It's good to see this thread, discussing hypnosis and mind control used by spiritual leaders and frauds. The fact that this is a known tactic (at least, here on RR) helps give credibility to women who say they've been hypnotized into sex with their guru or lama.
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Prasadam Das
This guy sounds totally bogus! Someone should report him to the proper authorities. Any genuine spiritual teacher is not going to try to have sex with their students. I have known at least two leaders in my spiritual group who ended up taking advantage of their students. This type of problem needs to be addressed immediately !
I love Prasadam Das' spirit--protesting outside the office or event of the false guru! There needs to be a nationwide (or even international) organization of folks ready to do this, whenever such issues arise.
Unfortunately, they arise all too often, and even in the context of "genuine" spiritual teachers. It raises the question: how do we define "genuine"? If there's this kind of corruption or lack of ethics, or whatever you want to call it, widespread among the ranks of Eastern religions, and even the most highly-placed teachers within their tradition or sect engage in misconduct, what is to be done? I'd be really interested to see a definition of "genuine", bearing in mind that some of the most reputable teachers engage in coercion of students for sex purposes whether via hypnosis, intimidation or other means, and manage to keep it under the radar.
And btw, who would the "proper authorities" be? The police? How could someone prove that hypnosis and mind control, or other coercion techniques were used? The criminal justice system at this time doesn't recognize as a crime hypnosis or coercion to obtain sex. as far as I know. The only way to deal with this would be if there were a group action--if a number of women filed charges at the same time, and even then, it would be very "iffy" in court. There's no precedent that I know of for arresting someone who had sex with a woman who said "yes", not "no". For that matter, the courts have an extremely poor record of dealing with cases in which the woman did say "no", even if there's a rape kit as evidence.
If anyone has any ideas on how to bring such cases to justice successfully, or has any legal information that's relevant, by all means, please share.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/19/2011 07:30AM by Misstyk.