuch as he had renounced his vow of celibacy, several women who were attracted to him saw this as their opportunity. This is Ananda’s response to depositions by Denise Petersen (Woman #1), Kamala Wiley (Woman #2), and Deborah Donie-Seligson (Woman #3).
Part IV - All other allegations
Ananda answers the testimony of the four remaining women who filed depositions: Thora McDonnel (Woman #4), Chandra Slavonic (Woman #5), Marilyn Stuart (Woman #8), and Sunny Plant (Woman #6).
Part V - Anne Marie Bertolucci
Anne Marie Bertolucci herself came to be almost a minor character in the lawsuit which bears her name. Her relationship was with Danny Levin, whereas the purpose of the lawsuit was to injure Swami Kriyananda. The story of Anne Marie and Danny is elsewhere on this website, especially in the letters Swami Kriyananda wrote explaining the case. Here we will deal with one aspect only-the false allegations Bertolucci eventually made that Swami Kriyananda was sexually inappropriate with her.
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