Children of the Cult review – fierce doc about the Osho commune survivors
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Maroesja Perizonius and Alice McShane’s impassioned, courageous, focused and confrontational documentary alleges the sexual abuse and rape of children in the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (AKA Osho) meditation communes in Britain, the US and elsewhere, in the 70s and 80s – by people who are in the same business right now. Names are named, questions asked, and certain ageing bland-faced hippy men are challenged on camera, their seraphic expressions of placid spirituality turning to fear and rage.
Children of the Cult grew out of widespread discontent among the now grownup Rajneesh children at the much acclaimed 2018 Netflix series Wild Wild Country, about the Rajneeshpuram cult in Oregon in the 80s. Although candid enough about the well-known bizarre criminality and charlatanism there that (temporarily) discredited the movement and its leader, the series failed to mention child sexual abuse. Grownup rape survivors therefore shared their stories on Facebook, leading to this fierce movie in which the film-makers travel to Europe, the UK and the US to record accounts of grotesque and unacknowledged crimes. As one interviewee puts it, the ashrams had something that attracted a certain kind of charismatic guy: “Free sex, and free sex with kids too.”
Content retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/oct/02/children-of-the-cult-review-osho-commune-bhagwan-shree-rajneesh-wild-wild-country.
