‘Raped 50 times’: A UK woman’s shocking story of child sex abuse at Osho ashrams

Indian mystic Rajneesh, popularly known as Osho, who died in 1990, and his sannyasin movement have found themselves in the public eye again after a 54-year-old woman shared her harrowing experience of being raised in the notorious sex cult.

Prem Sargam, in an interview with The Times, shared the rampant sexual abuse she endured from the age of six across three sannyasin communities or “ashrams.”

Let’s take a closer look.

The sexual abuse in name of spiritual enlightenment

Prem Sargam opened about her childhood and the “sickening Sannyasin’ sex cult” led by Indian mystic Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, aka Osho, in the interview with The Times, ahead of the release of her documentary named Children of the Cult, which details her and two other British women’s story at the ashrams.

She opened up about how she was forced to undergo sexual abuse as a minor in the name of “free love.”

“I want the world to know what happened to me and countless others. We were innocent children, exploited and abused in the name of spiritual enlightenment,” Sargam said.

The nightmare started when Sargam’s family relocated from their Devon residence to the cult’s ashram in Pune when she was just six. Her disillusioned father sought enlightenment from Rajneesh, popularly called Osho.

She was forced to change her name, wear orange robes and adopt a philosophy that viewed children as obstacles to parental sexual freedom.

The cult believed children should regularly watch sex and that girls going through puberty should be guided by adult men on their sexual journeys.

Sargam recalled, “It was considered good for the children to be exposed to sexuality.”

The so-called spiritual movement also felt that kids were a hindrance to their parents’ sex lives. This meant that Sargam lived in the children’s quarters, away from her parents, without an education, and worked in the kitchen for 12 hours a day.

The abuse, however, escalated a year after joining the cult.

Sargam told The Times that between the ages of seven and 11, she and her friends were expected to perform different sexual acts on grown men who lived in the commune.

An adult man trained her, making her follow him around “like a little dog” and rewarding her with chocolate from Switzerland.

“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,” she reflected.

Later, on the pretence of participating in a “boarding school” program, Sargam was transferred to the Medina ashram in Suffolk.

Still, the exploitation went on.

“It was only at 16 that I understood what had happened,” she said.

At 12, Sargam had been relocated to the US, joining her mother at an ashram in Oregon.

By that time, she had endured rape over 50 times.

About Rajneesh

Rajneesh, a philosophy lecturer, founded the spiritual movement and commune in Pune in 1970.

His ideas combined pop psychology, ancient Indian wisdom, capitalism, and sexual permissiveness in an odd way.

He promoted unfettered promiscuity, including partner-swapping, from the age of 14, contending that monogamous marriage is improper.

Because of his unconventional meditation methods and emphasis on sexual liberation, Osho became known as the “Sex Guru” in India. In the US, his 93-car collection earned him the nickname “Rolls-Royce Guru.”

Similar to Sargam’s parents, many of his supporters were well-educated professionals who were prepared to renounce middle-class tradition and pursue enlightenment in India, Cologne, and Suffolk communes, respectively.

Not much has been published regarding the mistreatment that hundreds of young children endured in Rajneesh’s international communes up to this point.

There was only one US child protection services investigation against the Oregon cult, according to The Times.

The children’s stories of abuse and neglect were left out of the popular 2018 Netflix documentary Wild Wild Country, which was about the cult’s Oregon branch.

Nonetheless, the 2018 Netflix documentary provides more details on what life was like within the free-love cult.

His downfall

The cult’s downfall in the 1980s was caused by its plan to construct a $100 million utopian city in a secluded area of Oregon in the northwest.

A probe into visa fraud, tax evasion, and drug smuggling by Indian officials led Rajneesh to relocate to Oregon in 1981.

They purchased a 64,000-acre ranch near the tiny settlement of Antelope, and the 7,000 followers who moved in overran the 50-strong resident Christian population.

With several homes, stores, eateries, and even an airport planned, Rajneesh started building a self-sufficient city with 50,000 residents in mind. However, local politicians fiercely opposed him, claiming he was the head of a dangerous cult.

Ma Anand Sheela, his personal secretary, and a few of her supporters were under investigation in 1985 for a variety of crimes, including a mass food poisoning attack aimed at influencing the county elections, an attempted assassination of lawyer Charles H Turner, and the attempted murder of the guru’s doctor. As a result, the FBI found an arsenal of unregistered firearms in addition to 10,000 tape recordings from her widespread bugging operation.

Sheela was arrested as a result, and she was given a 20-year prison sentence. However, she was released after 29 months of her arrest and deported.

Rajneesh, meanwhile, was accused of visa fraud and was sent back to Pune, where he passed away in 1990 at the age of 59 from heart failure.

There are still a small number of Rajneesh’s followers around the world today.

With inputs from agencies