By Sharon Preston
For a time, I lived at the Movement Center in Portland. I came there for spiritual practice. No one invited me to the inner circle. Swami Chetanananda and I never had sexual relations. It was low-key, I did my job, and I did it well.
At that time, I was unaware of most of his abusive behavior.
Women Enabling Abuse
Women admired, loved, and trusted him. Some of them worshiped him. They prepared his ritual offerings, cooked his food, and prayed with him. Some looked upon him as a father, son or brother. Swami has a side where he can be whomever you want.
Women whom you would never think would condone or enable violent predatory abuse in a million years were women who knew all about his abuses. Yet, they made excuses for him. They think anything he says or does is right. “That’s my guru.”
Power
His devotees believed in his power. They thought he could astral project. I witnessed him touch people, and they swoon and go into a semi-conscious trance.
His followers believed that he could eliminate their bad karma. Cleanse them from the evil deeds, mistakes, addictions, missteps, and abuses of a lifetime. They thought that he had divine insights that we did not possess.
His followers believe he can alter the destiny of his disciples and their families.
Relations
Swami and Gretchen
His students followed his instructions. To not obey is to invite disaster. To accept him as a guru, you must obey. In that sense, I was never a disciple.
I was aware that Chetanananda and others engaged in sexual activity. Gretchen was his primary partner. She’s exquisite. Stunning. I’ve never seen her scowl at anyone. She’s kind. She has beautiful energy.
Larissa and I became friends. She radiated beauty and sweetness. She was a child abuse survivor in her late 20s. Both of us described Swami as a father figure. We discussed his relationships with women and how sometimes he would be attracted to women at the Ashram.
Larissa expressed her distaste at the idea of him being attracted to her.
Some women claim he is so enlightened that sex with him can confer spiritual powers upon women. As one woman who was having sex with him said, “If he gives you the chance, take it.”
It is unclear whether they were grooming me for him. This never occurred.
Portland
Gold Beach
Leaving Portland
Vivina Swami and Prakashananda
Swami sold the Movement Center for $8 million. Swami then moved to Gold Beach. After that, there was talk about creating a new Portland center and passing the torch.
Swami Prakashananda had been with him since he was 19 years old. Chetananada was supposed to build him a center in Portland. However, the Swami did not make any provisions for a center to continue operating in Portland.
45 people were moved out of a house of 30,000 square feet in Portland. They started trickling out one by one. Some moved out and found places in Gold Beach. Others joined him in the new mansion. Swami cashed in and bought himself a wonderful mansion in Gold Beach. Good karma.
Leaving the Past Behind
Molly always worked hard offering free service to her guru.
Molly lived in his ashram for forty years. She was a member of the original gang. She devoted herself to him, believing she would die in the ashram. She directed the music program. To impress him, she worked ten hours a day.
When she broke her knee, nobody wanted to take care of her. She ended up undergoing rehabilitation. There was a lack of empathy when people were injured. Everyone was rolling their eyes. ‘Oh, Molly broke her knee.’
Despite her broken knee, she helped with the move to Gold Beach. As a result of her trying too hard to assist, her leg was severely damaged.
She was accustomed to picking things up and carrying them.
I don’t even know how Molly is getting along. She’s lived with them for 40 years. The ashram was all she had. He decided he did not need her at Gold Beach. She didn’t make the cut.
Anybody who couldn’t make the cut was just, “Oh well.”
Molly worked for him all her life. She had been with him since Bloomington, I believe. She could not afford to go to Gold Beach. She had to live in some tiny little subsidized apartment. She is on social security. She may have a small pension. To go to Gold Beach, you are going to need money. She did not have the necessary funds.
She worked for him for free for 40 years. And all the friends and people she lived with are gone. That’s karma.
Ruth
Ruth, Swami and Eddie…
Ruth managed the house. She directed the yoga department. Her husband Eddie was the gardener. They didn’t get to move either. All these years, they worked, and he didn’t provide anything for them.
Gold Beach had no room for Ruth and Eddie. People simply worked for him for free. Ruth moved that whole house. She and Eddie ended up in an apartment. How many thousands of hours did they work unpaid for him all those years. As a result, Swami was able to purchase a mansion at Gold Beach. Karma.
Moni
Moni O’Neil and Swami
At the time, I believed Moni had been dragged along to Golf Beach because she had been his lover. Many of Swami’s followers disliked Monica. The majority of people believe that she has been faking a variety of ailments. For example, she blinks uncontrollably. It does not cease. It’s unnerving.
After reading the articles on the Frank Report, I no longer believe that she is faking her illnesses. I believe she suffered from one too many head blows and oxygen deprivation for too long a period of time.
Moni was once the top woman in the 30,000 sq ft Movement Center. In her heyday, anything she desired of anyone would begin with the words “Swamiji wants you.”.
Now low-key lurching “If it pleases you master” after him for any crumb of continued approval or affection. I thought she was just mentally unbalanced. Now I understand what happened.
Swami cannot just leave people with the numerous wounds he inflicted behind. He will have to take care of Monica for the rest of her life, and he should.
I figured out from Frank’s stories that she was the woman,“Linda,” sent to gangbangs.
Moni is the craziest. She is a lunatic. That woman’s head has been bounced so much off concrete or choked out. She blinks. When she talks to you, she just constantly blink, blink, blink, blink, blink, blink, blink, blink, blink.
She talks to herself in the hallways. But she creates trouble too. If someone talks about something, she goes and tattles to Swami.
She is absolutely psychotic. You can tell neurologically. It’s clearly a lack of oxygen to the brain. I heard recently that one time after a session, somebody had to clean up. He beat her severely. They had to clean fluids and waste he beat out of her. He did this to her for years. Neurological, you can tell.
Have you ever seen somebody who blinks constantly? She doesn’t stop. You’d be walking down the hall, and she’s just conversing with herself.
Jen
Jen
Jen picked up on Monica’s moves. They despise each other. Jen was fond of provoking Chetanananda’s wrath against her targets – always female. I watched the rise and fall of Jen Wilhelm.
They get caught up in it. It’s intoxicating. Everyone wants to feel loved. First, it’s treatments, the healing, and the special attention that every member of the ashram vies for from him. Expensive jewelry, a place at the table in his lavish apartment, and the promise of enlightenment
It’s not like he starts beating them and loaning them to the local transient population. He isolates them, pumping their egos up by telling them they are unique and need to wean themselves from unremarkable people. He does this on purpose, so that the other women will be happy when he breaks them.
Gretchen’s not like that. She is always lovely and kind. But thinking back, I have to mention that she broke her back. The story was she was doing a yoga pose, and her back broke. I never questioned it until I read Frank’s stories. But who breaks their back from yoga poses?
It does sound suspicious.
Going back to Jen. Swami was losing interest in her. She was losing importance and favor with him. She was losing the status she once had.
We knew the ashram was coming to an end. Jen moved into her own apartment. She would keep her business as a chiropractor here. She was not going to Gold Beach.
One day I saw she had a black eye. She had this shiner. She said she’d gotten into a car accident. I didn’t see any damage on either of her vehicles. Then she said something about an accident in a friend’s car.
I read Frank’s story about how she got beat up by the Swami with a baseball bat. Then she was sent to a parking lot for men to come to have sex with her.
When I read that story recently, I was tripping out about the article’s tone. I called a friend who lived there. I was angry.
“You know,” she said, “I get it sounds crazy and awful, but the truth is, that’s how it really is.”
Jen ended up going to Gold Beach and is there today.
Eva
Eva
I spoke to someone who knew Eva had a concussion. She told me Swami choked Eva. At the time we heard she fell. But I saw pictures of Eva with a collar, looking completely drugged out when I was there. Consenting adults, I was told.
I knew Eva left by ambulance for the hospital. I never talked to her about what happened. Jen said she slipped and she would be fine.
Later I learned that Eva signed an NDA. Swami must have paid her. Sharon Ward must have worked it out. Sharon knows where every skeleton is buried. She hides them all.
Other Victims
Natacha
Lilianna told me she had a concussion. She said it was from a car accident. I never saw a wrecked car.
Women raised daughters in the ashram. They taught them from the cradle that you do what the guru asks. I know some who left. But I have since learned more.
It’s outrageous. He was your spiritual father your entire life until one day, he put his tongue down your throat—this STD-ridden bag of bullshit with a God Complex.
Frank has written about Natacha. She submitted to him. She wanted to transcend, transmute, to go through all her karma in this life.
The key is that you have to believe he’s got that ability. I didn’t have that. She got into yoga and the whole discipline. Natacha was an incredibly disciplined yogini. Beautiful. Everybody loved her. Hers was the class everybody wanted to go to.
The bridge Natacha jumped from.
One night she jumped off a bridge because, I’m guessing, that was the only thing she could do that would please him. He wanted it.
She jumped off an overpass above a freeway and managed to miss landing on the highway and being munched. She broke every bone in her legs. He knew exactly where to find her. He went straight to where she was. Generous. He paid for Natacha’s medical expenses.
Suicide
Another woman was suicidal. She called him. The Swami, playing God, said he would spiritually look out for her if she committed suicide. You can imagine the effect on the tormented woman.
She went to speak to two of his disciples. I was present. They both said, “Oh, I’m so sorry. His telling you means you have no more use to the guru.”
Sent to Be Degraded and Film It
Fantasy Theater
We are all talking since the Frank Report stories have been coming out. I am not going to mention her name. But, because many people know her, she was not the only one to whom he did this.
He sent this woman to sex clubs. And he would get mad if there was anybody she was attracted to, and she wanted to be with.
He would make her find the nerdiest or most unattractive guy because he was bestowing upon them the pleasure of, the favor of, being blessed with his beautiful woman. After all, they never could have sex with somebody like that. He was the most generous one.
He would send her to a sex store, the theater. He offered this beautiful young woman to repulsive random strangers. And have her meet men – total strangers – and have sex with them. And she could only be with disgusting men.
He would put ads on Craigslist advertising for men, people to come to get free blow jobs. But, then, he would have her do that with dirty strangers.
Why did she do it?
Trust. She committed to obeying him as her guru. And she thought this was doing her good. The rules were she had to be available 24/7.
Available to have sex with him whenever he wanted. Available if he put out an ad. He would put out an ad saying,’meet me here’.”
He did not have her charge for this. This was not sex work. It was his gift. She would have to FaceTime, and he’d see it. Then he would have her FaceTime him when she did that. So he could watch her having sex with random grotesque men. Watching this beautiful, honest, loyal, loving woman who trusted him giving random strangers blowjobs.
She was not a promiscuous woman. She grew up in a conservative family. She had been with only one man before she came to the ashram.
The Swami laments and bemoans how everyone takes advantage of him. Yet he lets the lowest dirtiest dregs of masculine vibration take advantage of his female students.
He would make her take out Craigslist Ads. Then, he would send her out in the dark for any man on the street to defile her while he watched from his phone.
She’s glad it’s coming out, though. It’s ugly and awful, but she doesn’t want Swami to deceive other women.
Facebook?
Another former member showed me a BDSM Facebook page. People from the ashram were ‘liking.’ The girl got their tongue split, and people from the ashram liked it.
I started looking at her Facebook page. She lived at the ashram at age 13. So if you look at her Facebook, her identity is wrapped up in living at the ashram. And BDSM. Everything on this page is about bondage and collars.
She talks about removing her belly button, scarifying their third eye, with bruises on their body, symbols, and a collection of whips.
She talks about Chetanananda and Rudi as part of her journey, and about living at the ashram at 13. The Swami’s liked the pages.
She is somebody’s kid. They lived at the ashram when she was a child.
Larissa has a Bad Swami Moment
Larissa was the young woman who freaked out about the idea of sex with Swami. So she started to attend more of the teaching. She learned about the philosophy, doctrines, and rituals.
One day they were alone, and without warning, he choked her. Just out of the blue, he choked her and made her unconscious. When she woke up, she said, “What happened?”
He might have raped her while she was unconscious. She left immediately. She’s never coming back.
We are united in seeing these abuses exposed.
