Conny LarssonOn a website, I reported an address given by ex-devotee Conny Larsson at a FECRIS conference in 2006. In this relevant talk, Larsson furnished information concerning sexual abuses achieved by his former guru Sathya Sai Baba (d.2011). Equalizer (Gerald Joe Moreno) reacted to my report by accusing me of endorsing Larsson’s “new age” activities. I had not done anything of the sort.
There followed a tiresome spate of Moreno online accusations about my supposed support for Larsson’s fashionable and exotic “workshop” roles. I was obliged to refute this apologist tactic in a new web article. That article described Moreno (Equalizer, SSS108) as an internet terrorist.
The idiosyncratic reasoning of sectarian Gerald Joe Moreno preferred to assume that, anyone who mentioned what an ex-devotee said, was necessarily in agreement with all the thinking and behaviour of the other party. This very illogical exercise in attempted stigma was patently ridiculous. Strongly visible on Google were blog idioms of Equalizer such as “Shepherd’s desperate and shameless justifications and cover-ups for psychic medium Conny Larsson.” All this amounted to an apologist recourse of superficial rhetoric.
I have never been in contact with Larsson, merely reporting relevant details about which he knew at firsthand. Those details can be encapsulated here by his well known observation that the Puttaparthi ashram of Sathya Sai was the scene of “a paedophile ring.” Larsson himself was encouraged by the guru into a homosexual relationship (with Sathya Sai) for five years.
Larsson’s book Behind the Mask of the Clown is very revealing. He relates how Sathya Sai sexually molested him in a private interview, explicitly wishing him to keep quiet about the new relationship. Larsson eventually discovered that he was not the only one in this predicament; there were many others. The guru even paid sexually exploited students and devotees, desiring their attention at this intimate and secretive level.
I have never been in contact with Larsson, merely reporting relevant details about which he knew at firsthand. Those details can be encapsulated here by his well known observation that the Puttaparthi ashram of Sathya Sai was the scene of “a paedophile ring.” Larsson himself was encouraged by the guru into a homosexual relationship (with Sathya Sai) for five years.
Larsson’s book Behind the Mask of the Clown is very revealing. He relates how Sathya Sai sexually molested him in a private interview, explicitly wishing him to keep quiet about the new relationship. Larsson eventually discovered that he was not the only one in this predicament; there were many others. The guru even paid sexually exploited students and devotees, desiring their attention at this intimate and secretive level.
Larsson also says that the four men who died in the notorious bedroom murders at the Puttaparthi ashram (in 1993) were victims of sexual abuse whom he had known personally. This otherwise concealed dimension of a well known event serves to explain at least some of the gruesome details.
Close analysts remarked that the “Larsson complex” of Moreno served as a distraction from the testimonies of sexual abuse by victims of Sathya Sai Baba. In trying to divert attention from the numerous reports of abuse, Moreno invented fantastic scenarios which he imposed upon critics. He described this ruse in terms of “exposing” the critics.
Conny Larsson wrote a significant Open Letter to Sathya Sai Baba, dated October 2000. This document should be more widely analysed by competent psychologists who are not fooled by the web antics of apologists like Moreno. The Swedish ex-devotee first encountered Sathya Sai in 1978, with the consequence that he was lured into an oral sex relationship with the guru for five years. In 1986, Larsson witnessed an episode in which a 23 year old Western visitor retreated from sexual molestation. That visitor left the ashram, became depressed, and later committed suicide. As the years passed, Sathya Sai increased his predatory sexual activity “with younger and younger boys.”
Those Indian boys faced severe problems in their situation at schools and Colleges existing in the name of Sathya Sai Baba. Molestations by the guru were very numerous, accompanied by the incomprehension of devotee parents who disliked complaints against Sathya Sai. Larsson wrote to the predator: “Your own students, both in Brindavan [near Bangalore] and in Puttaparthi, started to confront us Westerners with this unpleasant news” (Open Letter Conny Larsson to Sai Baba, exbaba.com, Witnesses tab). Partisans like Moreno, and the more prominent Dr. Michael Goldstein, served to maintain the plight of victims in stranglehold situations of paedophile dimensions.
Kevin R. D. Shepherd
February 2014 (modified 2021)
ENTRY no. 19
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