What was the crime of the children who were abused in ISKCON’s gurukulas?

What was the crime of innocent children’s who came to US Iskcon, leaving their homes and parents, seeking Krishna’s blessings. They were molested by Iskcon teachers (molested children included young boys as well as girls)

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you Iskcon gurus, molested children including young boys as well as girls Answer Life presents us with many injustices that seem to be very unfair and it is whether we are present within a religious institution or outside a religious institution, whether we are atheists or believers in God whether we are poor or wealthy everybody in this sense faces injustices in life and the Vedic wisdom tradition helps us understand that every action has a consequence and every consequence has had some action in the past which in general is called as the law of karma and this law of karma acts before this life and beyond this life that means some of us may get some reactions for what we may have done in the past prior to this life and some of us may do some things wrong but we may not get the reaction in this life we may get it in next life the details of the law of karma are many, there are two articles on this website as well as one full lecture which you can refer to for understanding the subtleties of the principle of karma but suffice it to say that these children the fact that they came to Krishna’s lotus feet and they were born in devotees families and they practiced devotional service to whatever extent they could this indicates that they were definitely devotionally minded they had some devotional background in the past and none of us has a karmic slate that is entirely white or entirely black it may be partially white and partially black so whatever happens to us is a result of whatever we have done in the past this does not free the person who has done anything wrong from the responsibility for that so regarding the specific question of what was the crime of the innocent children yes it is sad that this thing happened and from this point of life’s perspective surely the children were innocent but from the perspective that we have many lives whatever happens to us is something a reaction of what we have done in the past now coming to specifically the point of responsibility surely it was unfortunate that this thing happened and it is not that ISKCON actually colluded in this or made it happen ISKCON actually as soon as it was discovered after that not only did ISKCON arrange for a significant amount of money as well as emotional counselling and other things by which these children could be rehabilitated and so that they could have a proper life along with that those people who had done these wrong things strong disciplinary actions were taken against them they were removed from political leadership some of them were told to leave the movement and in fact the New York Times in an article compared favourably the response of ISKCON to what happened with the response of Catholic Church this is just unfortunate that we live in a society where people’s minds are so distorted so perverted and people do these sort of things so people do it because of their past backgrounds and when they join a religious movement they may continue to do this and ISKCON is an open institution so anybody can join ISKCON and if they are following the principles then they grow within the organisation but if they keep harbouring their past tendencies and they look upon opportunities to fulfil those bestial inclinations then they may end up doing wrong things so this is a problem which all organisations face just as an abuse of somebody in IIT doesn’t make IIT bad IIT is an educational institution somebody might come in there and he might abuse it so that person will be expelled or rusticated or some action will be taken against him appropriately the same principle applies ISKCON is an educational institution that gives knowledge of God and it’s a transformational institution that helps people to develop love of God but sometimes when these things happen that’s because our society at large is so unfortunately depraved so the point I was making about New York Times is similar things have happened in the Catholic Church but year upon year they just denied it and it’s not to blame them but it was ISKCON within its own journal published the article about what had happened to the children within the movement and what needed to be done to resolve it so rather than adopting a policy of denial and cover up ISKCON adopted a policy of open admission and rectification so the rectification, as I said, I talked about two parts one is a substantial amount of financial and other resources were reserved so that the children could be rehabilitated for whatever problems they might have suffered and whatever problems they might be having now those who did wrong were strongly corrected and disciplinary action was taken against them and proper surveillance measures and child protection teams were set up so that these things would not happen again so in this way whatever could be done has been done and as far as the children are concerned many of them have recognized that what happened to them was actually an aberration was a deviation and the devotee community at large at least the places where the devotee community is being cared for and guided properly according to the devotional principles of the Bhagavad Gita by mature dedicated leaders the devotional community over there is actively carrying on and preserving the spiritual culture and is serving humanity in various ways so it was a sad incident and the needful has been done to take care of it whatever was humanly possible in terms of the three factors involved the victims, the victimizers and the system in which the victims and victimizers came together so the victims have been taken care of the victimizers have been punished and the system has been changed by which the recurrence will not occur so to hang on to that to paint all of ISKCON as bad just indicates the unwillingness to recognize that ISKCON is an open organization where people with different kinds of mentalities will come in and just because one person does something wrong doesn’t mean that the whole organization becomes wrong so the principle of karma is not meant to deny responsibility or to become hard hearted but it is meant to help us become free from resentment without understanding the principle of karma when something wrong happens to us we just keep burning within ourselves, why me? why me? and when life offers us no answers generally we may go along two courses we may just burn ourselves internally by self pity and resentment or we may burn ourselves in the outer direction by expressing our anger towards others and just hurting and injuring others and maiming others so the principle of karma is primarily meant to help us become free from the feeling of resentment and life’s apparent injustices but that is not meant to be used as a justification for committing injustice or for that matter even tolerating injustice so that’s why as I said these people who did these wrong things have been adequately corrected and punished also wherever it was required in terms of disciplinary action and the facility system has been made as much as possible to ensure that recurrence of such incidents don’t happen