My years in a cult that groomed children to have sex with adults
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When Prem Sargam was six years old, her father left his job with IBM and disappeared from their home in Devon to join an ashram in Pune, India, in pursuit of spiritual enlightenment as a sannyasin or religious adherent. She didn’t know it then, but she was about to lose everything: her name, her home, any notion of conventional morality, her mother and, devastatingly, her innocence. What she would get was a new name after an initiation ceremony in an auditorium, a set of orange robes of her own and a new philosophy by which to live, which identified children as an obstruction to their parents’ sexual journey.
The other message of sannyasin teaching, both unlawful and shattering, was quickly assimilated by those joining the ashrams springing up worldwide, including the children: young pubescent girls on their sexual journey could be helpfully “guided” by older men.
Within a year, Sargam was a sannyasin too — nowhere near puberty, but regularly watching sex and displays of sexuality in the Indian cult. At first, in India aged six, Sargam was among thousands of followers living outside the main ashram, but soon she was taken into the children’s quarters, away from her parents, later working 12-hour days in the kitchen, receiving no education. It was there she waved goodbye to her innocence overnight.
Content retrieved from: https://www.thetimes.com/uk/society/article/children-of-the-cult-documentary-interview-336bgbxvv.
