Nandini
Sadly, Another Wakeup Call For Us All To Help Prevent Child Abuse
HH Tamal Krishna Goswami once spoke at an ISKCON Communications Conference in Dallas. His advice: “ISKCON devotees need to stop thinking they’re God’s gift to mankind.”
I’ll reword that: ISKCON devotees need to quit thinking we’re immune to the same human frailties, sins, and corruption that tempt every person, and plague every community, in the world. It’s time to wake up.
The question is not if ISKCON suffers the ubiquitous problems of human error, sin, and deceit. It’s how do we respond and prepare against them. Are we mature enough to recognize those frailties, guard against them carefully, and respond with openness, honesty, and humility? Or, do we hide, pretend, fool ourselves, and make the same mistakes over and over?
I was jolted into confronting ISKCON’s shortcomings in 1996. A dozen former gurukula students told their histories of being abused as children to seventy-five leaders at the annual North American meeting in Alachua. The vivid details of beatings, abandonment, emotional abuse, and sexual abuse were heartbreaking. Grown men and women were crying. Some fell to the ground, begging forgiveness from the youth for not being aware of the abuse and not doing more to prevent it. We were stunned. Abuse “wasn’t supposed to happen here.” Not in the Hare Krishna movement. Abuse happens elsewhere, we thought. In other religions. In other communities.
