Ninety plaintiffs and 400 additional claimants have filed claims against the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, ISKCON, the Hare Krishna movement, for alleged child abuse suffered in the organization's school system in the 1970s and 1980s. Nori J. Muster, a former member and researcher, explains what happened in the schools and how it remained secret for twenty years. She also discusses indoctrination into authoritarian attitudes in ISKCON and offers suggestions on how to prevent future child abuse.

[surrealist.org]

Thanks for the link, Oerlikon. I find this to be a very well-written chapter and especially these two following paragraphs are very pertinent as to how these people think:

Scriptures twisted to the leaders' advantage. The hierarchy promoted a distorted view of the scriptures that allowed them to shift the blame for all problems onto their followers. For example, they said that according to the scriptures, the gurus had perfect, spiritual bodies. The only way a guru could suffer physical distress was if his disciples committed sin. Therefore, when our gurus got sick, we were supposed to pray for forgiveness for whatever we did to cause it. If a guru had to sleep in and could not get up for the early morning services, it was the disciples' fault.

The gurus told us that according to the scriptures, everything in the world depended on whether Krishna was pleased. If the movement got into trouble with the law, or a bad article came out, they told us to work harder, ask for less in return, and learn to control our material senses. In fact, if anything bad happened anywhere in the world, heavily indoctrinated members felt responsible; something they had done must have failed to please Krishna. With all the followers blaming themselves for everything, the leaders were freed of responsibility for anything.

Some of these points were also discussed under the Chris Butler thread on this forum, but I think this writer has got the point across quite eloquently. Thanks for posting this.