A British woman spoke about the sexual abuse she has endured since the age of six across ‘ashrams‘ or ‘Sannyasin‘ communities. In an interview with the Times, the 54-year-old woman talked about the Indian mystic Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, commonly known by his alias ‘Osho‘.
Prem Sangram was allegedly abused and raped multiple times as a child in a sex cult.Sargam explained how her parents joined the Osho-led Sannyasin spiritual movement when she was a young child. The movement propagated that children should regularly watch sex and that girls going through puberty should be guided by adult men on their sexual journeys.
‘It was considered good for the children to be exposed to sexuality,’ she told The Times, explaining how watching adults having sex was a regular occurrence for her.
Sargam had moved to a Sannyasin commune in Prune, India when her family relocated from their home in Devon, UK after her father became disillusioned with his job and sought enlightenment from Osho.
The movement believed that children were obstructions to their parents’ sexual journeys.
Sargam lived away from her parents in the children’s quarters, where she received no education and would work 12 hours a day in the kitchen.
After a year of coming to India, Sargam was groomed by an adult man at the age of 7, who would make her follow him around ‘like a little dog’ and bribe her with chocolate. ‘It was only at 16 that I understood what had happened’, she said.
The sexual abuse on children in Osho’s communes is explored in the upcoming documentary ‘Children of the Cult‘ . The film will tell the story of three British women, including Sargam, who managed to escape the cult.
Sargam only opened up about her past three years ago on Facebook, when she wrote an open letter to her abuser.
‘Even in my [seven]-year-old mind, I thought what a strange thing to be doing. I was already becoming very mentally and emotionally confused.’
Sargam said that she and her friends were expected to perform different sexual acts on grown men who lived in the commune at a very young age.
By the age of 12, Sargam had relocated to the US to be with her mother, who was working in an ashram in Oregon.
Hundreds of young children were subjected to in Rajneesh’s global communes despite the abuse allegations.
According to The Times, there was just one investigation by US Child Protection Services into the Oregon cult.
Netflix released a documentary about the cult’s Oregon branch in 2018 called ‘Wild Wild Country’, but there was no mention of the children’s experiences of sexual abuse and neglect.
Osho’s unorthodox meditation techniques attracted tens of thousands of followers from all over the world, including celebrities and other famous personalities.
Rajneesh’s teachings were a bizarre mixture of pop psychology, ancient Indian wisdom, capitalism, sexual permissiveness and dirty jokes that he gleaned from the pages of Playboy magazine, according to a philosophy lecturer who, in 1970, founded a spiritual movement and commune in Pune, near Mumbai (formerly Bombay).
Rajneesh argued that monogamous marriage was unnatural and restrictive. He encouraged unrestricted promiscuity, which is having multiple sexual partners, along with partner-swapping, from the age of 14.
Osho was known as the ‘Sex Guru’ in India while in the US he was called the ‘Rolls-Royce Guru’ given the fact that he owned 93 luxury cars, according to the Daily Mail.
Osho’s followers were often highly educated professionals ready to reject the structures of middle-class norms and seek enlightenment first in India and later at other communes.
A lot of followers left their spouses and children, while others donated everything they had to the cult.
The Sannyasin spiritual movement attempted to build a $100 million city in Oregon. However, this utopic idea became the group’s downfall in the Eighties.
Indan authorities started an investigation over immigration fraud, tax evasion and drug smuggling on Osho when he moved to Oregon in 1981. The group bought a 64,000-acre ranch near Antelope, where 7,000 followers overwhelmed the town’s 50 residents.
The group initiated a construction on a self-sustaining ‘Rajneesh’ city intended for 50,000 residents. The settlements would include houses, shops, restaurants and even an airport. However, Osho faced strong opposition from local politicians who believed he was leading a dangerous cult.
Rajneesh was charged with immigration fraud and deported back to Pune, India, where he died of heart failure in 1998. Despite the cult’s downfall, a small number of Rajneeshi followers still exist today.