“Return to Crisis: Lokanath Swami and Child Abuse in ISKCON”
At the Religion and Sexual Abuse Project (R&SAP) Conference held at University of California-Riverside on March 4th and 5th, 2022, a panel comprised of survivors, advocates, and scholars addressed sexual abuse in relation to the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). The papers given focused on ISKCON’s previous history of abuse, its institutional structures and reforms, and the current controversies surrounding Lokanath Swami and child molestation. The panel was entitled, “Return to Crisis: Lokanath Swami and Child Abuse in ISKCON,” with papers presented by Sara Jones, KD McComb, Sanja Nilsson (in absentia), and Amanda Lucia.
For a recording of this panel, see:
The Religion and Sexual Abuse Project (R&SAP) is a collaboration between a team of scholars who aim to better understand sexual abuse and misconduct in religious traditions. Project leaders acknowledge the deep harm that sexual abuse causes as well as the importance of situating abuse in broader historical, cultural and social contexts. The project aims to support conversations between different stakeholders in a range of domains: academia, religious communities, the media and advocacy platforms.
On March 4th and 5th, 2022, the R&SAP hosted an international conference at University of California-Riverside. The conference included academic papers and workshops that addressed how sexual abuse has been represented and reported, how religious doctrine is used to justify abuse, configurations of power within religious communities that erase or decenter survivor experiences, historical perspectives on sexual violence, the intersection of race and gender in sexual violence, institutional structures that enable abuse, and community responses to abuse. The conference provided an arena for discussing methodological and ethical concerns in researching abuse, and a platform for conversations between advocates, artists, scholars, and survivors
For more information, see:
