Children of the Cult review — an incendiary story of neglect, abuse and rape
Published By admin with Comments 0
A litany of outrages defines this incendiary documentary about the neglect, abuse and rape of children in the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh “spiritual” communes worldwide in the Seventies and Eighties.
Maroesja Perizonius, a Dutch former victim of the Osho cult’s child sex regime, made the film in response to Netflix’s well-regarded Wild Wild Country. That series charted the Rajneesh movement’s activities in Wasco County, Oregon, without once delving into the subject of widespread child abuse.
Former victims step forward and bravely recount, sometimes shuddering with post-traumatic stress, the daily rituals and absurdly unapologetic practices that offered, as one survivor says, “free sex and free sex with children. If you’re a predator, what a great environment to go in.”
As well as detailing the crimes of several predatory men, including those who posed as teachers and carers in the cult’s sinister Suffolk base, known as Medina (it closed in the 1980s), Perizonius’s film turns its wrath on the navel-gazing parents who happily placed their children in harm’s way.
Told that their sons and daughters were an “impediment” to enlightenment, they abandoned their children to a system that encouraged “sexual initiation” between adult men and girls as young as eight.
When one abuser is finally interviewed, in audio only, he is remarkably phlegmatic about his atrocities, merely sighing, “Yeah, that was a big mistake I made, and I’m really sorry about that.” Another, still spiritual after all these years and leading meditation groups, is furious and aggressive when confronted about his rapist past.
Content retrieved from: https://www.thetimes.com/culture/film/article/children-of-the-cult-film-review-movie-922jc5rd2.
