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Friday, 8 February, 2002, 18:19 GMT
Krishnas to file for bankruptcy
![]() A spokesman for the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) has confirmed that several of the movement's US temples are to file for bankruptcy later in February to avoid legal action which they say could close them down.
A suit for $400m has been filed in Texas State Court by alleged victims of abuse in the temples' schools in the 1970s and '80s, saying they suffered rape, sexual abuse, physical torture and emotional terror.
However, filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which gives companies breathing space for reorganisation, would allow the movement to continue to compensate victims, he said. ISKCON, better known as the Hare Krishna movement, has admitted to some cases of abuse, and says it has tried to respond. Mr Dasa said it was "working with and beyond the government", spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on grants to people who had been abused and on measures to prevent future abuse. Movement at risk He added that those who had chosen instead to sue wanted an amount so unrealistic that ISKCON felt unable to settle out of court.
"Legal fees [in the US] are just out of control." Lawyers would not just go after the temples being targeted but their affiliates as well, he said, potentially bringing down the entire movement. He added that current temple-goers who had nothing to do with the abuse now risked having their temples shut down because of deviant behaviour in the past. Boarding school culture The movement's founder, AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, brought his form of Hindu devotionalism to America in the 1960s, at the height of the love and peace era and rejection of the war in Vietnam.
Prabhupada said children should be sent to boarding schools at the age of five so they could learn to be pure devotees, freeing parents to sell devotional books and do other jobs. By the end of the 1970s, 11 schools, known as gurukulas or houses of the guru, were operating in North America with several more around the world. Most closed down in the 1980s.
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