EAT, PREY, LOVE YOGA RETREAT ROCKED BY RAPE SCANDAL
It’s meant to be a haven of relaxation, but a Thai yoga centre is embroiled in controversy
With picturesque beaches and healing workshops, Koh Phangan is an international escape for thousands of Kiwis. But the Thai island is now under the cloud of #MeToo amid sexual assault allegations — the latest in a string of scandals that have struck the heart of yoga and its devotees. Anke Richter uncovers a paradise lost.
When the sun sets over the Gulf of Thailand, soft drum beats can be heard on Zen Beach where dreadlocked travellers juggle poi sticks.
Koh Phangan is a small tropical island famous for its laid-back hippie vibe, healing workshops and fullmoon parties. Cafe´s serve magic mushroom shakes and detox clinics offer colonics with organic coffee enemas.
The latest toxin that’s being flushed out is not a psychedelic drug, but a so-called “sex cult”.
Agama, one of the world’s largest yoga training centres that was a business magnet on the island for 15 years, is closed as it addresses sexual abuse allegations.
In July, 31 women publicly alleged sexual abuse at Agama. Fourteen women told the Guardian last week they were sexually assualted by the centre’s founder Swami Vivekananda Saraswati, a Romanian native born as Narcis Tarcau. Three said they were raped by him
Tarcau is understood to have left Koh Phangan that month.
Hundreds of Kiwis have passed through the school.
One, a 36-year-old woman, did 12 months of yoga teacher training at Agama over five years.
She tells the Herald on Sunday of going to Tarcau’s house for a “healing meditation”.
“Afterwards, he kissed me and started taking off my clothes without asking,” she says.
“There was a lot of pressure for sex, even though I said no.”
She managed to leave before anything happened but what really disturbed her was a senior teacher’s reaction.
“[He said] ‘Like wow, how did you manage to leave without making love.’ I felt really na¨ıve.
“Swami is very aggressive and manipulative. There was all this subtle pressure to sleep with him and other teachers the higher you go in the school. Men are told that women want to be ‘taken’.”
Women were also encouraged to have sex with other women in threesomes, she says.
“The brainwashing is subtle but relentless. If unwanted sexual advances or worse happened, and the woman wanted to bring it up, she was told either that she needs to be more open and work on her heart chakra, or that she is attracting this kind of experience. It’s her karma to work through this, especially if it happens more than once.”
Naomi Gibb, a graphic designer and yoga teacher originally from Wellington, also studied at Agama over five years.
She says she had many sexual invitations from men, including Tarcau and other teachers.
She was in a relationship and says she “didn’t go for the bait”.
“I was very careful not to be alone with him. He has quite a strong power. Other women were in a different situation to me and more vulnerable.”
The 42-year-old says that the last time she was on Koh Phangan, she heard about one of the senior Agama teachers who raped a woman during a massage session.
The dress code is white. It calls itself “a true spiritual university” and there’s an enlightenment hall and healing centre.
Tarcau started Agama in 2003 with former partner Mihaiela Pentiuc after he was deported from India, where he faced sexual abuse allegations.
Tarcau and Pentiuc — now known as Ananda Maha — were students of a Romanian guru Gregorian Bivolaru, a convicted rapist who is on the EU most wanted list, accused of human trafficking.
Agama provides workshops, retreats and teacher training to thousands every year.
The most popular course is a month-long yoga introduction for about $700 and there are now Agama centres in India, Colombia and Austria.
Many devotees volunteer and teachers usually don’t get paid but earn participation to their next course through a points system.
Nancy Ellen Miller, a Canadian writing coach who spent a decade at Agama, says Tarcau had convinced his inner circle a third world war would occur in 2012.
She had heard several students donated thousands to build an ashram (a spiritual or religious retreat) on a mountain in New Zealand which he could retreat to.
It is understood Tarcau sent a senior student here with the cash but nothing materialised. It is not known what the money was used for.
Miller says there were other bizarre practices — like staying for up to a week in pitch-black huts drinking only milk.
“Some left that school and ended up in psychiatric wards.”
Masculinity workshops were also held in which men learned how to pick up women and practiced their skills in local bars.
A former student told the Herald on Sunday it involved the practice of negging — how to build a woman up, then take her down.
Before the sexual abuse allegations became public, a group of former and current Agama teachers, students and staff members — half of them men — delivered a manifesto to the school to try and end all sexual misconduct and investigate it.
The student says they had meetings with Tarcau.
“He said he did it all for a higher good.”
Eventually Tarcau, who weighs more than 100kg, agreed to sit behind a desk for private consultations so that women would feel safer around him, another student says.
The first sexual assault complaint to an authority was filed by a British woman at the Thai embassy in Melbourne who attended Agama for several months each year from 2010 until 2015.
Her statement dated August 17 and seen by the Herald on Sunday reads: “I went to him for healing. He convinced me that having sex would help me.”
She says that in 2014 she was in bed with Tarcau when he raped her.
Last week, an Australian woman in her 30s made a complaint of rape in October 2016 to the Koh Pangan police.
Hours later the military and Thai police reportedly raided the yoga retreat. Tarcau is believed to have already fled.
The country has a three-month statute of limitation for rape charges.
The assaults are alleged to have happened in private sessions and during intimate interactions between students and teachers.
They were often recommended to students by top female teachers and the community’s mother figure Ananda Maha, aka Mihaiela Pentiuc, a homeopath from Romania.
Pentiuc, who is now head of the school, published an open letter on its website and Facebook page after the allegations came to light which said: “We are changing. Change also takes time. We have acknowledged our deep remorse.”
It said the accused male teachers had been removed from the school and they wanted women to come forward for an internal independent investigation.
She did not want to be interviewed for this story while Agama’s “internal independent investigation and the official police report” is still under way.
Other yogis who came out of Agama and started their own schools and workshops are now either under suspicion or have publicly denounced their affiliation — a purging of emotional and confessional posts from redemption to vicious attacks on social media.
Last month, Agama’s license was suspended by the US-based Yoga Alliance, a nonprofit trade association, until further review.
In the 31 public testimonials about Agama, sexual misconduct allegations were also against the head of the Austrian school, Serkan Temel.
The school closed temporarily and Temel called the claims false.
Some women have been hesitant to come forward because of their mistrust of the local police and the deep-rooted culture of victim blaming in Thailand.
After the rape and murder of a British tourist in 2014, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said: “There are always problems with tourist safety. They think our country is beautiful and is safe so they can do whatever they want, they can wear bikinis and walk everywhere. Can they be safe in bikinis . . . unless they are not beautiful?”
There was also fear of being attacked by Tarcau, not only in a
“I was very careful not to be alone with him. He has quite a strong power. Other women were in a different situation to me and more vulnerable.”
Naomi Gibb
We acknowledge that — as a tantric Yoga school — we should have done more to ensure safety. We are taking immediate actions to correct this.”
Agama statement
physical way — many victims beleive he holds power over them with hypnosis.
This week Agama issued a lengthy statement apologising “once more for any harm that any Agama teacher may have caused”.
It urged victims to share any allegations or information about the case with police as well as its thirdparty investigator.
“While we are doing our best to establish the facts regarding each accused individual, we acknowledge that as a school, we have failed to ensure a proper procedure to report discomfort or potential abuse and a proper procedure to ask for the written consent of students to engage in
sexual relationships with teachers,” the statement read.
“Although in normal life the police would be a natural resource for reporting abuse and sexual encounters between adults do not require written consent, we acknowledge that — as a tantric Yoga school — we should have done more to ensure safety. We deeply apologise for this. We are taking immediate actions to correct this.”
It is was making a number of changes including:
● Teachers and students who want to have sex must sign a consent form valid for three months, to be renewed every three months.
● A commission will be set-up for students to report issues.
● Training will be offered on sexual misconduct, boundaries, and consent, authority power dynamics, and trauma consequences.
● The review process of teachers and staff are being strengthened.
● The sexual Tantra and yoga curriculum will be reviewed “in order to assess any potential gender bias”.
● An online survey with former employees, teachers, and students will be conducted to understand what needs to be changed.
While it restructured, it would temporarily close during low season with a view to reopen in December and would publish the results of its internal investigation publicly.
Last week, Agama felt like a ghost town.
The Herald on Sunday attended a drop-in yoga class that usually holds about a hundred students in the high season. There were no other students.
The teacher from Brazil spoke about divine energy. Her eyes lit up when she spoke about Pentiuc’s upcoming birthday celebration at the half moon.
All videos of Tarcau, his biography and the newsletter archive have disappeared from the institution’s website.
There has been a sudden exodus of farangs, as the foreigners are called, from the island.
“It’s hard on the local businesses,” says Sunny McGill, a Thai woman who opened a yoga studio across from Agama in December. “They are torn between morals and money.”
There is also an organic shop next door to Agama. The Austrian manager first denies an association with Agama before he defends it and dismisses the sexual abuse allegations as “jealousy from other yoga schools”.
“We are pretty much finished.” Days after the scandal broke, a separate tantric workshop on Koh Phangan was shut down by police when they heard cathartic screaming and mistook it for exorcism.
Naked swimming is now illegal at Zen Beach, which used to be the unofficial nudist hang-out.
Like the film and several other industries, the wellness business has come under scrutiny. Bikram Choudhury, the pioneer of hot yoga was accused of rape in the US in 2013. The women are still pursuing civil cases. Choudhury has dismissed them as lies and fled the country.
Earlier this year, a student of K Pattabhi Jois, who developed the Ashtanga yoga style and died in 2009, posted an explosive #MeToo statement about him online.
Eight more women told their stories of sexual and physical assault by him to cult and yoga expert Matthew Remski for an upcoming book.
In January, a Czech court sentenced Jaroslav Dobes, dubbed Guru Jara, and his aide Barbora Plaskova to more than seven years in prison for raping six women during seminars at his Poetrie esoteric school that taught yoga, tantra, astrology and energy work.
In June, the head of Shambhala International, one of the largest western Buddhist organisations with meditation centres in more than 30 countries, had to step down after a report he had sexually abused and exploited some of his female followers for years.
And two weeks ago,
Sri Prem Baba — a celebrity guru from Brazil — was confronted with sexual abuse allegations.
Canterbury woman Donna Farhi, who runs yoga workshops internationally, is supporting several women overseas who have been molested by yoga teachers.
“We will look back at this era with shame. #MeToo has arrived in the yoga world, and it’s about time.”