An Olive Branch's Shocking Report on Yogi Bhajan Revealed
An Olive Branch finds rape, group sex, and abuses in their investigation into Yogi Bhajan. Cult expert Matthew Remski argues, however, that the report supports Yogi Bhajan’s enablers by including their glowing praise.
By Be Scofield
TRIGGER WARNING: This article contains graphic descriptions of sexual and physical abuse.
August 14th, 2020
An Olive Branch has released its long-awaited 72-page report into the abuses of Kundalini Yoga founder Yogi Bhajan. After a 5-month independent investigation that interviewed 140 people, they’ve concluded that the allegations of rape and sexual abuse against him are credible.
-> View & download the full investigative report
An Olive Branch’s findings support the original reporting that exposed rape, sexual and physical abuse, fraud, child abuse, marriage tampering, and more.
The report states they found sufficient evidence that “Yogi Bhajan raped three women and that he directed one woman to have anal sex with a young man.” One woman told the investigators that she “did not consent the first time with Yogi Bhajan…It was rape.” Another said Bhajan told her he would “conquer” her. “The last time he raped me was in LA.”
“Seven interviewees reported being part of group sex with Yogi Bhajan,” the report states. One described it as “straightforward orgy stuff.” Another said one time “five or six others were all having sex with him.” One woman says she was told to be a “third person” in a sexual scenario that she walked in on. She was directed to perform oral sex on Bhajan.
Numerous women told An Olive Branch that Bhajan was violent during sex. “He would chew on my [labia] for half an hour. I could not walk afterwards — I was bloody and swollen.” Several women reported their faces, tongues, and lips being bruised and bitten. “He would bite me on my neck, ears, checks and I cried,” one woman told investigators. “He bit my tongue and sucked it — it was blue and bleeding,” another said.
“[Grooming for sex with Yogi Bhajan] started with getting girls to watch porn with him,” one person told An Olive Branch investigators. “They had a TV in the room and often played sexually explicit and violent material…They would watch this for hours at a time, day on end…,” one person said.
The report states that Bhajan claimed to have lived a celibate life during this time.
The report also found numerous instances of physical and verbal abuse. “Another time the abuse was so bad that [my husband] passed out and fell at Yogi Bhajan’s feet who kicked at him calling him names,” one woman told investigators. A mother said that on one occasion Bhajan “unmercifully” verbally attacked her 15-year old daughter and called her “disparaging” names. “I’ll have her sold into white slavery,” Bhajan told the mother. “He referred to me in public as a lying homo and to my former wife as a betraying slut,” said another.
“He could arrange for me to be in a car that would go over a cliff and no one would know,” a former follower told investigators. Threats of physical violence and death were a common way Bhajan kept members under control.
Other findings in the report include coercing women to get abortions, tampering with marriages, using armed guards to instill fear, directing women to shave their pubic hair, and directing women to have sex with other women among others.
Since the original expose, other news sites have also reported on the abuse claims. In 2020 former secretary Pamela Dyson published a revealing memoir about her experience with Bhajan.
The Limitations of An Olive Branch’s Yogi Bhajan Report
An Olive Branch’s report doesn’t include the allegations of rape and abuse made by former secretary Kate Felt that were reported in the original expose. She alleged that her sister and current head of 3HO, Amrit Kaur Khalsa, helped Bhajan rape her.
The report also began with many pages of comments from Yogi Bhajan supporters describing how loving and wonderful he was. He was a “tireless worker” they claim who tried to “save everyone.” His supporters also said Bhajan could “read auras.”
Cult expert Matthew Remski explains his concerns with how the report supported Bhajan’s enablers and apologists:
“Tragically, this report was limited in scope to testimonies about Bhajan. It didn’t touch his fraudulent spiritual claims, his extensive criminal enterprises, his colleagues and beneficiaries, his groomers and honeypotters. It failed to cite Philip Deslippe’s extensive deconstructions of the Bhajan myth. It doesn’t touch the generation of children who were separated from their parents and sent to faux-Sikh residential schools in India.
Incredibly, An Olive Branch spent MORE TIME interviewing Bhajan enablers and 3HO apologists than Bhajan survivors. Then they frontloaded the accolades in the 72-page document. The effect is that the reader is conditioned by the group’s propaganda before the abuse testimonies are provided.”
What An Olive Branch did is essentially like including glowing, positive reviews in a report about the rape and sexual abuses of Harvey Weinstein or Larry Nassar.
Despite the report’s flaws it will help to create accountability and healing as this is the first organizational level review of Bhajan’s abuses.
-> Read or download the full An Olive Branch report in full here.
LINKS:
