Letter to the GBC from Titiksa ACBSP
Titiksa is a Prabhupada disciple that has worked with Gurukulas for roughly 10 years. She co-founded the first Day School model that is still flourishing in Alachua.
August 1, 2021
Dear Esteemed Members of Srila Prabhupada’s GBC
I offer my humble obeisances. All glories to His Divine Grace. I know some of you personally and have witnessed your lifelong dedication to Srila Prabhupada. It is with great sadness that I write this letter.
My mind and heart as well as thousands of collective devotees in the world find ourselves deeply disturbed by how a moral and ethical dilemma of child sexual abuse is still poisoning the very fiber of Srila Prabhupada’s movement.
I am writing in reference to the 30 year old outstanding, incomplete case of Lokanatha Swami’s admitted sexual abuse towards Satya Devi Dasi.
As it stands, every move the GBC makes regarding this case makes you all look complicit in covering up blatant sexual abuse towards a child.
Hopefully that is not true, but it sure looks that way.
And it will look like that even more, should the damaged family ever choose to press charges.
It will also look that way to the journalists that are now being contacted by survivors suffering from PTSD. They’re not going away. They are born Vaishnavas and they know what happened to them is egregious.
Quite frankly, you need to prove to the assembled devotee that you’re not covering up Lokanatha Swami’s case.
You are our governing body. We look up to you for the highest spiritual management in the world. And we most definitely look to you to do better that the Catholic Church regarding crimes towards children.
We can do better you know? Even in spite of the past mistakes .
The Catholic Church hid it for centuries. We’re nipping it in the bud in under 50 years. And we are going to nip this with the GBC’s help or without it.
You can help and take the credit or this movement is going to revolt on you and you’ll go down in history as failures at your esteemed service. We know you face politics with the ICC regarding this case. We know this may be the biggest wrong you’ve ever had to right. But you must.
The troops are pretty fed up with the approach you’re taking at this point. And now, with the internet, what goes on behind your closed door meetings becomes public knowledge quickly. It’s such a bugger how secrets never stay secret in the information age.
If I may, I would like to start with a few questions for clarity.
If you would be so kind as to answer these questions for me and the assembled devotees it will go a long way towards calming the waters.
- Firstly, can you please tell me why you took the qualified ICPO team off Lokanatha Swami’s case?
- If the ICPO is an independent entity why is the GBC determining whether they can examine the case or not?
- Why was Umapati removed as guru and sanyasa but not Lokanatha Swami?
- As far as your choices for the panel, why were two spots open to ICC members but not to those that voiced the complaints?
- Do the members of your chosen panel have training in Child Protection?
To prove you are innocent of any cover up, the Lokanatha Swami/Satya Devi case needs to be returned to the ICPO immediately for thorough investigation. That’s just absolute truth pure and simple.
Anything else just reeks of deception on your parts.
I do not believe any of you gentlemen want to face the internal revolution that is brewing in a very organized way.
It will be unlike anything ISKCON has weathered so far.
More destructive than the Turley case because these young people are brilliant. They’ve asked nicely for decades until they are all choking to death on their own childhood traumas.
Times up.
With my finger on the pulse of the second and third generations of devotees in ISKCON, either the GBC deals with this with the utmost morals and ethics, regardless who committed the crime or there’s going to be many years of hellish court battles ensuing.
You see, these abused children have grown up to be very well educated, empowered human beings that can use technology as if they have a chip in their brain.
This child abuse situation is the boil on the backside of ISKCON and it’s about to burst. It’s going to be messy and it’s going to drain a lot of us elders’ life forces.
Personally, one of the most glaring, befuddling and outrageously managed decisions you gentlemen managed to pull off was removing Dhira Govinda Das from his CPO power, his input and well documented findings about Lokanatha Swami. Dhira Govinda is an intelligent, highly qualified Phd. He is a sober minded devotee that did extensive work on this case years ago only to have it discarded, buried, whatever.
How can that be??
I pray that you will take the time to respond to my letter. I do not expect much in my life nor have I ever directly addressed you before, so I must admit that I DO expect a reply as I am your Godsibling and one of your mothers. I write it out of great concern for Prabhupada’s movement and quite frankly, your own legacies.
With Deep Respect and Quandary
Your Godsister, Titiksa Devi Dasi ACBSP
