By Alan O’Keeffe

New laws will tackle “serious issues” concerning the regulation of their work with vulnerable individuals, said Fine Gael TD Dan Neville.  “At the moment, anyone can put up a sign stating they are a counsellor or psychotherapist and charge €80 an hour for a service which they might not be suitably qualified for,” he said. http://www.herald.ie/news/crackdown-will-target-fake-therapy-3003513.html “This is extremely dangerous for vulnerable people,” said Deputy Neville, who is president of the Irish Association of Suicidology.   New legislation, due to be sent to Government next month, could help to address serious issues concerning regulation and registration, he said.   “Currently, there are no statutory regulations in Ireland for the registration of psychotherapists and counsellors.  “This means there is no State control over what qualifications are held by those practising in these areas…. We need a system of statutory regulation to ensure these professions are properly monitored and that adequate standards are met,” he said.

Complaints

Deputy Neville said: “The Taoiseach has confirmed to me that the Health and Social Care Professionals [Amendment] Bill is currently being drafted, and is due to be sent to the Government for consideration next month.  “The Bill will amend the original 2005 Act, which provides for the registration of people qualified to use the title of a designated profession.

“It also deals with issues surrounding complaints relating to their fitness to practice. “Under the existing Act, there are 12 designated professions listed. This does not include the professions of psychotherapy and counselling.”   He added: “I will be pushing for psychotherapists and counsellors to be included on the list of designated professions under the new legislation.”   He acknowledged a psychological therapies forum — encompassing 22 organisations — exists, “but unfortunately this means we have been left with a system of self-regulation. This cannot be allowed to continue,” he said.   “It is critical that the situation is addressed in the new Bill, to avoid vulnerable people in crisis being damaged by counsellors and psychotherapists who are not properly trained or qualified,” he added.

aokeeffe@herald.ie

- Alan O’Keeffe

On a cold Saturday in early 2009, Glenn Black, a yoga teacher of nearly four decades, whose devoted clientele includes a number of celebrities and prominent gurus, was giving a master class at Sankalpah Yoga in Manhattan. Black is, in many ways, a classic yogi: he studied in Pune, India, at the institute founded by the legendary B. K. S. Iyengar, and spent years in solitude and meditation. He now lives in Rhinebeck, N.Y., and often teaches at the nearby Omega Institute, a New Age emporium spread over nearly 200 acres of woods and gardens. He is known for his rigor and his down-to-earth style. But this was not why I sought him out: Black, I’d been told, was the person to speak with if you wanted to know not about the virtues of yoga but rather about the damage it could do.

Many of his regular clients came to him for bodywork or rehabilitation following yoga injuries. This was the situation I found myself in. In my 30s, I had somehow managed to rupture a disk in my lower back and found I could prevent bouts of pain with a selection of yoga postures and abdominal exercises. Then, in 2007, while doing the extended-side-angle pose, a posture hailed as a cure for many diseases, my back gave way. With it went my belief, naïve in retrospect, that yoga was a source only of healing and never harm.
At Sankalpah Yoga, the room was packed; roughly half the students were said to be teachers themselves. Black walked around the room, joking and talking. “Is this yoga?” he asked as we sweated through a pose that seemed to demand superhuman endurance. “It is if you’re paying attention.” His approach was almost free-form: he made us hold poses for a long time but taught no inversions and few classical postures. Throughout the class, he urged us to pay attention to the thresholds of pain. “I make it as hard as possible,” he told the group. “It’s up to you to make it easy on yourself.” He drove his point home with a cautionary tale. In India, he recalled, a yogi came to study at Iyengar’s school and threw himself into a spinal twist. Black said he watched in disbelief as three of the man’s ribs gave way — pop, pop, pop.
After class, I asked Black about his approach to teaching yoga — the emphasis on holding only a few simple poses, the absence of common inversions like headstands and shoulder stands. He gave me the kind of answer you’d expect from any yoga teacher: that awareness is more important than rushing through a series of postures just to say you’d done them. But then he said something more radical. Black has come to believe that “the vast majority of people” should give up yoga altogether. It’s simply too likely to cause harm.
Not just students but celebrated teachers too, Black said, injure themselves in droves because most have underlying physical weaknesses or problems that make serious injury all but inevitable. Instead of doing yoga, “they need to be doing a specific range of motions for articulation, for organ condition,” he said, to strengthen weak parts of the body. “Yoga is for people in good physical condition. Or it can be used therapeutically. It’s controversial to say, but it really shouldn’t be used for a general class.”
Black seemingly reconciles the dangers of yoga with his own teaching of it by working hard at knowing when a student “shouldn’t do something — the shoulder stand, the headstand or putting any weight on the cervical vertebrae.” Though he studied with Shmuel Tatz, a legendary Manhattan-based physical therapist who devised a method of massage and alignment for actors and dancers, he acknowledges that he has no formal training for determining which poses are good for a student and which may be problematic. What he does have, he says, is “a ton of experience.”
“To come to New York and do a class with people who have many problems and say, ‘O.K., we’re going to do this sequence of poses today’ — it just doesn’t work.”
According to Black, a number of factors have converged to heighten the risk of practicing yoga. The biggest is the demographic shift in those who study it. Indian practitioners of yoga typically squatted and sat cross-legged in daily life, and yoga poses, or asanas, were an outgrowth of these postures. Now urbanites who sit in chairs all day walk into a studio a couple of times a week and strain to twist themselves into ever-more-difficult postures despite their lack of flexibility and other physical problems. Many come to yoga as a gentle alternative to vigorous sports or for rehabilitation for injuries. But yoga’s exploding popularity — the number of Americans doing yoga has risen from about 4 million in 2001 to what some estimate to be as many as 20 million in 2011 — means that there is now an abundance of studios where many teachers lack the deeper training necessary to recognize when students are headed toward injury. “Today many schools of yoga are just about pushing people,” Black said. “You can’t believe what’s going on — teachers jumping on people, pushing and pulling and saying, ‘You should be able to do this by now.’ It has to do with their egos.”
When yoga teachers come to him for bodywork after suffering major traumas, Black tells them, “Don’t do yoga.”
“They look at me like I’m crazy,” he goes on to say. “And I know if they continue, they won’t be able to take it.” I asked him about the worst injuries he’d seen. He spoke of well-known yoga teachers doing such basic poses as downward-facing dog, in which the body forms an inverted V, so strenuously that they tore Achilles tendons. “It’s ego,” he said. “The whole point of yoga is to get rid of ego.” He said he had seen some “pretty gruesome hips.” “One of the biggest teachers in America had zero movement in her hip joints,” Black told me. “The sockets had become so degenerated that she had to have hip replacements.” I asked if she still taught. “Oh, yeah,” Black replied. “There are other yoga teachers that have such bad backs they have to lie down to teach. I’d be so embarrassed.”
Among devotees, from gurus to acolytes forever carrying their rolled-up mats, yoga is described as a nearly miraculous agent of renewal and healing. They celebrate its abilities to calm, cure, energize and strengthen. And much of this appears to be true: yoga can lower your blood pressure, make chemicals that act as antidepressants, even improve your sex life. But the yoga community long remained silent about its potential to inflict blinding pain. Jagannath G. Gune, who helped revive yoga for the modern era, made no allusion to injuries in his journal Yoga Mimansa or his 1931 book “Asanas.” Indra Devi avoided the issue in her 1953 best seller “Forever Young, Forever Healthy,” as did B. K. S. Iyengar in his seminal “Light on Yoga,” published in 1965. Reassurances about yoga’s safety also make regular appearances in the how-to books of such yogis as Swami Sivananda, K. Pattabhi Jois and Bikram Choudhury. “Real yoga is as safe as mother’s milk,” declared Swami Gitananda, a guru who made 10 world tours and founded ashrams on several continents.
But a growing body of medical evidence supports Black’s contention that, for many people, a number of commonly taught yoga poses are inherently risky. The first reports of yoga injuries appeared decades ago, published in some of the world’s most respected journals — among them, Neurology, The British Medical Journal and The Journal of the American Medical Association. The problems ranged from relatively mild injuries to permanent disabilities. In one case, a male college student, after more than a year of doing yoga, decided to intensify his practice. He would sit upright on his heels in a kneeling position known as vajrasana for hours a day, chanting for world peace. Soon he was experiencing difficulty walking, running and climbing stairs.
Doctors traced the problem to an unresponsive nerve, a peripheral branch of the sciatic, which runs from the lower spine through the buttocks and down the legs. Sitting in vajrasana deprived the branch that runs below the knee of oxygen, deadening the nerve. Once the student gave up the pose, he improved rapidly. Clinicians recorded a number of similar cases and the condition even got its own name: “yoga foot drop.”
More troubling reports followed. In 1972 a prominent Oxford neurophysiologist, W. Ritchie Russell, published an article in The British Medical Journal arguing that, while rare, some yoga postures threatened to cause strokes even in relatively young, healthy people. Russell found that brain injuries arose not only from direct trauma to the head but also from quick movements or excessive extensions of the neck, such as occur in whiplash — or certain yoga poses. Normally, the neck can stretch backward 75 degrees, forward 40 degrees and sideways 45 degrees, and it can rotate on its axis about 50 degrees. Yoga practitioners typically move the vertebrae much farther. An intermediate student can easily turn his or her neck 90 degrees — nearly twice the normal rotation.
Hyperflexion of the neck was encouraged by experienced practitioners. Iyengar emphasized that in cobra pose, the head should arch “as far back as possible” and insisted that in the shoulder stand, in which the chin is tucked deep in the chest, the trunk and head forming a right angle, “the body should be in one straight line, perpendicular to the floor.” He called the pose, said to stimulate the thyroid, “one of the greatest boons conferred on humanity by our ancient sages.”
Extreme motions of the head and neck, Russell warned, could wound the vertebral arteries, producing clots, swelling and constriction, and eventually wreak havoc in the brain. The basilar artery, which arises from the union of the two vertebral arteries and forms a wide conduit at the base of the brain, was of particular concern. It feeds such structures as the pons (which plays a role in respiration), the cerebellum (which coordinates the muscles), the occipital lobe of the outer brain (which turns eye impulses into images) and the thalamus (which relays sensory messages to the outer brain). Reductions in blood flow to the basilar artery are known to produce a variety of strokes. These rarely affect language and conscious thinking (often said to be located in the frontal cortex) but can severely damage the body’s core machinery and sometimes be fatal. The majority of patients suffering such a stroke do recover most functions. But in some cases headaches, imbalance, dizziness and difficulty in making fine movements persist for years.
Russell also worried that when strokes hit yoga practitioners, doctors might fail to trace their cause. The cerebral damage, he wrote, “may be delayed, perhaps to appear during the night following, and this delay of some hours distracts attention from the earlier precipitating factor.”
In 1973, a year after Russell’s paper was published, Willibald Nagler, a renowned authority on spinal rehabilitation at Cornell University Medical College, published a paper on a strange case. A healthy woman of 28 suffered a stroke while doing a yoga position known as the wheel or upward bow, in which the practitioner lies on her back, then lifts her body into a semicircular arc, balancing on hands and feet. An intermediate stage often involves raising the trunk and resting the crown of the head on the floor. While balanced on her head, her neck bent far backward, the woman “suddenly felt a severe throbbing headache.” She had difficulty getting up, and when helped into a standing position, was unable to walk without assistance. The woman was rushed to the hospital. She had no sensation on the right side of her body; her left arm and leg responded poorly to her commands. Her eyes kept glancing involuntarily to the left. And the left side of her face showed a contracted pupil, a drooping upper eyelid and a rising lower lid — a cluster of symptoms known as Horner’s syndrome. Nagler reported that the woman also had a tendency to fall to the left.
Her doctors found that the woman’s left vertebral artery, which runs between the first two cervical vertebrae, had narrowed considerably and that the arteries feeding her cerebellum had undergone severe displacement. Given the lack of advanced imaging technologies at the time, an exploratory operation was conducted to get a clearer sense of her injuries. The surgeons who opened her skull found that the left hemisphere of her cerebellum suffered a major failure of blood supply that resulted in much dead tissue and that the site was seeped in secondary hemorrhages.
The patient began an intensive program of rehabilitation. Two years later, she was able to walk, Nagler reported, “with [a] broad-based gait.” But her left arm continued to wander and her left eye continued to show Horner’s syndrome. Nagler concluded that such injuries appeared to be rare but served as a warning about the hazards of “forceful hyperextension of the neck.” He urged caution in recommending such postures, particularly to individuals of middle age.
The experience of Nagler’s patient was not an isolated incident. A few years later, a 25-year-old man was rushed to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, in Chicago, complaining of blurred vision, difficulty swallowing and controlling the left side of his body. Steven H. Hanus, a medical student at the time, became interested in the case and worked with the chairman of the neurology department to determine the cause (he later published the results with several colleagues). The patient had been in excellent health, practicing yoga every morning for a year and a half. His routine included spinal twists in which he rotated his head far to the left and far to the right. Then he would do a shoulder stand with his neck “maximally flexed against the bare floor,” just as Iyengar had instructed, remaining in the inversion for about five minutes. A series of bruises ran down the man’s lower neck, which, the team wrote in The Archives of Neurology, “resulted from repeated contact with the hard floor surface on which he did yoga exercises.” These were a sign of neck trauma. Diagnostic tests revealed blockages of the left vertebral artery between the c2 and c3 vertebrae; the blood vessel there had suffered “total or nearly complete occlusion” — in other words, no blood could get through to the brain.
Two months after his attack, and after much physical therapy, the man was able to walk with a cane. But, the team reported, he “continued to have pronounced difficulty performing fine movements with his left hand.” Hanus and his colleagues concluded that the young man’s condition represented a new kind of danger. Healthy individuals could seriously damage their vertebral arteries, they warned, “by neck movements that exceed physiological tolerance.” Yoga, they stressed, “should be considered as a possible precipitating event.” In its report, the Northwestern team cited not only Nagler’s account of his female patient but also Russell’s early warning. Concern about yoga’s safety began to ripple through the medical establishment.
These cases may seem exceedingly rare, but surveys by the Consumer Product Safety Commission showed that the number of emergency-room admissions related to yoga, after years of slow increases, was rising quickly. They went from 13 in 2000 to 20 in 2001. Then they more than doubled to 46 in 2002. These surveys rely on sampling rather than exhaustive reporting — they reveal trends rather than totals — but the spike was nonetheless statistically significant. Only a fraction of the injured visit hospital emergency rooms. Many of those suffering from less serious yoga injuries go to family doctors, chiropractors and various kinds of therapists.
Around this time, stories of yoga-induced injuries began to appear in the media. The Times reported that health professionals found that the penetrating heat of Bikram yoga, for example, could raise the risk of overstretching, muscle damage and torn cartilage. One specialist noted that ligaments — the tough bands of fiber that connect bones or cartilage at a joint — failed to regain their shape once stretched out, raising the risk of strains, sprains and dislocations.
In 2009, a New York City team based at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons published an ambitious worldwide survey of yoga teachers, therapists and doctors. The answers to the survey’s central question — What were the most serious yoga-related injuries (disabling and/or of long duration) they had seen? — revealed that the largest number of injuries (231) centered on the lower back. The other main sites were, in declining order of prevalence: the shoulder (219), the knee (174) and the neck (110). Then came stroke. The respondents noted four cases in which yoga’s extreme bending and contortions resulted in some degree of brain damage. The numbers weren’t alarming but the acknowledgment of risk — nearly four decades after Russell first issued his warning — pointed to a decided shift in the perception of the dangers yoga posed.
In recent years, reformers in the yoga community have begun to address the issue of yoga-induced damage. In a 2003 article in Yoga Journal, Carol Krucoff — a yoga instructor and therapist who works at the Integrative Medicine center at Duke University in North Carolina — revealed her own struggles. She told of being filmed one day for national television and after being urged to do more, lifting one foot, grabbing her big toe and stretching her leg into the extended-hand-to-big-toe pose. As her leg straightened, she felt a sickening pop in her hamstring. The next day, she could barely walk. Krucoff needed physical therapy and a year of recovery before she could fully extend her leg again. The editor of Yoga Journal, Kaitlin Quistgaard, described reinjuring a torn rotator cuff in a yoga class. “I’ve experienced how yoga can heal,” she wrote. “But I’ve also experienced how yoga can hurt — and I’ve heard the same from plenty of other yogis.”
One of the most vocal reformers is Roger Cole, an Iyengar teacher with degrees in psychology from Stanford and the University of California, San Francisco. Cole has written extensively for Yoga Journal and speaks on yoga safety to the American College of Sports Medicine. In one column, Cole discussed the practice of reducing neck bending in a shoulder stand by lifting the shoulders on a stack of folded blankets and letting the head fall below it. The modification eases the angle between the head and the torso, from 90 degrees to perhaps 110 degrees. Cole ticked off the dangers of doing an unmodified shoulder stand: muscle strains, overstretched ligaments and cervical-disk injuries.
But modifications are not always the solution. Timothy McCall, a physician who is the medical editor of Yoga Journal, called the headstand too dangerous for general yoga classes. His warning was based partly on his own experience. He found that doing the headstand led to thoracic outlet syndrome, a condition that arises from the compression of nerves passing from the neck into the arms, causing tingling in his right hand as well as sporadic numbness. McCall stopped doing the pose, and his symptoms went away. Later, he noted that the inversion could produce other injuries, including degenerative arthritis of the cervical spine and retinal tears (a result of the increased eye pressure caused by the pose). “Unfortunately,” McCall concluded, “the negative effects of headstand can be insidious.”
Almost a year after I first met Glenn Black at his master class in Manhattan, I received an e-mail from him telling me that he had undergone spinal surgery. “It was a success,” he wrote. “Recovery is slow and painful. Call if you like.”
The injury, Black said, had its origins in four decades of extreme backbends and twists. He had developed spinal stenosis — a serious condition in which the openings between vertebrae begin to narrow, compressing spinal nerves and causing excruciating pain. Black said that he felt the tenderness start 20 years ago when he was coming out of such poses as the plow and the shoulder stand. Two years ago, the pain became extreme. One surgeon said that without treatment, he would eventually be unable to walk. The surgery took five hours, fusing together several lumbar vertebrae. He would eventually be fine but was under surgeon’s orders to reduce strain on his lower back. His range of motion would never be the same.
Black is one of the most careful yoga practitioners I know. When I first spoke to him, he said he had never injured himself doing yoga or, as far as he knew, been responsible for harming any of his students. I asked him if his recent injury could have been congenital or related to aging. No, he said. It was yoga. “You have to get a different perspective to see if what you’re doing is going to eventually be bad for you.”
Black recently took that message to a conference at the Omega Institute, his feelings on the subject deepened by his recent operation. But his warnings seemed to fall on deaf ears. “I was a little more emphatic than usual,” he recalled. “My message was that ‘Asana is not a panacea or a cure-all. In fact, if you do it with ego or obsession, you’ll end up causing problems.’ A lot of people don’t like to hear that.”
This article is adapted from “The Science of Yoga: The Risks and Rewards,” by William J. Broad, to be published next month by Simon & Schuster. Broad is a senior science writer at The Times.
Editor: Sheila Glaser
A version of this article appeared in print on January 8, 2012, on page MM16 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: All Bent Out Of Shape.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/magazine/how-yoga-can-wreck-your-body.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=yoga&st=cse

PDF of the Phoenix Article

Roebuck-30-35

Purcell and her business partner (and hubby) John Milton also operated the Carraig Tur Nursing Home in Wexford, which ceased trading last year. As a result, 31 of the 50-odd former staff have lodged cases with the Employment Appeals Tribunal, claiming they are owed wages. Business was booming for the husband-and-wife team a few years back. At the end of May 2006, Roebuck Consulting Ltd (the company behind the Roebuck Centre) reported impressive accumulated profits of almost €2m, with cash in the bank of over €3m. That year, the couple splashed out €10.5m on a period mansion called Churchtown House, D14, which was once the Dutch embassy residence, and boasted an indoor swimming pool and 1,000- plus bottle wine cellar. (The house was sold earlier this year by a receiver for around €3m.) In 2007, Purcell and Milton became the subject of a flurry of newspaper articles while enraged Liveline callers revealed dubious practices at their counselling centre. The following year, an enquiry into the centre by the National Association for Pastoral Counselling and Psychotherapy – which had formerly accredited some of Roebuck’s courses – found that a Roebuck counsellor

named Claire Hoban had “seriously, flagrantly and frequently” violated the organisation’s code of ethics. At least four former Roebuck clients have taken High Court proceedings against Purcell and other parties, and in 2008 and in 2009 a number of judgment mortgages were granted in favour of these former clients.

With their ‘life mentoring centre’ in Dublin kaput, Purcell and Milton concentrated on their nursing home in Purcell’s native Wexford. However in April 2010, the Carraig Tur Nursing Home ceased trading and some of its staff complained that they hadn’t been paid wages in over two months. One contributing factor in the nursing home’s financial difficulties was a planned major new extension. A local building firm called R & P Builders Ltd (trading as Warrenhill Contractors) was contracted to carry out the project, which was never finished. R & P took High Court proceedings against Purcell in 2009, resulting in a €840,000 judgment the following year. The recently filed accounts for Carraig Tur Nursing Home Ltd – where Purcell and Milton are the directors and shareholders – show that the company had accumulated losses of €520,000 at the end of September 2011. Meanwhile, Ulster Bank issued High Court proceedings against Purcell and Milton last July.

Introduction

This commentary has been written primarily for two reasons. Firstly, because the Irish Catholic article has done a great disservice to the issues relevant to this debate. Rather than substantively address argumentation presented by the Clontarf Report it appears the article is content to attack Mr. Ó Ríordáin’s alleged comments instead. Secondly, the response to the contents of the Clontarf Report as articulated by unnamed church sources and by Dr. John Murray, in combination with some analysis offered by the article itself, do not satisfactorily address the contents within the report – and using language like “bullying” and “an attack on the religious freedom” only serve as a means to avoid substantive issues.

1. The Clontarf Report

It seems fair to begin this commentary with a brief analysis of the Clontarf Report, if only to give readers the grounding in the report’s arguments that are absent from the Irish Catholic article. The essential argument being forwarded by the report, taken from the report summary, is thus:

In the past twelve years, the Catholic Church, through its bishops, has introduced  “Catholics First” admissions policies into National Schools under its patronage. This has removed a right of entry to local National Schools from a significant proportion of children in Ireland. This is both unconstitutional and illegal. This report looks at this issue, and how it might be tackled.

The National School system is a State system of free primary education. The central pillar of the National School system is a legal right for “children of all religions to be taught together in the same school”. A National School is a school that has subjected itself to the “Rules for National Schools”, and thereby receives State funding. There are other primary schools which receive no state funding. The State is not allowed, by the Constitution and ordinary legislation, to provide funding for schools which discriminate on religious grounds.

In order to establish this conclusion the report analyses, in quite meticulous fashion, all relevant legislation concerning the national school system. The hierarchy of relevant legislation is given as follows:

1. The Constitution of 1937 – supreme

2. The Stanley Letter of 1831 – subject to the Constitution

3. The 1998 Education Act – subject to the Constitution

4. The Equal Status Act 2000 – subject to the Constitution

5. The Rules for National Schools – subject to 1,2,3,4

6. International and European Legislation

It would be unfeasible to recount all the analysis presented by the report on the above legislations here (since that would amount to simply duplicating the report’s contents), but some illustrations of that analysis are worthwhile. Under section 42.4 of the constitution the state is obligated to provide for free primary education. Section 44.2.4 states that “Legislation providing State aid for schools shall not discriminate between schools under the management of different religious denominations, nor be such as to affect prejudicially the right of any child to attend a school receiving public money without attending religious instruction at that school.” The report comments as follows:

1. This Article allows the State to support schools under denominational management, provided the school does not apply religious discrimination in allowing right of entry to the school.

2. Article 44.2.4 asserts that all schools receiving public money cannot discriminate on enrollment on religious grounds.

3. All schools receiving State support must allow children attending to refuse religious instruction in the school.

The report presents this level of detailed and meticulous analysis for all of the relevant legislations, and none of this argumentation was addressed in the Irish Catholic article. I think the headline of the Irish Catholic article (‘Religious ethos has no place in schools’ – Labour) should be contrasted with this comment from the report:

Virtually all religious indoctrination by the Catholic Church is done in National Schools, including the important occasions of First Confession, First Holy Communion, and Confirmation. This report does not envisage a change in the situation for the Catholic population, rather that children of other religions and none should see a change – a change back to the schools and education that was always envisaged by the founders of the National Schools – where children of all religions received the secular and moral education together, with separate religious indoctrination, all in the same school – the National School.

We have entered a new era in the evolution of our society. Like many others ours is becoming a multi-cultural, multi-racial, multi-faith, multi-lingual society. It is no exaggeration to claim that the very nature of what it is to be Irish is being redefined before our very eyes. If we do not steer these changes, what will emerge will be a new society which is unlikely to serve the needs of its citizens. The building and development of a society always occurs through education. This starts formally with the education of our youngest citizens in our National Schools.  Mutual respect and a willingness by a majority to protect the rights of minorities is one of the marks of a civilised society, which, after all, is what we aspire to. The founders of the National School system made the best effort they could for their times to promote religious understanding – it is now up to us, 180 years later, to ensure their goals are maintained and hopefully improved.

2. Mr. Ó Ríordáin’s comments

Here are all the references made to Mr. Ó Ríordáin within the Irish Catholic article:

‘Religious ethos’ has no place in Irish schools according to the Labour Party’s spokesman on education.  Aodhán Ó Ríordáin TD, vice-chair of the Oireachtas education committee, told The Irish Catholic ”that religious ethos has no place in the educational system of a modern republic”.

…

Deputy Ó Ríordáin, a former principal in a Catholic school, confirmed that he is supportive of the ‘Clontarf’ position yet, while accusing Catholic schools of breaking the law, the deputy also calls for the existing law to be changed, saying: ”I would like to see the law amended so that faith-based schools would be unable to reserve places for children of a particular denomination where a school is over-subscribed.

…

”I see no reason for to give a faith-based school any protection” to ensure that it can fulfil its mission to provide a faith-based education in line with the denominational ethos of the school by way of an admissions policy, he said.

…

Mr Quinn has also insisted that denominational schools will continue to be supported by the Government, apparently putting him at odds with Mr Ó Ríordáin.

It is obvious that Mr Ó Ríordáin’s comments, as represented by the Irish Catholic article, do not represent the content nor the thrust of the Clontarf Report. Yet, despite this obvious difference, Mr Ó Ríordáin’s alleged comments are used as a proxy for attacking the Contarf Report. It seems that this is little more than a cheap trick used to sidestep the report’s contents while attacking the report. To our knowledge this article is the only one by the Irish Catholic that has referred to the Clontarf Report (no other articles show up when searching their website). If this is indeed the sole article on this issue then this is very disappointing indeed.

3. Addressing the ‘responses’

The handful of responses relevant to the Contarf Report that appear in the article are now addressed. The first is this rather peculiar claim given by an unnamed church source:

The document — known within the Labour Party as the ‘Clontarf Report’ — insists that the schools are acting illegally when they give preference to Catholic children in the event of demand for places outstripping availability.

However, one senior Church source said ”there isn’t anyone working in the legal profession who would take such a claim seriously. This is nothing more than bullying”.

It is strange to make this claim given that one of the key sources cited by the report is the 1996 Constitutional Review Group Report. According to their website the Constitution Review Group claim that lawyers are predominant among their membership. Perhaps this unnamed church source knows better?

Quoting the relevant citation in full is worthwhile. The Clontarf Report used italics when quoting from the 1996 Constitutional Review Group Report. Due to how this blog operates (quoted material is automatically italicised) underline has been used in order to make it clear when the Clontarf Report is quoting is from the Constitutional Review Group Report. The red emphasis is our own addition.

The Constitutional Review Group in its 1996 Report accepted that the activities in National Schools at present are unconstitutional “In summary, therefore, the present reality of the denominational character of the school system does not accord with Article 44.2.4°. The situation is clearly unsatisfactory. Either Article 44.2.4° should be changed or the school system must change to accommodate the requirements of Article 44.2.4°.”

In considering whether the activities in the National Schools should be changed, or the Constitution changed to suit the illegal activities, the group made the following comments:

The Review Group does not favour the amendment of this part of Article 44.2.4° for the following reasons:

i) Article 44.2.4° may be thought to represent something of an exception to the general rule contained in Article 44.2.3° that the State shall not endow any religion. Accordingly, if a school under the control of a religious denomination accepts State funding, it must be prepared to accept that this aid is not given unconditionally. Requirements that the school must be prepared in principle to accept pupils from denominations other than its own and to have separate secular and religious instruction are not unreasonable or unfair.

ii) if Article 44.2.4° did not provide these safeguards, the State might well be in breach of its international obligations, inasmuch as it might mean that a significant number of children of minority religions (or those with no religion) might be coerced by force of circumstances to attend a school which did not cater for their particular religious views or their conscientious objections. If this were to occur, it would also mean that the State would be in breach of its obligations under Article 42.3.1°

iii) this aspect of Article 44.2.4° reflects an earlier commitment given on behalf of the State contained in the Treaty of 1921 and Article 8 of the 1922 Constitution which was designed to safeguard the rights of religious minorities. Any amendment at this stage would be a retrograde step − especially in the context of Northern Ireland − and would send the wrong signal concerning pluralism in this State.

Comments:

1. The Group’s recommendations were very straightforward in recommending that the existing

Constitutional provision for universal multi-denominational National Schools be retained.

2. The Constitutional Review Group Report was straightforward is saying that the present system of National Schools, which, in practice, was becoming increasingly denominational, was in breach of the Constitution.

3. The Constitutional Review Group’s report should be read in its entirety in assessing the existing situation regarding National Schools and the Constitution.

4. A “Catholics First” admissions policy in a National School (introduced since the Report in 1996) exacerbates the unconstitutional position elucidated by the Constitutional Review Group.

The unnamed church source further states that “The Department [of Education and Skills] fully acknowledges that faith-based schools have a right to admit children of their own faith before those of others where the local faith-based school is over-subscribed.”. An example of the department doing this is here: “…De La Salle College is fully entitled to stipulate that enrolment priority will be given to Catholic students and that ‘non-Catholic enrolment will only be considered in the event of being under-subscribed.’ ”

However this advice seems contrary to both section 44.2.4 of the Constitution (this was articulated above) and the Equal Status Act 2000 (this advice also conflicts with the 1998 Education Act and the Rules for National Schools, both of which are dealt with in the report but are not included here for the sake of brevity). The act bars discrimination on the grounds of religion for admission, the only exception being section 7.3(c): “where the establishment is a school providing primary or post-primary education to students and the objective of the school is to provide education in an environment which promotes certain religious values, it admits persons of a particular religious denomination in preference to others or it refuses to admit as a student a person who is not of that denomination and, in the case  of a refusal, it is proved that the refusal is essential to maintain the ethos of the school”.

The report offers the following analysis on the act:

There is an exception to the rule (it is an exception, it is not the rule) in Section 7,3(c). This is where “it is proved that the refusal (to allow equal access to a person of a different religion or none) is essential to maintain the ethos of the school”.

Four proofs are required to allow this -

(i) the case must be proven by the school – such proof should be provided to the school applicant. The obligation is on the school, not the child or parent to provide proof. The case must be proven before refusal of entry.

(ii) Delay would normally be legally regarded as “refusal”. Schools may feel that a practice of offering places to only Catholic (for instance) children in February, and not replying to non-Catholics until July or September (when the child will likely be enrolled elsewhere, or where extra Catholics may have applied) does not constitute refusal – this is not likely to stand up legally.

(iii) Refusal must be “essential” in each individual case. Prior to 1998, virtually all National Schools would have had children of different religions – while upholding their ethos. Admission of one individual non-Catholic would normally be unlikely to be make a significant difference to the ethos of a school. “Desirable” or “advantageous” is not the same as “essential”.

(iv) The ethos of every individual school must be proven – details of foundation of the school, enrollment details prior to 1998, and other historical information would be required to define a school’s ethos. A school that traditionally accommodated children of different religions might find it difficult to argue that it did not have some (even minor) multi-denominational aspect to its ethos. It is likely that the large majority of National Schools would have difficulty in proving a tradition of exclusive Catholicism in its enrollment.

6. The exception clause allowing discrimination seems to have been aimed at the private faith primary schools (such as Willow Park in Blackrock) rather than the National schools. These schools were set up as private faith schools and receive no state funding of any kind. These faith schools, although in ever decreasing in numbers, have existed since the foundation of the National School system, and were allowed (and remain allowed) under the 1937 Constitution.

7. Section 7, 3(c) of the Equal Status Act would seem be in direct conflict with Article 44.2.4 of the Constitution. The section of the Equal Status Act should have excluded “school(s) receiving public money” from the exception that is this section of the Act.

4. A bizarre reversal and conclusion

Throughout the Irish Catholic article, the sources they quote use a variety of accusatory phrases:

… ”bullying”…

…

“…This is nothing more than bullying”.

…

”It is nothing less than an attack on the religious freedom of denominational schools,”

Such language is quite bizarre given the facts of the situation. What is at issue here is how certain schools in receipt of public funding are enacting enrolment policies that discriminate on the grounds of religion. To assert that circulating the Clontarf Report, which analyses the illegality of such policies in considerable depth, is somehow “bullying” is hypocritical given that the practical effect of such policies is to bully some families into baptising their children in order to secure places at these schools. To portray the highlighting of such religious discrimination (which is being funded by the state after all) as “an attack on the religious freedom of denominational schools” is truly bizarre – in essence it is arguing the madness that state-funded schools should have the “religious freedom” to restrict the religious freedom of applicants to those schools.

The real disappointment with such language is that it has allowed the actual contents of the report, the underlying meat it presents in support of its claims, to be ignored. That is a shame. To conclude this piece the conclusions from the report are quoted, in their entirety, which we hope the reader will reflect upon:

1. The Irish Government, through the Constitutional Review Group Report of 1996, is aware that it is colluding in a breach of the Constitution in funding National Schools which discriminate on religious grounds.

2. The public is under a misapprehension as regards their rights in National Schools – they believe that the Catholic Church has complete control to run the schools as it wishes – a misunderstanding.

3. The State does not articulate  the rights of parents in relation to National Schools.

4. There is no evidence of political debate regarding the major changes towards faith schools in 1965, 1971, 1999 and since 2000

5. All changes to the National School system appear to have been agreed between officials in the Department of Education and religious officials. There is no public evidence of political involvement.

6. There is no report, no political decision, no government review since 1870 which recommends that National Schools should be denominational. There is no government report that recommends that children be educated only with children of their own religion.

7. Uniformly in Ireland, in Europe, and at the U.N. all modern thinking and legislation recommends that children of different religions should be educated together – with a view to decreasing religious discrimination and strife in society. We in Ireland should have learned this lesson by now.

8. The moves away from equal rights for all religions towards making National Schools into faith schools did not come in the early years of Independence, but only since 1965, more than forty years after independence.

9. There may have been a better understanding among political leaders after Independence as to what National schooling meant, because of the consistent difficulties encountered by the British authorities in resisting religious bigotry in National Schools prior to Independence.

This political corporate memory may have been lost by 1965, allowing intolerance and division to be introduced.

10. Politicians of all parties today seem to be unaware of changes being made to the National School system. They seem to be unaware of the import of the new “Catholics First” admissions policy. Politicians of all parties have been and remain very poorly informed on legal matters relating to Church and State in education.

11. There have been a number of myths that have grown up around National Schools without evidence or any apparent promotion – (i) that all National Schools were privately funded by the churches, (ii) that the churches always owned the schools, (iii) that National Schools are fundamentally faith schools and always have been, (iv) that all primary schools are National Schools – all untrue.

12. The existing position of poor public understanding, poor political understanding, and significant undebated efforts by the Catholic Church to move towards faith schools is facilitating changes which are contrary to the needs of a more religiously diverse society.

13. Losses in religious vocations, scandals about child abuse, falling numbers attending religious services seem to have strengthened, rather than weakened, the Catholic Church’s determination to maintain its dominant position in schools at both primary and second level.

14. The Catholic Church is a didactic church which encourages its adherents to accept hierarchical instruction without debate. The predominance of Catholics in all walks of life in

Ireland, including the civil service, may account for the changes towards faith schools that have been seen since 1965.

15. Perhaps not all civil servants are aware of the Constitutional provisions relating to education. Even those who are aware, may feel that instruction from the Catholic Church takes precedence. Perhaps the Catholic Church might be regarded as a higher authority that the Constitution.

16. The State at one stage required that clergy must be part of the management structure of a National School – a condition that might explain the dominance of religions in National Schools.

17. The innappropriate deference shown by officals of the State, condemned in reports of recent years, might explain much of the failures in regulation in the issue of this report.

18. The publication of the Admissions Policies of National Schools is chaotic – it is impossible to find the policy of most schools in any public forum (some have effective websites, most do not). It can only be found by contacting each individual school.

19. Decisions might be made on the basis of legal opinion. Legal opinion has no standing, and it is common to be able to get legal opinions giving completely opposite views.

20. Official published ruling by judges, of which there are very few on the issue of this report, are of some value, but are subsidiary to the legislation.

21. There seems to be no reason for the State to involve itself in Deeds of Variation.

22. Boards of Managment at National Schools which have adopted religious discriminatory admissions policies are acting illegally.

There is a concept in law that legislation means what a “reasonable man” would understand it to mean. Many people can rationalise an approach that involves taking no action when action should be taken – on the basis that there is a “legal opinion” that supports the inaction. Legal opinions (and contrary legal opinions) are easy to get – no account should be taken of them unless they are published and open to public scrutiny. The conclusions of this report are based on actual legislation and, above all, on the Constitution.

This report shines some light on a situation in our National Schools where the laws of the State have been ignored for decades, but more particularly in the past ten years. This illegality, is very difficult to understand. The lack of implementation of the laws relating to our National Schools may be due to inappropriate deference to the Catholic Church.

‘Religious ethos has no place in schools’ – Labour

Date: 19 Jan 2012

http://www.irishcatholic.ie/site/content/religious-ethos-has-no-place-schools-labour

‘Religious ethos’ has no place in Irish schools according to the Labour Party’s spokesman on education.  Aodhán Ó Ríordáin TD, vice-chair of the Oireachtas education committee, told The Irish Catholic ”that religious ethos has no place in the educational system of a modern republic”. His comments come as senior Church sources have accused the Labour Party of ”bullying” Catholic schools by falsely accusing them of breaking the law over enrolment policies that admit Catholic children ahead of other children if the school is over-subscribed.  The accusation comes in a Labour Party document circulated to Catholic schools.  The document — known within the Labour Party as the ‘Clontarf Report’ — insists that the schools are acting illegally when they give preference to Catholic children in the event of demand for places outstripping availability.

However, one senior Church source said ”there isn’t anyone working in the legal profession who would take such a claim seriously. This is nothing more than bullying”.  ”The Department [of Education and Skills] fully acknowledges that faith-based schools have a right to admit children of their own faith before those of others where the local faith-based school is over-subscribed,” the source said. Deputy Ó Ríordáin, a former principal in a Catholic school, confirmed that he is supportive of the ‘Clontarf’ position yet, while accusing Catholic schools of breaking the law, the deputy also calls for the existing law to be changed, saying: ”I would like to see the law amended so that faith-based schools would be unable to reserve places for children of a particular denomination where a school is over-subscribed.

”I see no reason for to give a faith-based school any protection” to ensure that it can fulfil its mission to provide a faith-based education in line with the denominational ethos of the school by way of an admissions policy, he said.  Dr John Murray of Mater Dei Institute of Education said the Labour move amounted to an attempt to ”intimidate” the schools.  He said: ”I hope this isn’t indicative of the attitude of the wider Labour Party to denominational schools because if it is, it is deeply worrying and needs to be strongly resisted.  ”It is nothing less than an attack on the religious freedom of denominational schools,” he said.  Dr Murray insisted that such a push would not just affect Catholic schools.

”A curb on the enrolment policy of denominational schools would hit Church of Ireland schools particularly hard because Church of Ireland children are often a small minority in their own communities and if their schools couldn’t admit Church of Ireland children first, then they would face the prospect of having to turn away the very children they were established to serve,” he said.

Mr Ó Ríordáin’s trenchant views will surprise many coming just months after Education Minister and Mr Ó Ríordáin’s party colleague Ruairí Quinn told a conference in Dublin’s Mater Dei Institute that ”religious education will have an important place in the future of education in Ireland”.

Mr Quinn has also insisted that denominational schools will continue to be supported by the Government, apparently putting him at odds with Mr Ó Ríordáin.

”It begs the question: ‘what does the Labour Party really have in store for Catholic education’,” another senior Church source said. ”Is it Mr Quinn or Mr Ó Ríordáin who is articulating where the party is coming from? Catholic voters have a right to know,” he said.

A recent profile of Mr Ó Ríordáin by The Irish Times education editor Seán Flynn said the Dublin North Central deputy ”is viewed as a future education minister”.

It noted that he has been a ”major influence” on Minister Quinn.

By Charles Lane, Published: January 16, 2012

In 1890, the Supreme Court upheld a federal law that abolished the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ corporate charter and authorized the U.S. government to seize its property. This collective punishment was constitutional, the court ruled, because the Mormons’ crime, polygamy, was “barbarism” and “contrary to the spirit of Christianity.”

Facing institutional destruction, the Mormons renounced polygamy; this, in turn, enabled Utah’s admission as a state in 1896. Over time, the twin cases that produced the court’s ruling — Late Corporation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints v. U.S. and Romney v. U.S. — faded into obscurity.

They’re relevant again. If he wins the presidency, Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and Mormon bishop, would not be the first president to confess a historically disfavored faith. But Romney would be the first who belongs to a church that the U.S. government actually tried to crush.

The Latter-day Saints broke all the rules of Protestant-dominated 19th-century America. They considered the church’s founder, Joseph Smith, a prophet, and his Book of Mormon a work as sacred as the Bible. Mormon men professed a religious duty to take multiple wives.

The “Mormon question” was also deeply political. Polygamy in the Utah territory created a constitutional crisis eerily similar to those raised by attempts to bring slavery into Kansas.

Just as anti-slavery Americans saw that institution as the basis of a corrupt, expansionist “slave power,” so did anti-polygamists see plural marriage as enslavement of women and the foundation of a theocracy that could spread from Utah.

In 1856, the Republican Party platform urged Congress “to prohibit in the territories those twin relics of barbarism — Polygamy, and Slavery.” In 1857, President James Buchanan, a Democrat, sent troops to skirmish with Mormon militia in Utah. In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act, the first of several such laws.

Slaveholders invoked property rights; Mormon polygamists claimed religious freedom. They took their case to the Supreme Court, which ruled against them in 1879 — holding that the Constitution did not protect polygamy any more than it protected human sacrifice.

Next came mass arrests of Mormons, denial of their rights to vote and sit on juries, threatened confiscation, and, in the end, Mormon abandonment of plural marriage — which only a minority actually practiced.

This long-ago struggle, in which Mormons and non-Mormons shed blood, is complicated even in hindsight. Anti-Mormonism was not a pure case of intolerance; polygamy did threaten women’s equality. Yet the Supreme Court’s assertion of a “Christian” basis to constitutional law and federal punishment of all Mormons for the actions of a minority are hard to justify by modern standards.

Contrary to foes’ predictions that the LDS would wither without polygamy, Mormonism flourished in the 20th century, growing to 3.1 million adult adherents as of 2008. Yet many Americans still do not know quite what to make of them.

Twenty-two percent of voters told Gallup last year that they would not back a Mormon of their own party for president, in contrast to 5 percent willing to admit that about an African American.

Ironically, given their faith’s origins as a kind of counterculture, Mormons’ current material success and “traditional” views on abortion and gay marriage probably cost them popularity — on the progressive left. A recent documentary film, “8: The Mormon Proposition,” depicted the church as a shadowy theocratic power behind the defeat in 2008 of same-sex marriage in California. On the right, though, evangelical Protestants, also echoing 19th-century rhetoric, depict the Saints as un-Christian or, as Baptist leader Robert Jeffress put it last year, a “cult.”

Meanwhile, pop culture serves up stereotypes with varying degrees of humor and taste. Last year’s Broadway hit, “The Book of Mormon,” was a relatively gentle send-up. But would anyone make a satire called “The Koran”?

In November, we may find out how many votes, if any, hinge on generalizations, pro and con, about Mormonism. Liberals wouldn’t back a conservative Republican whatever his faith; 91 percent of white evangelical Protestants told a 2011 Pew Research survey that they would vote for Romney over Obama, if those were the options.

Americans are products but not prisoners of our history. Like Mormonism, U.S. democracy was invented in the New World, and it’s still being reinvented. Hence the prospect of a presidential contest between an incumbent whose race would have made him an outcast 125 years ago — and a challenger whose creed would have done the same.

lanec@washpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-verdict-on-the-mormon-question/2012/01/13/gIQANY753P_story.html

After posting the above Thomas Cooney makes contact. On the one hand he says he has not read the posts but feels they are plain lies. The result is the letter below.

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2011/12/24/open-letter-to-thomas-cooney-pastor-of-victory-galway-from-mike-garde-director-of-di/

I phone Thomas again wishing him a Happy New Year. He says he will get back to me. I do hear from him so get back to him and again he is concerned that inaccuracies are to be found on our blog but when pushed has to agree he has not read them! He also does not seem to understand that people are free to use our blog to comment without censorship, but if he finds anything incorrect he should either write up an article which we would publish in full or edit any inaccuracy he brings to our attention.

Again he agrees to go away and study things and get back to me. I raise with him the issue that it is difficult to understand his situation as because his Church is a Trust their accounts are not publicly available to evaluate his comments. He admits that he does drive a rather flashy car which confirms what was on our blog. He also tells us that his property was not purchased with Church funds and cost less than a €1m when he purchased it. Again I waited for a reply but on 17.01.12 I sent the following text to him:

17.01.12

Dear Thomas,
I was waiting to hear back from you concerning my open letter and my subsequent calls to you. I addressed a number of concerns you raised and offered you an uncensored response on our blog. If I do not hear from you before Friday I will treat your silence as a sign you do not wish to dialogue in regard to the victims and the ethical issues arising out of the collapse of Abundant Life, the involvement of Victory Dublin and of Victory Galway.

Regards

Mike Garde

His response was the following text:

18.01.12

Hello mike I am seeking legal advice about your blog waiting for my solicitor to get back to me

Pastor Tom

I will allow the words of St Paul to be my initial response to this text. I highlight the appropriate references:

1 Corinthians 6

New International Version (NIV)

1 Corinthians 6

Lawsuits Among Believers

¹ If any of you has a dispute with another, do you dare to take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the Lord’s people? ² Or do you not know that the Lord’s people will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? ³ Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life! ⁴ Therefore, if you have disputes about such matters, do you ask for a ruling from those whose way of life is scorned in the church? ⁵ I say this to shame you. Is it possible that there is nobody among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers? ⁶ But instead, one brother takes another to court—and this in front of unbelievers!

⁷ The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? ⁸ Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers and sisters. ⁹ Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God?

I also outline for him the relevant section of the new Defamation Act:

See pdf below:

Defamation

New defamation laws

The Defamation Act 2009, signed into law on 23 July 2009, has abolished the separate torts of slander and libel, replacing them with “the tort of defamation’; defined as “the publication, by any means, of a defamatory statement concerning a person to one or more than one person’: The Act provides that defamation is actionable in itself without needing to prove special damages.

The Act also created a new defence to an allegation of defamation, namely “fair and reasonable publication on a matter of public interest’: This defence has been welcomed by media outlets, who have long campaigned for reform of the libel laws. Significantly, the new Act also allows judges to guide juries on the amount of damages that may be awarded. A person who believes themselves to have been defamed can now seek a Declaratory Order from the Court that a statement was false and defamatory. This is a fast track procedure which can be heard by a sitting judge alone. The plaintiff must have sought and been refused a retraction/ correction/apology by the defendant. Plaintiffs seeking a Declaratory Order are not entitled to damages as the order itself is considered remedy enough. For the first time in Irish Law, Section 12 of the Act allows a company to bring a defamation action whether or not it has incurred a financial loss as a result of the alleged defamation. We wait with interest to see how actions of this type will be received.

Could I be so bold Tom to suggest this legal advice?

Tom Cooney must have sought and been refused a retraction/ correction/apology by the Dialogue Ireland. Plaintiffs seeking a Declaratory Order are not entitled to damages as the order itself is considered remedy enough.

Please reconsider and Dialogue Ireland is open to reopening dialogue at any time!

PS: It is interesting that the King of King’s Church in Tuam responded in a similar  manner in 2003 when I visited the Church and delivered a summons to Ossie Sheridan the Pastor there requesting he appear before a Christian Tribunal to resolve issues raised by members, former members and relatives of members. I was told by his wife Mary they would be consulting lawyers!

http://www.lucancc.ie/

Lucan Community College is situated in Esker, an area just south of Lucan village in County Dublin. The college first opened its doors in 1987, but has a much longer history, as it was built to replace Lucan Vocational School on Esker Hill, which had served the surrounding area since the early 1950s.

We offer junior cycle and senior cycle programmes to our students, both boys and girls. With more than 800 students currently enrolled, the college completed a much needed extension to the original building in 1998.

The college is also a thriving centre for adult education in the Lucan area.

Lucan Community College aims to be an environment in which students can develop naturally, achieving their academic as well as their personal goals. Students, staff, parents and everyone involved in the College work together to create an atmosphere which is highly productive yet free of wasteful tension and stress

http://willi-stewart.blogspot.com/

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2011/07/11/the-rev-william-stewart-founder-of-core-moves-to-england/

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2011/08/04/the-last-service-of-rev-willi-stewart-assistant-priest-in-ireland-before-moving-to-england/
http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2011/07/25/the-decision-to-publish-the-sentence-of-the-court-in-regard-to-willi-stewart/
http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2011/07/25/visit-to-st-canice’s-cathedral-kilkenny-may-2008/
http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2011/07/25/developments-from-05-to-08-in-regard-to-addressing-the-victims-concerns-of-sexual-assault-by/
http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2011/07/23/willi-stewart-trial-correspondence-between-dialogue-ireland-and-david-pierrepoint/
http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2011/07/21/links-to-willi-stewart-and-core/

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/reflections-on-the-period-between-willi-stewart-resigning-in-2004-and-his-court-case-in-2005/

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2011/07/18/dialogue-ireland-reaches-a-cul-de-sac-with-archbishop-john-neill-march-8-2004/
http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2011/07/18/church-discipline-in-the-church-of-ireland/
http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2011/07/18/archdeacon-gordon-linney-claims-willis-crime-was-“once-off-moment-of-madness-”/
http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2011/07/18/core-early-days-of-the-crisis-feb-2004/
http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2011/07/16/further-correspondence-around-willi-stewart-the-archbishop-and-core/
http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2011/07/17/to-a-core-trustee-proposals-to-address-the-current-crisis-4304/
http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2011/07/16/further-correspondence-around-willi-stewart-the-archbishop-and-core/
http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/category/abuse/page/4/
http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2011/07/12/statement-of-the-rt-revd-alan-winton-bishop-of-thetford-on-ministry-of-willi-stewart/
http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2011/07/12/the-trial-of-rev-william-james-stewart-at-the-bridewell-district-court-on-friday-14-jan-2005/
http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2011/07/12/adult-ritualised-sexual-abuse-a-contemporary-western-phenomena/

Charity Commission curb after

Scientology complaint

Note the title above was changed at the request of the Charity Commissioners, explanatory note at the bottom of the article.

After 25 years in operation, the Cult Information Centre fears it may no longer be able to work effectively

The Guardian

Lynne Wallis

Guardian Professional, Friday 13 January 2012

More than 160,000 charities in England and Wales are registered with the Charity Commission, thereby qualifying for charitable status and the tax relief and fundraising advantages that brings. So what happens when a registered charity is deemed to be in breach of the commission’s stringent criteria? While the commission can’t withdraw charitable status, it must investigate any alleged breach of the conditions of charitable status and ensure the charity is compliant.

The Cult Information Centre (CIC) was granted education charity status in 1992 but has recently run into difficulties with the commission after complaints were received in 2007 that it is in breach of the rules governing status. Specifically, it is alleged that the CIC isn’t neutral concerning its educational work, which means it could be deemed to be a campaigning or political organisation. A commission spokeswoman explained: “The problem is that the CIC’s education work seems to be coming from a pre-conceived standpoint whereas, when we granted charitable status, we specified that any educational work needs to be objective and factual. There has been ongoing correspondence, and the charity’s trustees have offered to conduct a review into the charity’s work and practices.”

The CIC, set up 25 years ago, offers information on cults and new religious movements to the general public, including families who have lost relatives to such groups and former cult members trying make sense of what their experiences. Ian Haworth, who runs the charity, also gives talks to schools and other organisations on the psychological techniques cults use to recruit people and the threat that cults can pose to young lives; it is this educational element of the charity’s work that has been under the spotlight.

The commission has not revealed who is behind complaints, but an official let slip at a meeting attended by Haworth and some CIC trustees that it was the Church of Scientology. Perhaps, unsurprisingly, the commission has received complaints from numerous cults ever since the CIC was awarded charitable status, and Haworth is at a loss to understand why the commission is only now flexing its muscles. He likens the restrictions the commission is trying to impose to a drugs awareness charity being told it can still operate, as long as it never says drugs are bad.

Haworth said: “We were awarded charitable status 20 years ago in spite of complaints from the Moonies, Scientology and the Hare Krishnas, which the commission was prepared then to override. Meanwhile, the commission continues to award charitable status to some very sinister and suspect groups whose contribution to the public good is arguable, and now the CIC is being told it can’t operate effectively.

“The commission has got it all so wrong, while the whole business has distracted us from our core work. Our website content is now problematic, and we can’t fundraise properly or talk openly to the press about groups, which is particularly worrying given that the vast proportion of stories go untold because cults are so litigious.

“An educational charity must, they say, be neutral, but how can we be neutral about the dangers of the coercive psychological techniques cults use to recruit?”

The commission suggests the CIC may have to “change its objects” which, in non-commission-speak, means it must maintain its status by using different qualifying criteria, ie, not claim to be an educational charity.

The CIC argues vigorously that its work is beneficial to the public, and the thousands of people Haworth has helped over the 25 years would, he says, undoubtedly agree, but the charity will get into hotter water still if it doesn’t toe the line on neutrality. The Church of Scientology was famously refused charitable status in 1996 on the grounds that any organisation claiming public benefit under the banner of “advancement of religion” must believe in a supreme being and/or worship to express its religious belief, neither of which is the case for Scientology. Had it made its claim on other grounds, it might have been successful.

Since the 2006 Charities Act, the criteria under which organisations may apply has expanded hugely from the very narrow relief of poverty, advancement of education or religion, and a general “public-benefit” umbrella, to the advancement of anything from from amateur sports to human rights.

The irony for the CIC is that many of the sorts of groups the charity has been warning young people about before they go off to university have themselves achieved charitable status. The world famous Unification movement, for example, more commonly known as the Moonies, has enjoyed charitable status since 1974. If the CIC is prevented from raising awareness about the dangers of cult recruitment, there is precious little else out there for concerned parents or others needing to find out about cults. One thing is certain: any forthcoming information resulting from contacting a cult group directly to find out what they are about would very definitely not be neutral.

The CIC was the first port of call in 2003 for a teacher from Liverpool who can’t be named for fear of reprisals from the group who recruited her son. She said: “The CIC are unique because they have a wealth of information and contacts at their fingertips. They put me in touch with an expert in the particular field our son was involved with, who swiftly identified the supposedly buddhist group our son had joined as fake. The CIC put us in touch with the charity Catalyst who gave us invaluable legal advice, and we used CIC literature to hand out to police and other concerned agencies – their book is brilliant, and it was the most efficient way to convey what had happened to our family. It was also very comforting to talk to someone who understood and didn’t think we were crazy. The Charity Commission shouldn’t stop the CIC doing this important work.”

• This article was amended on 13 January 2012. The original article said that “an official [from the Charity Commission] let slip at a meeting attended by Haworth, and some CIC trustees that it was the Church of Scientology” which had made the complaint to the Charity Commission about the CIC. This is denied by the Charity Commission which has asked us to make clear that it is the commission’s policy not to reveal the source of any complaint and that the complaint came from an individual who did not claim to be making the complaint on behalf of any one else or any other organisation.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/voluntary-sector-network/2012/jan/13/charity-fall-foul-commission-scientology?newsfeed=true

The Irish Times – Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Cardinal’s profit mission and an FBI investigation into sale of

church property

JASON BERRY

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2012/0117/1224310361337.html

RITE AND REASON: IN 2005 parishioners of St James in the farm belt town of Kansas, Ohio, recoiled when Toledo Bishop Leonard Blair, facing a tight budget, closed the parish, steering them to one several miles away. They filed an appeal to the Vatican. It failed.

Then they sued in a local county court, arguing that the bishop was a trustee but parishioners owned the property. The state sided with the bishop. “We spent $100,000 in legal fees,” said parishioner Virginia Hull. “Bishop Blair paid his lawyers with $77,957 from our parish account.” Blair had the church demolished.

Canon law says a parish is “a juridic person”. But that “person”, like an olden slave, does not own itself. The bishop does. Nevertheless, a federal court in Springfield, Massachusetts barred the bishop there from razing a church deemed a historic landmark. Parish ownership is unresolved in American law.

A US Catholic parish has closed on average once a week for the last 20 years. Many bishops have sold churches to plug deficits, or pay for abuse cases caused by their negligence or their predecessors’.

The idea that each bishop stands in a lineage going back to Jesus’s disciples renders them immune from prosecution for recycling abuse predators or selling churches to cover mistakes. Since 2005 at least 95 parishes from 21 US dioceses have appealed to Vatican courts. At least 12 closures won partial reprieves in the Syracuse, Buffalo, and Allentown, Pennsylvania dioceses.

The Apostolic Signatura (Vatican supreme court), in a split-the-baby ruling, decided that the protesting parishes were “sacred” property not to be sold, but would not restore them as active churches. Juridic “persons” slumber in the folds of legal farce.

In July 2003 Boston’s then new archbishop Cardinal Seán O’Malley visited Rome seeking financial help to resolve 552 abuse cases. He met Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano and Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, then in charge of the Congregation for the Clergy, which oversees the liquidation of diocesan assets.

They gave O’Malley carte blanche to sell properties. In Boston, parish sit-ins ignited bad press and a deep slide in donations.

Cardinal Sodano saw profit horizons. He installed an under-secretary at the Vatican who fed information on closing churches to a New York company, the Follieri Group. Its vice-president was Andrea Sodano, a building engineer in Italy and a nephew of the cardinal. The cardinal greeted potential investors at a New York launch party.

The Follieri website promoted its ties to Vatican officials. Its business plan: find churches, buy low, sell high. When an investor sued Follieri for profligate spending, the FBI investigated.

Follieri had wired $387,000 to the Vatican Bank account of a lay staffer in cahoots with Andrea Sodano. Cardinal Sodano’s nephew’s invoices netted more than $800,000 for work the FBI deemed worthless. Raffaello Follieri today is in prison for fraud and money laundering.

Nepotism, from the Italian “nipote”, means nephew. The FBI considers Andrea Sodano, the Vatican under-secretary and a lay staffer there to be “unindicted co-conspirators”. It helps to have an uncle in robes.

Pope Benedict should empanel constitutional scholars to create a court system for criminal issues and church property. But first, he should sack Cardinal Sodano – now Dean of the College of Cardinals and who will oversee the election of the next Pope.

It would give some sign of papal belief that St Augustine was correct: justice is a virtue.

I remember back to a message Heather preached in the church on are you a Martha or a Mary? I remember it was a message that went down really well with the ladies. She shared the passage from Luke 10:38-42

³⁸ As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. ³⁹ She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. ⁴⁰ But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

⁴¹ “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, ⁴² but few things are needed—or indeed only one.^[a] Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

When I reflect back now, I stand amazed. We were all pushed in a “spirit of excellence” to be all Martha’s. We had no time to think or pray or find God. Only to be told what God expected or to seek the counsel of “Gods anointed” and that we not question. Please do not read what I share here as an expression of hate or bitterness but rather as an expression of love for my former friends.

I now realise what it is like to be in the world but not of it. Spending time with family and friends and being Christ to them. It’s what qualifies me for ministry. It’s not devoting my life to a group of isolated people thinking that they are the only ones in the Truth with the direct line to God in such an exclusive manner that like the High Priest in the Old Testament they were the only one allowed into the Holy of Holies.

I now find my walk so much more enriched and involved in being Christ to a lost world of unbelievers who need us to be there for them. What amazes me too is how much unbelievers were there for us in that time that we shunned them and blocked them out or lied to them about their believing partners or adult children thinking that it was for the sake of the Gospel. I asked God and them for their forgiveness and had the most wonderful time with them this Christmas.

Brethren, I count not myself yet to have laid hold: but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before,

(Philippians 3:13)

In Love,

#############

See links graphically here: Abundantly Clear!

http://www.abundantlife.ie

You can see youth ministry of Victory Centre Galway is on the name. So if Victory did not take over ALCC why is the link to a youth ministry for victory on their website?

We are a VEC registered youth group.  Teens from Galway who want to live life full! To find out who God is and what He wants from us, and have an amazing adventure along the way. To succeed as young people in our generation. We welcome all teens because you matter!  At each FUEL event, you will have a blast!

Youth ministry of Victory Centre Galway

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2011/05/27/the-high-court-has-passed-a-%E2%80%98motion%E2%80%99-in-favour-of-the-defendants-against-pastor-kevin-sanford/

All of this time they also had an office in and near Briar Hill (near the Racecourse in Galway) that they were also using/renting. This after they vacated the Heffernan property was where the Church met till it closed late last year.To be clear this is not the property where the Living Word Church which was led by   Thomas Cooney’s used to meet which is a completely separate building around the corner on the Liosbaun Estate.

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2011/12/13/location-location-from-hotel-back-to-industrial-park-for-victory-galway-west/

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2011/11/17/abundant-life-victory-and-possible-surrender-in-the-living-word/

He took the remnant of those left after the collapse of  Abundant Life  and they are meeting in his old premises in the Liosbaun Estate.

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2011/11/19/brendan-hade-ceo-of-victory-in-take-over-of-abundant-life-ltd-galway/

This Church is now known as Victory Galway. Dialogue Ireland is waiting to hear back from Pastor Thomas Cooney in regard to its offer of dialogue.

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2011/12/22/what-has-victory-got-to-do-with-it/

The story in the Advertiser gives those who had concerns about Abundant Life a flash back as it was in that building where Faith Christian Fellowship is located. It is called ‘Tower House.’

http://www.advertiser.ie/galway/article/48362/new-premises-and-new-services-from-faith-christian-fellowship

New premises and new services from Faith Christian Fellowship

Galway Advertiser, January 12, 2012.

By Kernan Andrews

The Faith Christian Fellowship, one of Galway’s biggest and longest established African churches has moved to new premises and will be holding a series of new events and services.

The FCF has moved to Tower House in Liosbán, formerly where the Abundant Life church was located. The church holds services every Sunday from 11am to 1pm, led by church leader Pastor Larry Ovie. The FCF has also introduced a series of new events, including the Lunch Hour With Jesus on Tuesdays; a fasting and prayer hour on Wednesdays from 6am to 7am; and the Jericho Hour from 6pm to 7pm, involving healing and music, on Thursdays.

Thursdays will also see the FCF continue to offer its counselling services. “Anyone in physical, emotional, or spiritual pain is welcome to come and we will help in any way we can,” says Pastor Ovie. “We provide assistance to people suffering from suicidal thoughts, marriage break up, and bereavement.”

The FCF will also host services and worship with Bishop Ben Eragbai from Nigeria, from February 22 to 26 in Liosbán. Pastor Ovie is also hoping to host a series of celebrations for Easter in conjunction with St Nicholas Collegiate Church and the Roman Catholic churches in Galway.

For more information contact 087 – 1134002, 093 – 42255, or see www.dehouseofroyalmission.org

Galway Advertiser
41/42 Eyre Square
Galway
Tel: 091 530 900
Email: info@galwayadvertiser.ie

Word document:

Phoenix Jan13 2012 

Hade was in fact a director of Abundant Life Christian Church Ltd from 2001-2003.

In a newsletter late last year to their flock announcing their departure, the Sanfords said that they had known Hade and his wife, Sheila Hade, for “many years. They have known our church and staff. After praying about it, they decided to not only take the church, but to drive over every week and handle it themselves.” Brendan Hade didn’t respond to a query from Goldhawk asking if this effectively meant that the Victory Centre was taking over Abundant Life.

Fans of Goldhawk will recall (see The Phoenix 30/7/10) that despite the fact the Sanfords claimed never to have drawn a salary from the church, they also owned a villa in Alicante, Spain. A search of Irish property records reveals that their friends, the Hades, have also made a few property purchases over the years. Hade is a former electrician, and his move to being a pastor has apparently proved a more rewarding enterprise. In the late 1970s, he and his wife started off with a modest house in Ballyboden, D14, and according to Land Registry documents, in 1998 they bought two city centre apartments in Jervis Place, followed by another house in Tallaght in 1999 and another Tallaght apartment in 2006. These days, the couple reside in leafy Rathfarnham. Brendan Hade will be familiar to fans of Goldhawk through his

church’s lucrative role in providing accommodation to asylum seekers (see The Phoenix 17/12/04), which led to accusations of “prison like conditions” from

asylum seekers in one centre, Kilmarnock House, Co Dublin. The Department of

Justice axed that contract in 2006. Hade has been involved in various other ventures and was also a director (and shareholder) of a property management company called

Milverton House Ltd, along with one Gerry Byrne. Byrne is also a pastor at the Victory Centre and is listed on the church’s website as a host for one of the church’s ‘home groups’. He popped up on the Revenue’s list of tax defaulters in 2001 for failing to file income tax returns, for which he received one conviction and a €875 fine. His occupation at the time was listed as a ‘painter.’ Byrne and Hade were involved in a High Court spat+ last year in which they sued a company called Portlick Castle (Glasson) Ltd, where the principal is Aussie Luke Whittington, whose company owns Portlick Castle* on Lough Ree near Athlone, Co Westmeath. Neither Whittington nor Hade would explain to Goldhawk the outcome of that particular dispute, which is no longer before the courts.

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

*  http://www.tourismresources.ie/cht/portlick.htm

+ We should remind our readers that this is not the same court case at the end of this month which we have referenced earlier where Hade is being sued. The Phoenix reported that Byrne and Hade were involved in a High Court case last year in which they sued a company called Portlick Castle (Glasson) Ltd.

Patricia Fitzpatrick – first seminar in the early 80s. Many seminars in Malahide. A number of 18k seminars. A number of Educo Gym Training seminars (gym now gone belly up). A number of 63k seminars. The Summit Seminar. The Song of Life Seminar. Promotes Tony Quinn seminars all over the world for many years and was trained by him to be a healer. Did massage course with him. NOW listen to her testimonial where she admits that she needed to go back again on another seminar.

Susan Morrice – first seminar back in early 2000s. A number of 18k seminars. A number of 63k seminars. The Summit Seminar. The Song of Life seminar. Educo Gym Training seminars. Promotes Tony Quinn seminars all over the world for years. Now listen to her testimonial where she admits she still needed the formative learning seminar.

Glen O Callaghan – first seminar back in the early 80s. many seminars in Malahide. A number of 18k seminars. At least one 100k personal seminar. A number of 63k seminars. Educo Training seminar. (gym had to be sold off). The Song of Life seminar. The Summit Seminar. Promotes Tony Quinn all over the country. Now listen to his testimonial and hear how he still needed to go on the formative learning seminar.

John Boyle – first seminar in early 2000s. A number of 18k seminars. A 100k personal seminar. A number of 63k seminars. The Summit seminar. The Educo Gym Training seminar (gyms sold off). Promotes Tony Quinn both within his company and also gives classes to the general public promoting Educo. Now listen to his testimonial.

Mary Ann Malone – first seminar back in early 2000s. A number of 18k seminars. A number of 63k seminars. A number of Educo Gym Training seminars. Promotes Tony Quinn and Educo all over the world and is employed by the oil company of which he is a director. Also works in an Educo Gym. Does she say all this on her testimonial. Does she say how many “goes” she has had at gaining the “freedom” he promises?

Madeline Page – first seminar back in the 80s. Many seminars in Malahide, teaching yoga for his association, worked in reception, attended a number of 18k seminars, a 63k seminar, attended Educo Gym Training seminar, working with Quinn for many years and was trained as a healer by him. Madeline has been giving testimonials for many years now – on everything and anything Tony Quinn wants promoted.

Ann Kinsella – first seminar back in the 80s. Attended many seminars in Malahide, attended a couple of 18k seminars, attended a number of 63k seminars, was trained as a healer by Tony Quinn and worked for him for many years. Her ex husband gave a revealing interview on her obsession with TQ on Ireland’s TV3. She has given many testimonials for Tony Quinn over the years.

Why do the people giving their experiences of Tony Quinn seminars not tell their stories accurately? Why do they not say that they have to keep going back on seminars every time Tony Quinn has a new breakthrough from “the light”? Why can they not admit that they have spent, in most cases, hundreds of thousands of euros and many years chasing the elusive and imaginary carrott that he offers. Do people not notice that it is the same people to appear on all the promotional material? Why have consumer analysts not picked up on this very misleading type of advertising?

 Pages 28 & 29  Sunday World January 8, 2012

Tony1   Pages 28

Tony2        Pages 29

GURU Tony Quinn looked like he had a lot on his mind as he took a stroll near his plush home this weekend. The man followers dub the ‘Messiah’ had plenty to think about as he took a windswept walk on his own in the grounds of Dublin’s Malahide Castle.  He had just learned that he will have to explain in court what has happened to millions of oil money belonging to Irish shareholders.  Quinn’s role in international oil company INE has been the subject of huge  controversy since it first struck black gold in Belize in Central America back in 2005.

Two years later the ‘mind guru’ is believed to have been handed an estimated $20 million worth of shares by his avid follower and company director Susan Morrice who credited his mind control techniques with helping INE strike it rich.  Three other original Directors have since sued Quinn and one of the cases, taken by former Director Paul Marriot, is believed to have been settled late last year. He filed explosive documents to a court accusing Quinn and his devoted follower Morrice of scheming to take control of the company. This week the Irish High Court made orders compelling Quinn to give evidence as part of a multi-million dollar lawsuit in the US brought by another former director Jean Cornec.

Lover

It is understood that private investigators filmed Quinn and his busty lover Eve as they strolled together in Malahide Castle near his Hick’s Tower home last week in order to have iron-clad proof for the courts that he was in the country. Quinn has been avoiding coming to Ireland for months but was told he would be safe to return this Christmas. He had successfully fought off a similar order last year because he wasn’t in the country when it was made by the High Court.  Countless people who have attended his mind bending seminars in the sun over the past few years have also received letters from the Revenue saying they are examining payments they made to Quinn’s offshore company in Jersey.

At the same time lawyers representing Cornec had told the Irish courts that they wanted to quiz Derek Lawlor, Quinn’s childhood friend from Malahide, and an associate of his in his business in recent years. The company, INE, pumps up to 5,500 barrels of high grade oil every day, making an estimated profit of $100 million a year. It is worth almost one billion dollars; and has 12 million barrels of reserves, enough to keep it going for over five years. It is owned by 350 Irish shareholders none of whom have received a penny in dividends.

Lifestyle

Another shareholder, Maire Lalor, is attempting to take a class action against Quinn and Morrice in the US and her lawyers are likely to serve him a summons this weekend in relation to the proceedings.  Meanwhile Quinn is still trying to blag money out of his hard pressed Irish followers. Today he is due in the RDS for his annual meeting with his ‘Educo’ cult devotees at the RDS.

Quinn has amassed a huge fortune by conning followers out of millions of their personal savings to fund his lavish lifestyle.

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/category/tony-quinn/

Cultism, Quinn, Educo, Occultism, Undue influence, Oil, Sexual assault, 40 years without a court appearance and High Court demands are sub themes of this post.

Dear M. J. Waites

You say “I really am shocked to see that there are people out there who have a negative view on Tony Quinn”. You clearly haven’t looked very far or are a very easily shocked person!

There are masses of people who have huge issues with Quinn, over 40 years. Check out the comments on this and other websites for an overview. Check out the huge number of negative media exposes on Quinn’s false claims.

Do you support his deceptions? You need to make your position clear on these and other problems for a start before accusing others of being biased. You choose to ignore the financial and emotional rape carried out by Dr. (bogus doctorate, of course) Quinn over 40 years.

Once again, there is the Quinnite dissembling over the word “cult”. You quote, “A cult promises much more than it delivers” and state “well you could include the catholic church in that category could you not? Or any other church or organisation”.

The Catholic church and its flaws is not the organisation under discussion here. Quinn and his organisation is the issue here. Many Catholics and other church members would disagree with your evaluations. For a start, they could easily point out that, as a Catholic, you don’t have to pay 18, 000 Euros for garbled, third-hand plagiarised “teachings”, as many psychologists, therapists and other who have carried out a serious evaluation of Quinn’s “system” have concluded.

Dr. Quinn is not just another motivational, self-help, self-improvement speaker like Tony Robbins as you choose to portray him. Quinn is a dyed-in-the-wool occultist who ran his communes in Dublin fro many years and practiced his “sex magic” methods on his female devotees, while he exploited and ruined the lives of hundreds of young people who you could look up if you were interested but it seems you’re more interested in denying the “trail of destruction” you mention. There is no “ambiguous evidence” here, despite your attempts to dismiss and portray peoples’ suffering as such. People have told their histories of involvement with Quinn in self-help groups for “survivors” of Quinn’s abuse. Your attempts to sweep Quinn’s sins under the carpet will utterly fail as we see that despite massive efforts by Quinn’s diminishing flock (and personnel from the “troubled” oil company) to promote him. It’s about time, the false, self-proclaimed “messiah” confronted the issues instead of relying on his followers to defend him. Quinn is overwhelmingly rejected by the people of Ireland who have got his true measure after 40 years of his cult. Quinn peaked about 30 years ago, now he can run but he can’t hide. His karma is catching up on him.

Where are the real examples of success? Quinn, himself, is a deeply flawed personality that feeds off of young people and hides behind women, running from country to country, essentially of no fixed abode as he represents himself to the courts, on the run from the legal battles, many of which he originates to silence any criticism. Quinn has never provided a shred of good scientific data to show meaningful and concrete results from his methods, over and above placebo effects and that couldn’t have been achieved by spending less than 180 Euros (not 18,000 + Euros) for the original literature that Quinn plagiarised, misinterpreted and “reinterpreted” as Educo. Many of his closest associates, who often gave “testimonials” as if they were not closely connected with his organisation are now in dire straits financially. They probably won’t have the guts to tell the truth.

Quinn was dabbling in hypnosis and NLP in the 1990s, despite claiming to be Jesus for 20 years before this, and he never even became an accredited hypnotherapist, just tried to rebrand himself as a self-improvement guru while burying the mountain of old failures by blaming his unfortunate victims (they too apparently “didn’t get it”) who had slaved for him devotedly for 20 years. If you think that’s good behaviour, you seriously need to look at your choices. You say you were happy on your seminar and that you still are and some other attendees (you don’t say how many) also are. That’s your decision but doesn’t establish anything meaningful about the effectiveness of Quinn’s methods.

Some who paid huge sums for so little in any cultist scheme will, years later, attempt to defend their actions. Marketers call it “defending your purchasing decision” even when it’s clearly been very bad value. Psychologists and cult-leaders know all about “cognitive dissonance” whereby the victims will defend the cult all the more, the more it goes downhill.

Quinn’s star is irredeemiably sinking. Your efforts can’t save him.

Hi.
I really am shocked to see that there are people out there who have a negative view on Tony Quinn.

I see the word “cult” has been used many times. You said, “A cult promises much more than it delivers” well you could include the catholic church in that category could you not? Or any other church or organisation.

Firstly you really must look at this from a wider perspective.
Literally thousands of people have been on his seminars to date.
But only a handful of people have regretted attending.
It is only a tiny fraction of the total number of attendees.

There were maybe thirty people on my seminar.
Everyone was thrilled with their investment, to this day I still meet some of them, I will admit there was one lady who did not fully “get it” perhaps the seminar was not explained properly to her before she made her decision to go. With such high numbers attending over the years this would be hard to avoid as anyone who attends can refer someone.

Secondly, I have heard about so many other seminars from other people in this area, Tony Robbins, etc. It`s like anything else in life, you must put what you learn into practice to reap the rewards. The easy option is just to say it doesn`t work and criticise it… This is clearly the case with anyone who has a problem his material.

It`s quite simple for me,
I went on his seminar 5 years ago,
For a year after returning, I didn`t really notice much difference,
However I kept attending his meetings and really started to put it into practice. I’m just much more fulfilled, happier.
I’m quite financially secure. But the greatest thing I have gained without question is how I now relate to people, especially my personal relationship.

Instead of focusing on this so called “trail of destruction” left by TQ
Perhaps you should look at the massive positive changes he has made in the lives of so many.

That would be a broad minded approach as opposed to a one sided bias conclusion. It`s best not to interpret ambiguous evidence to support your position.

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/the-modern-mystery-school-and-the-cult-issue-which-does-not-seem-to-be-going-away/

You do rituals to put you into the light but this also brings darkness to you like a moth to the flame. If you are not aware of spiritual practices you will become depressed and you life full of more problems than you had before. They pressurise you in taking more course and if you don’t have the money it will come. They issue cheap manuals use cheap or free accommodation. If you add up in a simple course for a day they can make 50k which is ludicrous. I have always believed that Spiritual work should be free or donations only as it segregates people who cannot afford it. I wrote to Gundi personally telling him I had no money and could i come on the course for free. Absolutely no reply. I also asked Gundi if he is saving the world with his rituals etc.

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2011/11/24/dr-who-gudni-gudnason-more-on-the-the-modern-mystery-school-cult-or-just-blarney/

Why didn’t he stop the tsunami in his home town Japan. Simple because they do not have any power they use the same stuff as everyone else occult worshippers. There is only one source out there you either use it for good or abuse it. Their magic etc is nothing new you can read it in all books and obtain knowledge for free. All the teachers who enlist have no life they live for promoting the school. They have no money as they spend it on the school and quite honestly I do not see them happy they are in awe of Gundi like he is God. They do not promote love and their fees are ridiculous for what you get? What do you get? They prey on people. Martina says you must exercise and eat organic foods why then is she so fat? Living wealthy? It is really a mugs game just remember the best things in life are free and if its all inside of you why do need this secret cult to open it for you? If it don’t feel right then it isn’t right. My heart told me something was wrong and that’s what you need to listen to yourself it is a waste of money. And Gundi lives a lavish life with his young pretty Japanese wife whilst his ex-wife runs another cult the 7 Rays School all the same shit as her ex-husband again another charlatan at work. These people have lavish lifestyles don’t think they live in poverty. Please don’t be a mug take it from someone who went there they are robbing you and you may even go insane with some of the rituals they pass through you and they send spirits to watch you!!! You will go mad trust me if you dont know what its about. Its a bit like black magic they know what your thinking and when your down they prey on you – like oh you need a healing, a dna awakening!!! They are messing with your spirit, trust me if you tell anyone normal they will think you are mad and that’s because you are going mad. I know I’ve been there but luckily my spirit kept telling me what there doing is wrong. Trust yourself please. Need any advice contact me? (Address with DI)

The more that I have looked at this the more I have come across people whose relationships have broken down as a result of the involvement of one of the partners in the School. From personal experience I would recognise that the involvement in the school may not be the single factor that broke those relationships but intense involvement in the school has such dramatic effects on the individuals, time, finances and alters the view of the world to such an extent that if there are cracks in the relationship (very few have none), then these can easily become chasms due to the pressures involved. What is very disturbing is that where the partner outside of the school questions the involvement, the thinking, the practises or the impact it may have on the relationship or the family this is seen as evidence of the work of Satan/evil/darkness that the school warn you of. Very early on in your involvement they will say that you will be challenged by those you love and love you. They will explain that this is how darkness works to keep you from reaching the full potential that only the school can lead you to. When this thought process becomes true for the person involved then the result is serious for the relationship as any expressions of concern can then be dismissed as the work of the devil. They also say that humankind is in peril (it may well be) and only the school through it’s work and rituals has the answers to save us. They will tell participants of their special talents and that they can assist them to develop them for the good of the world. This produces such an inflated sense of the individual’s importance in the destiny of the world that they feel they must ignore obstacles so insignificant as their relationships, friends, finances etc. as the work is too important. The evangelical enthusiasm for the school I have seen from participants is sycophantic to say the least. Whether or not this is in its strictest sense a cult or not is arguable, however the workings of the messages on the minds of participants mean the effects of cultism are very real for the participants of the school.

By its nature the School is full of Mystery and secrets. These are not sustainable in most marriages or relationships and can have cancerous effects on the relationship. The cost of pursuing the courses is unsustainable for most ordinary people but may well be within the reach of the more well heeled. However, from my experience, the School at a certain level does put pressure on individuals to attend its classes. It has a all hands on deck mentality, it does implore people that if they are not making a success in their lives that it is their fault and the fault of the people around them rather than any failing in the teachings of the school.

I have tried in as many ways as I can (admittedly limited) to find credible information about the Mystery School and its leader. This has proven to be to be a difficult challenge. I have serious concerns regarding the credibility of the Leader Gudni Gudnason and his claims to be a PhD which I have not been able to verify through online research.

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2011/11/24/dr-who-gudni-gudnason-more-on-the-the-modern-mystery-school-cult-or-just-blarney/

It would be wonderful if Gudni and the other leaders having taken the step of bringing the Mysteries to the masses could also take the step of being fully open and transparent regarding their own learning. We can all claim, like Gudni, to have graduated from the ‘School of Life’ and while this allows us to make comment and gossip it does not allow us to set ourselves up as master teachers or practitioners and demand large sums of money and obedience from others.

In my experience there are those for whom the School experience would not be described as negative, and there are those for whom the involvement has been a catalyst for a complete breakdown in their lives and those around them. The School would no doubt argue that this was a necessary transformation for those individuals, but the only winner here is the school.

This new attempt to ‘rebrand’ the system is designed to act as if there were no issues related to Quinn. A case involving sexual assault? His involvement in an oil company. His role in the fact that  shareholders have been disenfranchised? All is brushed under the carpet with a fresh start. This new site shows a rather dated style in presentation and is incongruous  for a person like Quinn who is a techno phobe. However, it is clearly well funded and organised. The King is in his all together as naked as the day he was born!

Most of the issues raised are thoroughly dealt with on the Dialogue Ireland blog and we invite the public to look at the material and give us their feedback and evaluation. Many will be able to check the videos and see the attempt to recruit through genuine people like John Boyle who has misattributed his success to Quinn and realise what is really happening. By the way we offer any person who has given their testimony on this new site the right of uncensored comment and posting on this site.

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2011/02/06/comm2post-alex-on-john-boyle-submitted-on-20110206-at-437-pm/

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/i-staked-it-all-on-thought-power-the-business-interview-aine-coffey/

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2009/09/03/misattribution-john-boyles-view-of-tony-quinn/

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/supplement-to-sunday-world-sunday-august-23-09/

Here is the material around for years and which is just repackaged without major new thinking.

http://s135771.gridserver.com/wp-content/uploads/Formative%20Learning%20Brochure.pdf

Many of the claims will be analysed in the coming months. We have a massive archive where most of the claims can be analysed. As people send us contributions we will edit them into this text.

http://dialogueireland.org/site/dicontent/a2z/tonyquinn/index.html

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/category/tony-quinn/

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2009/01/18/the-tony-quinn-story-%E2%80%9Cfrom-butcher-to-oil-slick%E2%80%9D/

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/summary-of-media-coverage/

Usually commercial groups are very happy for their material to be republished. Here we find a nearly paranoid fear of the material getting into the public domain. The very reason you have a web site!

http://s135771.gridserver.com/services/

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Note the business research and the suggestion it is based on proper research. We invite Dr. Moore to give us the links to the peer reviewed literature? We have already addressed the questionable basis of Quinn’s doctorate and the University of East London’s failure to stand over this research. Most people are not aware that Dr Clifford is no longer involved with the University of East London and that he has never given a response as to the nature of this research. It is interesting to note that Quinn obtained a doctorate in California which could be the subject of criminal case if he was to make this claim in the USA. Also it is not unusual that a person that already has a doctorate then goes onto do a Master’s and says he is doing a doctorate? Where this time Mr Quinn?

http://s135771.gridserver.com/business-research/

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2009/09/30/professor-clifford-not-answering-questions-about-quinn-blueprint-for-failure/

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/doctor-ed-tony-quinn-ma-doctor-of-yogic-confusion-doc-mill/

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2009/09/27/dr-who-charting-the-cv-of-quinn-through-the-blueprints/

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2009/01/18/dr-quinn-medicine-man/

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2009/09/20/christ-almighty-it%E2%80%99s-tony-quinn-part-2-of-life%E2%80%99s-investigation/

http://s135771.gridserver.com/pain-free-surgery/

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2009/11/29/more-of-the-history-of-quinn-the-false-messiah-comm2post/

http://s135771.gridserver.com/fat-loss-study/

Submitted on 2012/01/08 at 5:55 pm

I did my seminar in 2004 and to be honest it has helped me release alot of my emotional blocks from my past, even beyond therapy. Because the EDUCO thinking is outside the norm people of course think its a cult and if this is the case then was catholosism a cult at the beginning!!! I would say it is a different way of living your life as we are all entitled to live our lives anyway we choose without hurting people. The tools given at the seminars are realistic and if you choose to use them then things work out, if you dont use them well you are back to where you started before seminar – so you are going to feel hurt etc. I can only talk from my experience but some of the terminology like ‘do nothing’ and ‘use other people’s money’ did not help me as I did nothing and also borrowed more money than I should have, which i have now paid back – I did not understand the true concept as it wasnt explained very well. Anyway in recent times he has corrected this information and basically it is all about believing in our true selves – SPIRIT or GOD or LIFE whatever you want to call it – to be present always and to trust SPIRIT, GOD or LIFE to guide us and trust me when you do life is much better, honestly. Also Tony is human like us all, and who hasnt made mistakes in life and this is now his journey which he needs to experience in whatever form it takes for him.
SF

As our mission is to raise awareness we are happy to publish this article about the activities of Tony Quinn.

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/category/tony-quinn/

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2009/01/18/the-tony-quinn-story-%E2%80%9Cfrom-butcher-to-oil-slick%E2%80%9D/

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/summary-of-media-coverage/

FINDING THE TRUTH AND NOT COVER-UP AND QUINN’S CULT PROPAGANDA

Anonymous, your comments may be well-intentioned or just more of the Quinnite attempts to cover-up the reality of this cultist group.  Playing word games about the meaning of “cult” is irrelevant to the real issues discussed here as the word has a broad meaning to the general public as a destructive group that exploits people.  A cult promises much more than it delivers and is seriously abusive in that it takes a lot more than it gives.  This fits the reality of Quinn’s original Yoga (nowadays Educo) perfectly well enough.  You say you got some benefits emotionally from involvement with Quinn, well many found exactly the opposite on a dramatic scale.  It’s not just about ex-followers feeling “hurt” because of a lack of results, as you state, and you are either seriously missing the point or guilty of hugely minimising or even denying the trail of destruction emotionally and financially from Quinn’s cultist activities over 40 years.  In any event, people experience emotional benefits and improvements from many possible sources e.g. proper therapy, healthy relationships, meditational exercises, placebos, etc, so without details of the benefits you state you received and comparison with results from other systems of self-improvement this doesn’t remotely establish that Quinn’s “methods” constitute an effective system of self-development.

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/category/tony-quinn/

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2009/01/18/the-tony-quinn-story-%E2%80%9Cfrom-butcher-to-oil-slick%E2%80%9D/

http://dialogueireland.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/summary-of-media-coverage/

 We have the most extensive archive on his activities in the world.

We hope to have the full text early in the week:

We continue to receive reports about the break up of families , undue influence in regard to personal finances and those who Quinn claimed had become rich through his courses who are in very  difficult circumstances. We do not wish to dwell on these people only hoping they will break free from this conditioning and find their own minds after the undue influence exercised on them.

Friday January 06 2012

THE High Court has cleared the way for lifestyle guru and businessman Tony Quinn to give evidence in Ireland as part of a multi-million dollar lawsuit in the US.

Yesterday, Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy ordered Mr Quinn to give evidence in a case in Denver, Colorado, regarding International Natural Energy (INE).  Mr Quinn was appointed as a director of the company several years ago.

The case concerns the sale of shares in INE, the holding company for a firm involved in oil exploration in the Central American country of Belize. Former INE director Jean Cornec claims he has not been paid in full for a $15m (€11.7m) sale of his shares to INE director Susan Morrice, who is the firm’s chairperson.  In response Ms Morrice has alleged that Mr Cornec broke their contract by engaging in a campaign of undermining Tony Quinn.  She also claims the campaign against Mr Quinn resulted in the loss to INE of a proposed $100m (€78.2m) investment from Dubai. Mr Cornec has denied those allegations.

Mr Cornec’s lawyers secured an order from the District Court in Denver County that requested the Irish High Court to compel Mr Quinn to give evidence in the case.  The order was sought on the grounds that Mr Quinn is an Irish resident.  The court heard that Mr Quinn disputes this and claims he is a resident of the Bahamas and spends only a short period each year in Ireland.  Yesterday, following an application by lawyers acting for Mr Cornec, Mr Justice McCarthy made an order that Mr Quinn give evidence. The process is to be videotaped and transcribed by an official stenographer in accordance with Colorado civil procedure rules.  The transcript and video recording will then be forwarded to the Denver court.

Shane Murphy SC is to act as examiner.  Jonathan Newman, counsel for Mr Cornec, told the court that last July the High Court made orders allowing Mr Quinn to give evidence.  His testimony had been sought as part of the case listed in Colorado, he added.  Those orders were set aside after Mr Justice Michael Peart found that Mr Quinn was not in the country on the date the order was made. Therefore orders that Mr Quinn attend could not be made, the judge ruled.  Mr Newman said Mr Quinn was presently in Ireland.  The court heard that earlier this week the businessman was observed at a property he owns at Hicks Tower, Malahide, Co Dublin, and walking around Malahide Castle.  Mr Quinn is due to give a seminar in the RDS this Sunday, the court was also told.  The court heard that in correspondence Mr Quinn had proposed that he give his evidence in either the Bahamas or in Florida.  However, it had been decided to seek the order allowing for Mr Quinn to do so in Ireland.

- Aodhan O Faolain

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/lifestyle-guru-quinn-ordered-to-testify-in-multimillion-us-lawsuit-2981505.html

http://www.newstalk.ie/2012/news/high-court-orders-statement-from-lifestyle-guru-over-lawsuit/

The High Court has ordered Irish yoga guru Tony Quinn to give a sworn statement as part of a multi-million dollar lawsuit in Denver, Colorado.

The proceedings arise from the sale of shares in International Natural Energy (INE) – the oil exploration company connected to Mr. Quinn – which is operating in Belize.

INE hit the headlines last year when a Caribbean court found Tony Quinn was in breach of his duties as a director of the Central American oil company.

Now a US court in Denver, Colorado has requested the High Court to order the lifestyle guru to give a sworn statement in a multi-million dollar lawsuit by a former INE director.

Jean Cornec claims he has not been paid in full for a US$15 million sale of shares but the purchaser Susan Morrice has counter-claimed that he broke the contract by engaging in a campaign of disparagement against Mr. Quinn.

The Irish businessman spends much of his time in Barbados but Judge Patrick McCarthy made the order having heard he is in Dublin ahead of what is advertised as a ‘truly life changing seminar’ in the RDS this Sunday.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/0106/1224309891820.html

THE HIGH Court has made orders compelling lifestyle guru and businessman Tony Quinn to give evidence as part of a multimillion dollar lawsuit in the US.

Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy yesterday made orders requiring Mr Quinn to give a deposition in Ireland as part of a court action in Denver, Colorado.

The action arises from the sale of shares in International Natural Energy (INE) LLC, the holding company of a firm involved in oil exploration in the central American country of Belize.

Mr Quinn was appointed a director of INE several years ago.

The proceedings have been brought by Colorado resident and former INE director Jean Cornec, who claims he has not been paid in full for a $15 million (€11.7 million)sale of his shares to INE director and fellow Colorado resident Susan Morrice, the firm’s chairwoman.

In her counterclaim, she alleges Mr Cornec broke their contract by engaging in a campaign of disparagement against Mr Quinn. She also claims the alleged campaign against Mr Quinn resulted in the loss to INE of a proposed $100 million investment from Dubai.

Mr Cornec denies those allegations. His lawyers secured an order from the district court in Denver county, Colorado, requesting the Irish High Court to order that Mr Quinn be deposed as a witness in the Colorado lawsuit.

The order was sought on the grounds that Mr Quinn is an Irish resident. Mr Quinn has disputed this. He claims he is a resident of the Bahamas and spends only a short period each year in Ireland.

Yesterday, following an ex-parte application by lawyers acting for Mr Cornec, Mr Justice McCarthy made orders, under the 1856 Foreign Tribunals (Evidence) Act, that Mr Quinn should appear before an appointed examiner and submit himself for deposition in Ireland.

At the deposition, Mr Quinn can be examined and cross-examined by lawyers representing the parties in the US action.

Mr Quinn’s deposition is to occur at a time and place designated by the examiner. The process is to be videotaped and transcribed by an official stenographer. The transcript and video recording are then to be forwarded to the Denver court.

The court heard that Shane Murphy SC is to act as examiner.

Barrister Jonathan Newman, for Mr Cornec, told the court that last July the High Court made orders allowing Mr Quinn to be deposed. Mr Quinn’s testimony has been sought as part of the case listed before the Colorado court, Mr Newman said.

He added that those orders were subsequently set aside after Mr Justice Michael Peart found Mr Quinn, who spends most of his time outside of Ireland, was not in the State when the order was made. Therefore orders that Mr Quinn attend the deposition could not be made, the judge ruled.

Mr Newman said Mr Quinn was presently in Ireland. The court heard that earlier this week the businessman was observed at a property he owns at Hicks Tower, Malahide, Co Dublin, and walking around Malahide Castle.

Mr Quinn is due to give a seminar in the RDS in Ballsbridge, Dublin, this Sunday, the court was also informed.

Mr Quinn had proposed that he be deposed in either the Bahamas or in Florida.

However, it was decided to seek orders allowing for Mr Quinn to be deposed in Ireland.

Quinn is in town for the Christmas and New Year to rally and exploit the diminishing flock. For the last weeks, followers, flunkies and unfortunate victims still caught up in his phony “spiritual” world and his glittering empty promises, have been tasked to drag anybody they can get to make up the appearance of a big crowd devoted to the narcissistic Quinn. The stage-managed and tightly controlled rally at the RDS is the usual propaganda exercise to keep the flock under the influence with Quinn blathering on with the usual sub-spiritual guff about “Song 0f Life” Version 511 promoted as world-shattering, life-changing, etc. Quinn’s difficulties can’t be hidden by this charade as his problems continue to roll on since he was mortally wounded by the media exposes of the last few years. Despite his promises to the faithful that these problems would be long gone by now, the reality is that 2011 has been an extremely bad year for Quinn with the critical media reports continuing, many of them focussing on the oil-related problems Quinn has. The oil shareholders that have been calling “foul” by Quinn and associates have been creating yet more negative exposure for Quinn and Morrice.

Quinn’s toxic cultist influence continues to plague the oil company and many of the shareholders while he invents yet more conspiracy theories to try to dismiss the legitimate criticisms. Legal problems and defeats in 2011 add to his (and his cronies) difficulties, for example, being found in court to be in breach of his fiduciary duties, unable or unwilling to turn up and face the music in court and having to pay up to Paul Marriott despite fighting to avoid this. Quinn has been trying to avoid legal processes for decades, easier to do when you can hide in a cult with lots of flunkies to take the flak, avoid summons, run and hide from country to country and use lots of ill-gotten money to use lawyers to threaten your critics. Using an oil company as legal protection hasn’t been as successful as Quinn hoped. Quinn’s attempts to portray himself as a successful businessman and reinvent himself as a “success” guru haven’t worked and he is far too tainted with his old occultism and messiah claims and the long history of mental, sexual and financial exploitation. A few minutes looking at media archives on Dialogue Ireland and other websites gives a very different picture of Quinn, the “businessman”, than the one that Quinn, Morrice, Millea and other inner circle members try to put on the public. It would certainly take a lot more than a few spin-doctors to cover up Quinn’s cultist mess. It even takes a lot more than lies, cover-ups, “testimonials” and propaganda from core members to rescue Quinn.

Quinn’s legal problems have emerged strongly into the spotlight in the New Year, with Mr. Cornec’s being just one more, and Quinn’s threats and legal attacks haven’t silenced people with the guts to face him down with the truth. Coming under any kind of scrutiny is a big problem for the cultist “guru” as yet more people see more clearly behind the facade of pseudo-spiritual preaching to the darker world of cultist lies, manipulation and exploitation. The rallying cries of Quinn and Morrice are having less and less effect as the cultism of over 40 years collapses in on itself.

A View from a Parallel Universe

The story in the blog Behind the Thankas begins with the description of the inauguration day in Lerab Ling in August 2008. His Holiness of the Dalai Lama was coming to inaugurate the newly built Tibetan Buddhist temple and many guests were invited. My own memories of those days begin earlier, when there was a drastic weather change: on the evening before His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s arrival the clouds were “storming away”. The day of his arrival to Lerab Ling was a completely cloudless day, which was a miracle by itself in the region. We lined up with our khataks to receive him. Everything in nature and in humans was at peace.

The next day hundreds of guests arrived. There was a massive security operation with policemen all over the mountains to secure the guests’ arrival. Some French politicians, many human rights activists, Tibet supporters, many religious leaders of different faiths and friends were invited. Since there were 2000 attendants many of us had to stay outside the temple. The author was nowhere near the inauguration, but writes like he/she had been there. The “reality show” has been watched on YouTube and the author’s description follows the TV camera’s point of view. That is not the view of anybody who was present in the event.

When HH Dalai Lama spoke in the event he was moved into tears while talking about the situation in Tibet. The event was heart warming, even though the sad situation of the Tibetan people was the background of it all.

The next day the special guests were gone and I had the chance to join in the temple. There were present many Tibetan government authorities and many Tibetan Buddhist teachers like Orgyen Tobgyal Rinpoche, Sechen Rabjam Rinpoche, Ringu Tulku Rinpoche and Rigdzin Namkha Gyatso Rinpoche. After the opening Sogyal Rinpoche invited all of them to say something. The atmosphere was great, like being in one big family: everybody was deeply touched and happy. Many stories were told about how the teachers had ended up in the West and many memories were told about Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.

Orgyen Tobgyal Rinpoche said that the earlier demonstrations against HH Dalai Lama in Nantes were organized by the Chinese. The Chinese were in the frontline with their swords shouting (like the Dorje Shugden himself) and some Tibetans at the back joined in shamefully. Orgyen Tobgyal was sad that some of the teachers demanded their students oppose HH Dalai Lama, even though some have even received initiations from him. The students are in difficult position he said.

The idea of the Temple was to be in the spirit of rimé, so that different schools could come together and even different faiths. That was the view of HH Dalai Lama and his wish. All present were worried about the situation in Tibet and agreed that all schools should work together, supporting each other.

Orgyen Tobgyal Rinpoche had a strong effect on the design of the Temple and he helped acquiring relics, statues and so on. During the visit he had asked HH Dalai Lamas’ opinion on the Temple. Many times he had heard HH commenting that a certain temple was too small or too big, but not this time: he was very pleased and said he would come back again, before anybody even had had a chance to invite him.

The author of the blog continues:

“So how did a 63 year old man in poor health…”

Finally it has been admitted that there are health problems that could be the cause for his weight. Sogyal Rinpoche’s health problems caused him to gain weight at an early age. He had an operation in his stomach that was unsuccessful. He is repeatedly called “fat, sleazy, balding, little man” by his critics. How would somebody react if I called him/her “thin, dry, gray, old harp”? The author continues to claim Sogyal Rinpoche “had only a basic education in India” and again he/she forgets that Rinpoche studied Comparative Religion in the Trinity College in Cambridge University. In India he had attended Catholic School in Kalimbong, and then university in Delhi before coming to the west.

“How did he become to be the head of a multi-national organization with tentacles in five continents?”

One explanation in which the Tibetans believe: it has been predicted that Sogyal Rinpoche will achieve a lot in this life as the reincarnated master Terton Sogyal, who was a teacher of the 13^th Dalai Lama. The author should be also aware of the concept ‘karma’.

“How did he manage to raise 10 million Euros to build a huge temple in southern France?”

It was an American private donor who thought that the Temple was an important project and, among other people, donated the funds. Have a vision and make it happen! Just choose carefully what kind of vision you’re after!

Finding Sogyal Rinpoche through his book

The author believes that the students feel devotion toward Sogyal Rinpoche because of his charisma and his humour – or because he is famous. That is a very superficial look reflecting more the author’s own agendas: maybe the person likes to follow celebrities around. It shows clearly that he/she hasn’t spoken to anyone. Which spiritual seeker would say: “I’m here because that man is charismatic and funny!” At least I wouldn’t. I would say: I looked for a spiritual path, but I didn’t want to settle with anything I already knew, since I couldn’t relate to the teachings. I wasn’t looking for a cult or a hippie gang that I would fit into and feel at home among my kind. No. Sogyal Rinpoche has commented at times that his students are “so individualistic and stubborn”. That is probably the reason why I am not first one to not buy into the critics’ stories. Of course I have the benefit that I can compare things with my own experiences. I read Sogyal Rinpoche’s book and I thought: this is a truthful book. That is why I wanted to meet him and by chance it happened. The timing was perfect.

Other people who have been inspired by the book have lost a relative, have been faced with terminal cancer or other health problems and found comfort in the book. The author wants to make everything look bad, even Rinpoche’s book, claiming it was made with a motivation to gain riches and not to help people, even though in reality it wouldn’t have touched thousands if it was a shallow book. Many Tibetan Buddhists in the West today have become Buddhists after reading his book. The critics are constantly trying to dishonor the people who wrote the book. Sogyal Rinpoche gave the content and others edited it. Even with the straight forward response Harvey gave, the meaning had to be twisted into something bizarre, ‘an inconclusive response’:

“Sogyal participated totally in every level of the creation of the book and as the representative of his tradition was the indispensable transmitter of its wisdom. The process was a totally mutual collaboration in which Sogyal gave everything and had the final word on every word. It is a very hard process to describe. Any suggestion that Sogyal did not write this book is -I think, absurd and dishonouring of his genius and passion. Both Patrick and I worked tirelessly and I hope, selflessly to honour Sogyal’s brilliance and the wisdom of the tradition. And the book could not exist without the transcripts of Sogyal’s talks that were it’s foundation.”

“…but Harvey’s words do not confirm Sogyal as the author” the author insists. He/she thinks that when he/she edits other people’s stories that he/she is actually the “author”, but he/she is an editor. In his/her case it is of course so that he/she becomes the “author” since he/she changes the story line to suit his/her own agenda best. Therefore he/she can’t understand that the more important person – especially in this TBLD case – is the authentic informer. In TBLD Sogyal Rinpoche’s life story is told and is told by him, with his language and voice. It’s not Harvey’s life story: it’s not about his life and he didn’t give the teachings contained in the book.

According to the Blog, Grant, a former Rigpa member, recalls spending time with Harvey “when he was writing the book”. Grant adds: “Could anyone who knows Sogyal imagine him being able to quote the German mystical poet Rainer Maria Rilke? Or the Sufi sage Jalaluddin Rumi? He simply doesn’t have that level of education.” Yes, I can. I have heard him quoting even many more mystics. He did study in Catholic School and Comparative religion in UK. He might even discuss things with Western people like Patrick, Andrew or a Christian priest friend. He happens to meet a lot of people all the time. Is that forbidden? Should he live in a vacuum and all knowledge should just drop down from the sky?

Ngakpa Chogyam: “The book was cobbled together from more than a decade of Sogyal’s teachings,” he says, “I worked for a while on transcribing the tapes. There were a fair few mistakes which I corrected as I went along – particularly about Dzogchen and precise definitions of Buddhist doctrine.” Chogyam is an English speaker, Sogyal Rinpoche is not. Buddhist terminology is still in the process of being translated and corrected. Now Chogyam has corrected some spelling mistakes and he thinks that correcting some definitions of Dzogchen in English puts him up as a transmitter of Dzogchen. Why then are his books are only circulating among their group? Why have I never seen – and, as I believe, will never see – a Tibetan lama quoting him? I don’t know how Ngakpa sees himself, but sounds a bit self-important to me.

Informants

The author seems to have found writings on the Internet that she/he refers to. Quite a few are posts written during the past two years on the Dialogue Ireland blog. These people are referred to as authentic informants, so I might as well refer to other anonymous persons on Internet forums. The ones who have given their names or faces in the documentary “In the name of Enlightenment Sex Scandal in Religion”, I do not consider reliable.

Mary Finnigan is mentioned in the blog as a source, and she was also one of the main speakers in the documentary “In the Name of Enlightenment”. She is also the main critic of Sogyal Rinpoche and holds importance in this discussion. Let’s establish some facts: she was drawn to famous people like David Bowie and other stars, and met Sogyal Rinpoche in his youth during the 70’s (she is herself about 10 years older than Rinpoche). After that she has had no contact with him at all. She has claimed to have tried contacting Sogyal Rinpoche several times for an interview. This can’t be verified, but I have spoken with some of the main people in Rigpa and they have told me they have tried to communicate with her many times, although unsuccessfully. Since I know the style she writes, I wouldn’t wonder if Sogyal Rinpoche refuses to give her an interview.

How can one form an opinion about somebody when one hasn’t met the person for four decades, like she hasn’t? She has heard hearsay by people who have written to her or she has met them. How have I formed my opinion about her, whom I have never met in my life? I have read her writings in the newspapers and in different blogs and forums. These are my conclusions.

Finnigan is very sure about her view on Sogyal Rinpoche and his motivation. But can one really say they know somebody well when they haven’t met the person for four decades and probably even in the 70’s they were not very close? Is it possible? At least I can say about myself that I was quite different when I was 10, 20, 30 and 40 years of age. She has said on the Dialogue Ireland that she holds a thick dossier of people who have been sexually abused by Sogyal Rinpoche. She states her goal and shares her ideals with 30 people.

“There are now more than 30 people willing to join forces to make sure that Sogyal is taken out of circulation as a teacher effectively and permanently.” Mary Finnigan, May 18, 2009

This means that instead of the thick dossier of victims, there are 30 people who did not like Sogyal Rinpoche’s teaching and style. I bet there are many more since he is a very provocative teacher, too direct to many. That is part of being a Dzogchen Master. Can’t get away with that. Many people do not enjoy the rough ride when the Master places a mirror in front of them. It simply isn’t pleasurable to see one’s own hidden traits. How a Dzogchen teacher should approach people? Tapping them on the shoulder and saying: “please continue to grow your ego’s defense mechanisms: arrogance, pride, aggression, evasion, denial and so forth”? I have understood that ego’s task is to make us feel unique and separate from the fellow beings and the universe – and the Buddhist teachings are about countering that ‘false view’.

Even the said victims do not hold special meaning in Finnigan’s mind. Even though she has claimed to hold a dossier of personal stories by sexually abused victims, she can still say things like this:

“Hi Kapasi, If all the women came forward they’d fill the Royal Albert Hall…

And imagine what will happen to S in the bardos…all those screeching harpies….” Pema, August 27^th, 2009

This is meant as a joke but on the other hand reveals her thinking. For me it seems this is almost as entertainment to her, not at all serious. I think it is also an indication that she doesn’t know any of those claimed victims, because they are too abstract for her and she can jokingly call them “harpies”.

“Sogyal could not have scaled the giddy heights without the help of his long-term right-hand man Patrick Gaffney”, writes the author of the blog: “Some former insiders, like the journalist Mary Finnigan, go further: “Patrick is the real brains behind Rigpa,” she says, “Sogyal is merely the public persona.” Finnigan surely is an old former “insider”. Now she is an outsider who has no idea of what is going on. Patrick respects Sogyal Rinpoche deeply and he knows a lot better than the Finnigan the reasons for this respect. Sogyal Rinpoche is not just a public persona – he is the holder and the leader of it all. If you arrived in a strange country wouldn’t it be best to seek advice from the locals, how to manage there?

“In the winter of 1973 Sogyal turned up in London, announcing that he wanted to set up a centre where teachings could be given by some of the great Tibetan meditating yogis. Around this time he met Patrick Gaffney and another faithful acolyte, Dominique Side.”

These people, Patrick Gaffney, the “brains” as Finnigan calls him, and Dominique Side, a published author, have deep devotion toward Sogyal Rinpoche. Since they stuck around they have reaped the benefits of knowing such master and received the blessings of the lineage.

“According to Mary Finnigan, Sogyal already had a reputation as a playboy with a penchant for pretty girls when he arrived in London.”

Which young man wouldn’t have sexual appetite and also an adventurous nature? At least I had, when I was young – and I’m a Western woman. I also heard that women practically threw themselves at him, if they had a chance. One of these women was Victoria Barlow, who is constantly referred to and who is one of the main speakers for the cause.

“Yet in 1994 an American woman known as Janice Doe sued Sogyal for sexual assault and battery.”

This case has been settled. No one knows what has happened. We have only Victoria Barlow’s words echoing the story, but are her words trustworthy? The lawyer of the Janice Doe was the husband of the Zen priestess, who wanted to pursue the court case for Janice Doe. Many think she had an agenda: Tibetan Buddhism attracted more followers than her Zen Buddhist courses. Even in this conversation there are Theravada Buddhism supporters demonising Dzogchen and Tantric methods.

“Professors Thurman and Simmer-Brown depicted them as western teachers with dubious motivation who are jealous of the Asian teachers. I have never heard of any mainstream Tibetan Master claiming that Sogyal Rinpoche was a fraud or otherwise unqualified.” Let’s Be Fair, July 9, 2009

“The glorification of Sogyal suffered a serious setback and in order to silence Janice Doe, Rigpa was forced to part with a large sum of money. Just how much money was involved in the out-of-court settlement is a closely guarded secret, but it is alleged to run into millions of dollars.”

Here the author goes again. Alleged by whom? Where can we verify that ANY amount has been paid – and to whom? If it was written 50$ was paid, we would think the harm done was very small, but since the amount “MILLIONS of dollars” is repeatedly written by the critics we are truly convinced a great tragedy had occurred. They keep coming up with “millions” because there’s an agenda: removing Sogyal Rinpoche out of circulation. But it’s not the critics, fortunately, who determine if Sogyal Rinpoche teaches. There are the dedicated students who ask him to teach.

Many have justified their view on Sogyal Rinpoche for a long time through the testimony of Victoria Barlow. Victoria has not only claimed of having had sexual relationship with Sogyal Rinpoche, but also with His Holiness Sakya Trizin. According to her writings on Internet forums she wasn’t satisfied with either of them, since she ended up talking about her private life in public. Both of the teachers were “grounting” during sex, she says. Many critics have denied her stories about HH Sakya Trizin, but continue to believe her stories about Sogyal Rinpoche. Talking about one’s private life in public might be an indicator of a person without boundaries, which is quite common trait among those that have been sexually abused as children. Victoria has claimed innocence in her story: she as a student came to talk about Buddhism with a lama.

“I went to an apartment to see a highly esteemed lama to discuss religion”, she said, “he opened the door without a shirt on and with a can of beer in his hand.” Once they were on the sofa, Barlow continued, “Sogyal lunged at me with sloppy kisses and groping. I thought I should take it as a compliment so I surrendered to him – but it had a horrible effect on me and caused a lot of depression.”

Depression is the aftermath of sexually abused children, and as adults some seek new partners in order to find acceptance and get rid of the depression – but in fact it leads to more depression and in some cases to sexual addiction if the person doesn’t seek treatment. On the other hand sex in general might feel abusive to them, no matter what were the circumstances, because of the past memories.

I have serious doubts about that particular view on the events described by Barlow, since she also claims that Sogyal Rinpoche was borrowing her mother’s phone card. A regular student doesn’t lend one’s phone card to Sogyal Rinpoche. I also believe the following comment is Victoria describing how she met one other informant, Deidre or Janine. It clearly indicates she considers herself a girlfriend and not a student. Their relationship happened (if it happened at all) when Sogyal Rinpoche was under 30 years of age, in the 70’s. I also wonder if she told him she has been abused as a child? This kind of information would cause a difference in any man.

“I have been in contact with Mary Finnigan for a number of years now and have given my permission for her to use my statement of my experience of Rigpa and Sogyal under a pseudonym, Last year she brought to my house the young woman mentioned above who told me of her own time as an attendant “dakini” to Sogyal. I was profoundly shocked. Her account rang true because I had been a girlfriend of Sogyal’s many years ago and knew what he could be like and how the devoted students of Sogyal would cover up his behaviour.” Tiger Lily, July 6, 2009

In the documentary “In the name of Enlightenment Sex Scandal in Religion” there are the journalist Finnigan and two of her female friends there: Victoria Barlow and a young woman who uses pseudonyms “Mimi” on the video and “Janine” in the Behind the Thankas blog. I haven’t seen the whole documentary, which has only been broadcasted on Christian based TV stations. On the video Barlow shows the innocent face of “an unsuspecting student” visiting her lama. I don’t know if her motivation is caused by disappointment that the relationship didn’t last or anger from childhood traumas.

Before I discuss “Janine”, let’s continue with “Deidre”. Deidre claims that Sogyal Rinpoche was begging her to have sex with him for six hours – and he was lying in his bed all the time! Which one of you, who have met Sogyal Rinpoche, believes he would act in this way: begging for sex for six hours?

“He ground me down”, she says, “it was the same thing over and over – Do you love me? Do you trust me? It must have gone on for about six hours. Eventually I was exhausted and gave up resisting. The whole thing revolved around surrender to him and I was scared of losing the opportunity to heal my family.”

I think a woman who lasted in resisting sex for six hours, could have as well walked away. Unbelievable story, I must say. During the six hours there must have been gaps where Diedre would have heard her inner voice and summoned her strength to say: “No!” If she didn’t act in this way, I think she was open to the idea of sex. I still must say I can’t imagine Rinpoche with his busy life would waste six hours begging a woman. It doesn’t sound like him.

“Dierdre was told by Rigpa devotees that if you have negative feelings, you destroy your relationship with the guru.”

I have NEVER heard anybody telling me anything like that in Rigpa. And gosh, I have had my fair share of projections towards him! I can feel what ever I feel in Rigpa. That is part of the whole package: tantric methods are about transforming the emotions, not rejecting them! If you were not allowed to feel and think what you want, then how can you heal and how can you evolve spiritually? Where is all the understanding? What ‘Buddhist’ invents these stories?

“I only left the house to go to the teachings, where I saw 500 people prostrating themselves to the lama. The rest of the time I listened to him on tape, saying things like ‘pray to me, see me as the Buddha, love me, trust me, be obedient to me’“

That doesn’t sound like a Rigpa tape! Rigpa tapes are teachings – not some “guru” begging people to worship himself… I don’t know who still believes these stories? This is ridiculous – and I’m not afraid to say it. This is so ridiculous that I don’t believe this woman even exists.

“Mimi” is a name that the young woman “Janine” uses on a documentary. There is in reality a real Mimi working in Rigpa, so I think it was an intentional choice of pseudonym. Now in the blog her name has been changed into “Janine”, which is close to Janice Doe – a clever choice again. We might be fooled into thinking there are more than one young female. When reading her description of events one can notice many things that are not a facts but invented stories. I won’t even bother to repeat the Harlequin stories.

“Indoctrination into the inner circle is designed as a life sentence. A young, vulnerable woman is programmed to accept Sogyal’s god-like status and to be compliant with his wishes and whims, slave-like in her willingness to accept a punishing workload and available for sex on demand. She is separated from her family and friends, discouraged from contact with the outside world and persuaded to see Rigpa as her family, with Sogyal (confusingly as father-lover) in absolute power and control.”

“In the majority of cases, it works.” Do you believe it works? Are you a bit naive? A life-sentence? Someone, who has this sort of ideas, must be a bit imbalanced. People work in Rigpa, some stay and some don’t. Some find their true calling outside Rigpa helping people. That was one of the things Rinpoche said in 3-year retreat: first we mature the Sangha and then we can benefit beings in the outside world. I have seen many family members of workers and nuns visiting Rigpa. It’s not a closed world of it’s own.

“By the time these women realise they are being abused and exploited and are deeply embedded in a coercive cult, it is too late for them to extricate themselves. Their investment is total and their chances of making lives for themselves beyond Rigpa have dwindled into non-existence.”

I am aware that ‘battered, abused women’ are often suffering from low self-esteem that comes from the subjugation. Their self-respect is taken away and it’s hard for them to reveal their situation to anybody. There’s fear, shame and quilt: how come this is happening to me, am I to be blamed? They begin to identify themselves with their experiences and become depressed, which could cause them to be unable to seek help. I know a few women in my life outside Rigpa who have been or are in a violent relationship. I know it’s very difficult for them to seek changes, if their lives are under a threat or they feel they need the abuser in some way in their lives: to avoid loneliness or something else. I also know a woman who chose not to continue a violent relationship. Different women have different responses to violent men. I guess it has something to do with overall circumstances around the relationship and timing.  According to my own experience through friends some of the women who stay in abusive relationships may have mental or emotional problems already prior to their present relationship. By saying this I don’t mean to blame anyone, but there are many factors involved.

I do not believe all of the ‘claimed victims’ are weak. Especially when I’ve seen those “Mad Harem” women, who are radiant and strong. They do not look fearful, evasive, beaten and bruised: that would be so obvious and people would eventually notice it. On the contrary I find many of those women empowered and joyful. At times some of them are reading out teaching notes and their voices are beautiful and confident – not shaking in fear and pain. These women have their own children and husbands or boyfriends. They are not socially isolated. They don’t all live in Lerab Ling, but outside and also abroad. They do not fit into the category of domestic violence victims, where abused, bruised house wives with kids have no one to turn to.

If a woman was so much in pain she would run away, eventually. People are mostly kind and caring in Rigpa. There are psychologists who work in Rigpa who would help someone wanting to escape! There would be many ‘Janines’ every year! Remember the circulation of women is constant. As the critics claim: filling The Royal Albert Hall.

May I also remind you that Europe is not America, where social security is practically non-existent and people end up in the street once they loose their homes or jobs. Here we have social security, social networks for helping people starting a new, if they didn’t have relatives and friends they could seek help from. One can always start a new life.

Janine, 22 years old, was

“Determined to take every opportunity to be close to him (her father!), Janine started attending Sogyal’s teachings with her father – usually falling asleep against his back. Inevitably Sogyal’s lasciviously roving eye alighted on Janine and in due course she was lured into the brainwashing process that leads to his bedroom.”

This description of a girl falling to sleep on her father’s back sounds like someone under 12 years old! Which 22-year old is not leading her own life with studies, friends and boyfriends and so on – but sleeping against her daddy’s back in Buddhist teachings! But then later she takes her distance to her father (must be the approaching puberty) as she takes her place in the Mad Harem – and the father has no clue! Amazing.

Fortunately one of those young women – in real life – who work in the lama kitchen today has her mother living and working in Lerab Ling. The mother is a therapist in Rigpa, and I doubt she would be as blind to her daughter’s destiny as Janine’s father was. The mother has been around for decades and she knows all secrets in and out since she treats quite many people.

The Behind the Thankas episode is just really madly inventive. I think Sogyal Rinpoche prefers Thankas better than girlie pictures. Why would he need girlie pictures if he had “an orgy with his harem consisting of eight women”? Don’t you think the workers who are constantly arranging the Thanka paintings in Lerab Ling wouldn’t notice those ridiculous images?

“Dakinis who were in the harem (eight female names, known persons in Rigpa) before Janine’s arrival gradually came to accept her as a team member. Eventually they announced that she should join them in an orgy. Janine was not keen.”

They announced it to Janine? Only Janine was not keen. Is it a Harlequin book or what she has been reading? These people are really not a group, you know? They have their own busy lives, different working areas and men in their lives. Did these eight women inform their male friends that they couldn’t come home today, because there’s an orgy at Rinpoche’s? Instead of drawing pictures I think Janine should write Harlequin books: the terrible dark Beast kept us Princesses in a chamber of evils….

What about the times when Rinpoche is not in Lerab Ling? He is travelling all the time, at times spending moths in a row in different countries, like US and Australia. Maybe the “victims” could use these long periods of his absence planning their escape route? Sogyal Rinpoche is not and cannot control “his claimed victims” in a way that a husband at home could: 24 hours a day, 365 days a year – since he is simply not there and he is too busy with other matters in the Universe.

One might in all decency ask themselves: how many women like orgies in general? It’s mostly a male fantasy. At least I wouldn’t like to share my sex life and partner with other women. It’s an amazing co-incidence that those few women are Buddhists and also workers in Rigpa.

My best friend, whom I have known longer than I have spent in Rigpa, works in Lerab Ling many months a year. Knowing him has made me trust men again after my youth. He knows these claimed ‘harem women’. He told me the background stories of these women – and they do not belong to any harem.

The thing about writing anonymously about people you mention (as your co-victims) by their name is that it is cowardice. Who would do such a thing? I think it’s valid to question the moral character of a person who claims to have been part of a harem (even if she claims she didn’t want to), and she puts out publicly the names of similar people in similar positions that she herself claims to have been in, while not mentioning her own name. Why do that? Why not to leave the names of the “victims” out? To show the readers she knows the names of those people and making it look like she knows them personally? Or to practice public humiliation which they criticize others of? Anybody who opens their ears during the teachings would have known – and in the future will know – the names of these people. They will think these people have something to do with a mad harem.

Janine is revealing:

“After this a lot of important Rigpa people called me. There were all sorts of threats and I heard that men were claiming I’d slept with them and were calling me a whore. But they should know that Sogyal is very possessive about the women he likes – he only lets the ones he wants to get rid off sleep with other men. I know now that many of the things he does are punishable by law. I am not afraid of him”.

Men in Rigpa are the kindest gentlemen one can find on this Earth. Nobody is calling women “whores”. People have their own relationships and they are not offered “left overs” from Sogyal Rinpoche.

Sogyal Rinpoche’s child’s mother:

“It was window dressing,” says one former Sogyal dakini, “the Dalai Lama blessed the relationship, but Sogyal was never monogamous. One of his other women – (name removed) — saw herself as the ‘wife’ and she would not have allowed him to stop having sex with her.”

In this episode it’s not Sogyal Rinpoche who is forcing women to have sex with him, but it’s one of the Dakinis who is demanding Sogyal Rinpoche to have sex with her? Interesting. How many of those Dakinis are victims and how many are in a position of making demands on Sogyal Rinpoche? Sometimes abusive relationships of course are binding both parties in some strange way. Since most of the “harem victims” have male friends of their own, are they seriously after an elderly man? Aren’t their own younger partners enough? How often women principally want sex from their human relationships? According to my limited experience it’s quite often so that men are after sex, but women are after other things too. What about the mentioned “dakini’s” long term boyfriend? How did he feel about these events? She and the younger man seemed so close together and everybody in Rigpa knew them: they were an item. They don’t even live in the same country as Sogyal Rinpoche. Their relationship began and lasted during and after Rinpoche’s relationship to his child’s mother. Now the young man has a new relationship and a child that he brought to be blessed by Rinpoche a few years ago. Sogyal Rinpoche’s child’s mother has been visiting Lerab Ling during the past years. She also lives in another country.

Dakinis are considered to represent wisdom – and I have seen Sogyal Rinpoche asking advice from the so called “dakinis” many times during the teachings. He asks their opinion sometimes, if he should teach something or not, if he should reveal some information or not. Sometimes he also asks similar questions from the audience. It’s communication between the students and the teacher – not dominance.

Once Sogyal Rinpoche asked one of the women to say something and she said: “I remember I had some (negative) patterns of thinking in the past, but somehow they are gone. I just can relate to them anymore, because they seem like gone.” I think she has evolved as a person, her experience has changed regarding some things in her past, so that also speaks against victim hood. Victims of abuse do not evolve, they are stuck in emotions, in the prison of their situation.

Everybody in our culture knows about the teachers’ power over the students and they may be in position where they could use their power wrong. Many of us have personal experiences of such events or “invitations” by teachers in our Universities and so on. How many of those women who have been abused by their teacher have gained a permanent position in the teacher’s life? Some are abused and thrown away. If they haven’t been thrown away, they can’t say they were abused, if their relationship ended up in a marriage. The abuse happens, when the woman is told what to do and told that she will be rewarded somehow. These situations do not usually last for years, since the victims are thrown away, if they complain and do not obey. Soon enough they are being replaced by the next victim.

Many critics feel the need to show the foreign men their place and educate how women should be treated. I could join them eagerly since I have known a few men from non-Western cultures personally and through my friends. But then I must also say that I have never seen Sogyal Rinpoche treating his “dakinis” without respect. They are not thrown away, but have remained for years or decades. He usually doesn’t send anybody away. He accepts followers and doesn’t pick and choose like some teachers do. He wants to help sentient beings regardless of their faults and failures. Like we all know, most of the interaction between Sogyal Rinpoche and his students happens publicly – and not behind some doors. Sometimes the students complain publicly about things, they resist and so on. Sogyal Rinpoche then shows how to do things, explains until they and us, the audience, understand what he is up to.

The last story is picked up from an anonymous poster ‘lalatee’ on the Dialogue Ireland blog:

“The last straw for me was when he called a senior assistant to come to the dais. She’s a respected professional in her 60s doing amazing work with the bereaved and the dying. She was forced to kneel beside Sogyal, while he embraced her closely and put his hand on her chest.” (lalatee, July , 2011)

It’s a new line in the story, because the old stories repeat that he is only after young women.

Mental abuse

The old story was the sexual abuse, but since there seems not to be too many victims (that would fill the Royal Albert Hall) the critics have gone for something else. Now it’s mental abuse or financial abuse. Two years ago he was still “an alcoholic, porn viewer, over eating fat sleazeball” according to critics.

Sogyal Rinpoche has many skills. He is not only a great teacher who can reach many people, which means having a lot of experience and psychological understanding. He is also skilled in visual arts and calligraphy. What puzzles people mostly is that he is not a monk – he doesn’t look like a fragile saint and he has management skills that saintly beings usually do not. It seems like people have gotten used to dividing different skills between different people, and it’s somehow incomprehensible when there are multitalented people. There was Leonardo da Vinci, but such multitalented people can’t exist today can they? How many people at the top of the business world are just single talented? How come Dzongsar Khyentse is able to make movies? He is supposed to be a Buddhist teacher.

“He was a slave driver”, says one squatter, Jack, “he had us working flat out, restoring the house, building a shrine, putting up shelves and so on – while he sat around directing operations.” 

In no Buddhist organization is the teacher, and in no Christian church is the priest, doing the brickwork. It’s obvious that he is not ‘hands on’ in everything. He is the teacher and he is teaching and travelling around the world. There were paid construction workers, Bhutanese and Western artists, gardeners and the rest, who had somebody responsible as a head of each team. Sogyal Rinpoche was not there telling people to lift the bricks! People worked voluntarily and they were paid.

An anonymous poster, who visited Rigpa and afterwards wrote about her experience on the Dialogue Ireland, is alarmed:

“I couldn’t help thinking that if he’s really a Vajra Master why does he need to follow a precise order of events? Why are the prepared readings and video excerpts so important? I really think there’s something else going on.”

There is something else going on. Well noticed. It’s a shame the person didn’t stay long enough to know what it is all about.

Sogyal Rinpoche has an overall vision about situations, he is able to see very quickly to the point of things. He has also been teaching business people how to work more efficiently. I guess it has to do with being present and being able to cut to the point. If one’s mind is all over the place one is blurry and can’t be present in the moment. It’s not a conducive state for anything. Being strict with students and demanding presence is part of the training where he points out the weakness in a practical manner. Remember, that he knows his workers quite well. There are people who have made a life choice: they have left ordinary Samsaric working life and they have decided to be in the presence of the Master. If he allowed them to sit back and continue as they were, what would be the use of that life change?

Buddhist teachings are about getting rid of the ego. There are different methods for removing that self so that the nature of mind can dawn from within. One could practice the Theravadan method, meditation, but the Tantric and especially Dzogchen are considered faster methods. If one has tried Tantric visualization and it has worked, the person is convinced of the effect. If one hasn’t tried then there’s nothing much to argue there. People seem to know a lot about Dzogchen methods, and claim to have authority to criticize Dzogchen Masters. At the end of the day there has to be devotion – and if there isn’t a connection between teacher and the student it just doesn’t work. There will always be a block, a lack of understanding that can’t be explained away. It’s almost like somebody trying to explain to a cat that they should become vegetarians. People, based on their own standards, criticize others who have a deep connection, a deep devotion and have a path ahead of them. It just doesn’t make sense to criticize others, but of course people are entitled to their own experiences and opinions.

This one is my own experience of the so called “mental abuse”, which I consider the Dzogchen Master pressing the student’s buttons. It happened on a retreat where we did strong group practice for 10 days. One night I saw two strong dreams and I woke into them at 2am. In the first one I received instructions how to dive very deep, 20-30 meters, into a pool. After I surfaced again I flew on a boat above the ocean to the infinite sky (just like the view in Dzogchen Beara). In the other dream I asked a question about a certain practice which is not practiced in Rigpa, after which SR turned into a wrathful form with big eyes, trying to kill me, I thought (trying to kill my ego, I guess). In the dream he chased me around and tried to hit me with something. I noticed that it was an umbrella (symbol of refuge and protection). Then I turned around and I told him that I’m not doing the practice I asked questions about. Then he calmed down in my dream and said: “At least you understand.”

The next day in real life SR was really pressing all my feminist buttons, and I was boiling inside. I wanted to give him a private message where I would tell him how I felt about him. I also spoke to a worker. In the evening I went outside to eat in a restaurant and when I sat down on the chair I thought: “Oh, never mind. Now I just want to let go of my anger and relax.” What happened next was that I just felt this incredible all-pervasive feeling of love. It was so extraordinary that I thought: “where is this coming from?” Then I remembered the teachings that it is inside oneself, the abyss of love. That love was so wide it had no borders and had no object to grasp onto. It just went right through me.

One could consider like me, that the pressing of people’s buttons might have a deeper purpose than what meets the eye? Maybe I was so bull-headed that I needed all my feminist protective cover removed? Maybe he used it in order to crack me (and my self-preserving ego) open? At least I’m truly happy about my experience which lasted for about five minutes. I was in the presence of my best friend and I told him about my experience in wonder.

My own experience reminds me of the old Buddhist story:

One great master in the nineteenth century had a disciple who was very thick-headed. The master had taught him again and again, trying to introduce him to the nature of his mind. Still he did not get it. Finally, the master became furious and told him: “Look, I want you to carry this bag full of barley up to the top of that mountain over there. But you mustn’t stop and rest. Just keep on going until you reach the top.”

The disciple was a simple man, but he had unshakable devotion and trust in his master, and he did exactly as he had been told. The bag was heavy and it took him a long time.

At last, when he reached the top, he dropped the bag. He slumped to the ground, overcome with exhaustion, but deeply relaxed. All his resistance had dissolved, and with it his ordinary mind. At that instant he suddenly realized the nature of his mind. He ran back down the mountain, and, against all convention, burst into his master’s room.

“I think I’ve got it now . . . I’ve really got it!”

His master smiled at him knowingly. “So you had an interesting climb up the mountain, did you?”

Critics blocking away the other side, the reality

The author of the blog bases his/her opinions about Sogyal Rinpoche’s skills to teach Dzogchen: a friend of theirs who has been in Rigpa didn’t have any experience of the nature of mind. Having an experience is not an automatic event, nor a guaranteed service you will receive after you’ve paid the retreat fee. Having an experience requires devotion and other circumstances in order to happen. One can’t naively blame the teacher for their own lack of practice, devotion and so forth. I think it is quite self-important to claim to know the level of any lama’s realization – especially when they haven’t obviously even been in the presence of the lama in question. Some critics haven’t even seen him for four decades.

The critics have shown many times insensitivity towards other people with differing views. They block away information that disturbs the image they are fighting hard to paint. For example Finnigan said after ThomasKent had cleared her mistakes in various matters that she claims as facts: “You and I must be inhabiting parallel universes.” That is how I chose the title for my response.

ThomasKent (Nov 6^th, 2011) corrected Finnigan about the author of the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. In the Blog it is also claimed Sogyal Rinpoche didn’t write the book, rather that Andrew Harwey and Patrick Gaffney were the authors even though in reality they merely edited the public teachings that the book was based on. It is also claimed that Sogyal Rinpoche is unable to read Tibetan. The fact is that his reading is perfect and he works as a head of the translation team Lotsawa House that is working with many Tibetan Buddhist texts. The widely sold Rigpa Calendar has his eloquent calligraphy all over the place. The Tibetan font used in the Calendar is designed and written by him. He has said he learnt painting calligraphy in his childhood. Calligraphy is part of his esthetic skills that can be seen influencing the many Rigpa publications.

“Ever since then, allegations around his private life, financial affairs and credentials as a lama have surfaced from disillusioned former disciples.”

Fortunately we have practicing Buddhists who disagree with the author and whoever those people are. The people who work in the administration and are in the highest positions in the Rigpa organization have been there for decades. The critic’s friends never worked in the management department of Rigpa. How could they know a thing? They can’t. In Rigpa there are Western people working – and those people know where the money is going. It goes to bills, salaries, as offerings to very poor monasteries in India and elsewhere and to visiting lamas, like Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche. Of course a person with a poverty mentality would feel deprived when some poor nunnery in Manali gets a little support. The Chinese especially would be happy if the Tibetans were poor and helpless.

Finnigan claims such events have taken place:

“Sogyal was at Merigar some years ago. I hear that this visit went down like a lead balloon. Apparently he had about 5 people at his *teachings* (plagiarised from ChNN and other lamas) and they were so banal he was laughed off the premises. I don’t have feedback on this latest one yet — but it will happen in due course. When it does I will post again here.” Pema, September 22^nd, 2009

Plagiarized from ChNN? I thought that Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche and Sogyal Rinpoche didn’t spend much time together in the early days. Somebody also taught Dzogchen to Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche. Others, like Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche, taught Sogyal Rinpoche. That is how the lineage is formed, or did they also skip that particular point about Tibetan Buddhism? Teachings originate from past and continue from one generation to another.

“She makes the claim that Chögyal Namkhai Norbu knows everything about the allegations around Sogyal Rinpoche and therefore shuns him” Let’s be fair, July 10^th, 2009

Obviously it wasn’t so bad since Sogyal Rinpoche was invited to teach at the Dzogchen Community again. This August (2011) Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche taught in Rigpa.

“Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche has said more than once in my presence that Sogyal Rinpoche is a fully qualified Dzogchen master.” TomasKent, 6^th November 2011

This picture of Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche and Sogyal Rinpoche doesn’t need explanation:

“I am confident that the journalistic treatment I am currently undertaking, together with a book project, will be effective in taking Sogyal out of circulation as a teacher and denying him access to his sexual hunting grounds.” Mary Finnigan, July 6th, 2009

She thinks that Sogyal Rinpoche teaches for the purpose of getting laid. He has a vast vision, not limited to what Finnigan is able to comprehend – unfortunately she takes herself too seriously. Students ask the teacher to teach and not the other way around, remember? Buddhism is not an obligatory subject at school.

Now Western Buddhist lama Ngakpa Chogyam has been dragged into the filth in the Blog. His own group has been criticized for inauthentic lineage and teachings, but it seems like they have settled into their own practice and they are not going to change. It still seems easy to start siding with someone who criticizes Ethnic Tibetan Buddhist teachers, but quite unwise unless the comment was made decades ago. Recently a Tibetan lama said that one mark of an authentic teacher is the fact that they don’t talk badly about other teachers.

“Ngakpa Chogyam also became aware of gaps in Sogyal’s knowledge: “He asked me a lot of questions about Dzogchen”, he says, “and I was surprised by the way he’d enquire – almost, I thought at the time, as if he didn’t know the answers. I ended up talking a lot when we were alone together – but it occurred to me later that he never asked questions like this when anyone else was around.”

It didn’t occur to Ngakpa Chogyam, who is not Ethnic Tibetan, that the lamas question students on their knowledge? It is a common way of checking the students. Did Ngakpa Chogyam already then state that he is a teacher himself, authorized by Chhimed Rigdzin Rinpoche? Authorization was a false claim and for the claim he has been widely criticized. Today they no longer make the claim so there’s no reason to debate it, but I want to bring it to people’s attention, so they can consider Ngakpa’s reasons for siding with such a Blog.

“You have some silly stuff about Sogyal Rinpoche’s teacher Kyabjé Dudjom Rinpoche allegedly “suggesting he give up teaching for a while and return to India to ‘ripen his practice’.” Kyabjé Dudjom Rinpoche would never make public his personal practice advice to any of his students let alone one of his close Tulku disciples like Sogyal Rinpoche. It isn’t even a cultural probability. This story is just someone’s fabricated spin. Sogyal Rinpoche remained one of Kyabjé Dudjom Rinpoche’s close disciples and continued to serve him even after Rigpa was established. To this day Rinpoche receives frequent counsel from Kyabjé Dudjom Rinpoche’s Sangyum (wife) and enjoys close relations with other members of the family. They would laugh if they heard this ridiculous claim.” Sogyal Rinpoche is Amazing’, July 5^th, 2009

Now in the Thanka Blog the girl called Janine, Mimi in the ‘documentary’, obviously, reveals that she is part of Sogyal Rinpoche’s harem. Girls are said to have been sexually harassed and strange games are being played. They are supposedly washing him and wiping his ass. The whole story is like from a cheap movie. So cheap that I wouldn’t bother to look.

The author said the “brains” behind Rigpa is Patrick, but in this new sequence written by Janine (must be the 4^th season in the series) he is the dumb “cuckold” boyfriend whose woman is abused. This series is getting more interesting as the seasons develop.

The Three Year Retreat. Gerard claims:

“We were not allowed to talk” he says,“but we found ways to communicate.” “As a result some of the 200 people present also left the retreat – some shocked at the revelation, others realising that their pre-existing doubts were well founded.“

In reality NOBODY left the retreat, except him. There were only 300 people in the first place.

There are many workers in Rigpa – and I doubt they all are wearing a blind-fold. There is the office with the administration, the reception, the ordinary kitchen for retreat food. There are the people who work with the teachings and texts. There’s also the documentation team: the people who transcribe the teachings and the people who film the teachings on video. There’s a huge archive. There’s a translation team, which works with ancient Buddhist texts. There are people who plan retreats and events. There are people who do graphic design. There are people responsible for the buildings, the Temple and the garden. There are dozens of positions and areas where people work, not only the lama kitchen.

Lerab Ling is a calm place and there’s no way any parties and Harem Orgies are happening. In the past, at times, there were parties where retreatants could socialize, but not so much anymore. In one of those parties I recall Sogyal Rinpoche coming to stop the party because of the noise at late night (before 1 am).

During the summertime the retreats are happening non-stop. Sogyal Rinpoche teaches during 99% of the days, and retreat programs require a lot of work from everybody. There are also other events and projects that Rinpoche needs to take care of, like the Tenzin Gyatso Institute and visiting Lamas and Buddhist events outside Rigpa. I wonder how he could have time for the extra-curriculum activities described.

Other testimonies from people he has helped

For me personally it seems contradictory and hard to put the two pictures together. I have met only people Sogyal Rinpoche has helped. I met Sogyal Rinpoche for the first time on a weekend teaching. I was quite active from the beginning and wanted to find out about the nature of this ‘religion’. I had read Rinpoche’s book and it alone convinced me, but I still was not open to become part of some weird cult if this happened to be one. I talked with one woman who had had suffered from depression and she told me that “he has shown me who I really am, and for that I’m really grateful”. My first contact with a Rigpa person was with someone who had suffered and who had found help and hope in her life. I thought: “Maybe the teachings in the book talk about real things.”

I have been visiting Rigpa every year for the past 10 years. At times I have spent weeks or over a month there. I have been in Ireland too, which is my favorite retreat place. Mostly I visit Lerab Ling where the Temple is and where Sogyal Rinpoche lives. Since I’ve been there so many times I have become familiar with all those main workers and have spoken with some of them. My best friend works there for many months a year. He knows those people quite well and, as I have said before, Rigpa is no gossip-free zone.

In the article Janine mostly talks about lama kitchen. There are many more working areas in Rigpa – not just a lama kitchen like I stated before. There is the kitchen, which has many functions: food for retreats is prepared. Then there is the lama kitchen, which makes food not only for Sogyal Rinpoche but also for his elderly mother, his son, the past Khandro Rinpoche, visiting lamas and many other people who permanently live in Lerab Ling.

There is also a Care Program, which includes many therapists who work with people. During the Three Year Retreat there were many who shared the work with 300 retreatants. Not every retreatant needs therapy and Rigpa is not fundamentally offering therapy as its main focus, but there is certainly quite strong emphasis towards healing. We practice Ngöndro and especially Vajrasattva, the healing and purification practice, has a strong emphasis in Sogyal Rinpoche’s teachings. Many might think Guru Yoga (and misunderstand it as lama worship) and Mandala Offering (and again misunderstand that gaining riches is the reason for it) would be central Rigpa practices. I really want to emphasize that healing is in the front line. Many Tibetan Buddhist lamas notice that people are not feeling mentally well in the West, with worries and stress, so they recommend psychological work first before one hires the “assassin for their ego”.

I heard about the accusations during my first or second year in Rigpa. I was shocked of course, like many people here, when they come across these kind of rumors. Then I decided to speak with one of the attendants who I felt I could relate to. She said she had heard about the accusations too, some years ago. She hadn’t confronted him about those things, but she said what she had done was to “check out the lama”. She decided to keep her eyes open. At some point she had the experience of the nature of the mind, which confirmed to her that she was dealing with an authentic lama. After that she decided to go ahead with the path and committed herself to work for Sogyal Rinpoche. She had suffered from abuse when she was young, so she was also really careful about those matters. Ever since then she has worked closely with Sogyal Rinpoche and never faced issues regarding abuse of females. Sogyal Rinpoche of course knows her past and is very fatherly with her, like he is with others too, and protects her from fear by comforting her and explaining things as they are, in public so I have seen it happen. Since I have spoken with her I pay attention to her treatment by Sogyal Rinpoche.

I have spoken to other women too. Someone who has been there for 30 years told me she used to work as his masseur. Sogyal Rinpoche never harassed her in any way and she is still working in Rigpa in different fields. She knew Sogyal Rinpoche’s girlfriends too – and she has never seen them treated badly or heard them complaining.

In Dialogue Ireland two courageous female students have written their posts (‘Sogyal Rinoche is Amazing’, July 5^th 2009 and ‘Survivor’, July 6^th, 2009). In the stories one can also sense the protective fatherly attitude Sogyal Rinpoche has shown towards his students. Of course there are more positive statements, but since people in Rigpa know Finnigan’s agenda they consider it a wasted effort to write here. I’m the only fool trying to bring another side of the story here. I’m not doing it in order to change Finnigan’s mind, I can see that is a complete waste of human resources. Let’s see in the future if her mind changes.

‘Sogyal Rinpoche is Amazing’ has known Sogyal Rinpoche for 25 years.

“On occasion I have travelled with him, he has frequently stayed in my home and to this day I consider him one of the most compassionate, wise and amazing buddhist masters I have ever met. I have had the unbelievable good fortune to have studied with many of the greatest masters including masters such as Kyabjé Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Kyabjé Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, and of course His Holiness the Dalai Lama. All of them spoke very highly of Sogyal Rinpoche and encouraged me to study with him. In all the time I have known him I have never seen him do anything to anyone for vulgar, selfish gain. However, I have seen him perform inspiring, selfless acts of kindness and charity helping people and showing them how to live better, healthier and more productive lives.”

Survivor’s story:

“When I began to study with Sogyal Rinpoche about 17 years ago, I was a young woman who had been considered especially attractive since being a young girl. It’s a bit awkward to say something like that about oneself – but here I just want you to know where I was coming from: being a beautiful young woman also meant to constantly have predators around and having to be on guard.

And I was especially on guard, because I had been badly traumatized. As a child – actually I had been brutally gang-raped at age 8. Needless to say that I had grown extra sensitive antennas to any sexual vibes coming towards me and always erring on the side of feeling threatened. On top of that, my father had been quite abusive and I grew up with a constant fear of abusive males in general.

So At the age of 23 I had already had one mixed experience with a Buddhist group. But after attending a talk by Sogyal Rinpoche in Berlin I knew I wanted to study further with him. In a short time I became quite close to him, often spending periods of time alone with him in my home and other places. If Sogyal Rinpoche had even remotely resembled an abusive sexual predator, I would have smelled that right away and left feeling sorry for his students.

But instead I haven’t felt unsafe around him for a single instant. No one has ever shown such profound respect for me nor treated me with more love and kindness. Just through this, Rinpoche disarmed my patterns of shame and self-hate again and again. Having a keen sense of what each individual needs, he has always been especially gentle with me, allowing me to heal in my own time. And – just in case you were wondering I was never his lover.

Sogyal Rinpoche saved and healed my life with his wisdom and kindness. He constantly inquired about why I was so fearful and in pain all the time – and then he didn’t get tired of showing me ways to heal, until I truly got it.”

In real life I have only encountered similar stories of healing and hope.

Ethics of the Blog – ‘Buddhists’ who don’t respect anyone

If the author calls him/herself a Buddhist then they clearly do not hold respect for anyone in the Tibetan Buddhist world. The article begins with description how HH Dalai Lama enters the ‘temple of evils’. They criticize the judgment of HHDL and other teachers who associate with Sogyal Rinpoche. Some critics are said to be students of Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche, who actually supports Sogyal Rinpoche. If they were able to ask advice from Namkhai Norbu I wonder what kind of response they would get.

The author looks at Tibetan Buddhism from an exceptionally critical and one-eyed view. I don’t mean people should be blind and expect a miracle world – the Shangri-la that some have experienced in their youth in the 60’s and 70’s – to appear. People are people, even the Tibetans, and we should have patience with each other and ourselves. But there is another view about the human condition that Tibetan Buddhism can reveal to us which we do not have in the Western culture. Sogyal Rinpoche himself doesn’t support new age hippie stuff, he wants to ground people and doesn’t want them to “go off” to shangri-la and other la-la-lands.

“In October 2011 the French news magazine Marianne carried a six page feature on one of Sogyal’s teaching retreats at Lerab Ling. It was compiled from material gathered by an undercover journalist, Elodie Emery. The tone of the reportage alternates from coy to sarcastic to ‘shock horror’ and contains allegations which would not get past legal scrutiny at mainstream British media.”

It almost sounds as if Emery was told in advance how to see things. Now in the Behind the Thankas blog the long article is summarized into one sentence: “his ruthlessly cruel treatment of one participant, who was stumbling towards an agonised confession in front of 500 retreatants”.

The real story in Marianne goes like this:

“The people present in the room choke with laughter at these tips illuminated with wisdom. But the session takes an expected turn when the man starts talking about what provokes his wife’s wrath: “I have worked for 25 years with mentally handicapped children. One day, I abused my position with one of them.” The audience squirms with embarrassment. “I told my wife, and that’s why she puts terrible pressure on me, she is terrified about the possibility of me abusing our 4 year old daughter.” In answer to this the master chooses to remain silent. He has run out of jokes.”

The author just can’t keep to the facts – not even in a text that has been already translated from French into English! This is a textual example of the author’s methods of constructing stories. Unbelievable!

“In 2011 Sogyal’s sex life came under mainstream media scrutiny again” the author writes. I wished they were a bit more honest and added: “…because of our own writings.”

The Big Question

The important question when we evaluate the work of Sogyal Rinpoche is to ask whether he is working for personal gain, like the author claims, or whether he is here to help other beings. Is it possible, that someone who is able to see, recognize and identify people’s suffering, someone who is able to help and support abused women could also be completely blind to himself and be abusive? I believe my own eyes and the people around me. Even at this very moment (I heard from my friend) Sogyal Rinpoche has decided to help and work with a woman, who is suffering and can’t be reached and helped by anyone else in her surroundings. I believe the encouragement of various lamas who happen to know Sogyal Rinpoche personally. I have heard them saying that Sogyal Rinpoche has strong Bodhicitta, compassion. I do believe there are many different people and we are all humans at the end of the day. What has brought us all into Buddhism is the recognition of suffering, wanting to remove suffering and help sentient beings to gain liberation. I’m confident Sogyal Rinpoche is aware of this basic Buddhist principle and that it is the motivation behind his actions.

Pseudonyms are used to protect some individuals. Their words are on record and their identities are known.

Irish Examiner Thursday, January 05, 2012 – 01:13 PM

http://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/quinn-ordered-to-give-sworn-statement-to-court-534723.html

The High Court has today ordered Irish lifestyle guru Tony Quinn to give a sworn statement as part of a multimillion dollar lawsuit in Denver, Colorado.The proceedings arise from the sale of shares in International Natural Energy (INE), the oil exploration company connected to Mr Quinn which is operating in Belize.
INE hit the headlines last year when a Caribbean court found Tony Quinn was in breach of his duties as a director of the Central American oil company.
The ruling came as certain shareholders expressed frustration that despite massive revenues following the discovery of huge oil reserves in Belize, they had not received a dividend.
Now a US court in Denver, Colorado has requested the High Court to order Quinn to give a sworn statement in a multimillion dollar lawsuit by a former INE director.
Jean Cornec claims he has not been paid in full for a $15m (€23.3m) sale of shares but the purchaser, Susan Morrice, alleges that is because he broke the contract by engaging in a campaign of disparagement against Tony Quinn.
The Irish businessman spends much of his time in Barbados, but Judge Patrick McCarthy made the order having heard he is in Dublin ahead of what is advertised as a ‘truly life-changing seminar’ in the RDS this Sunday. *

*It is noteworthy that there is no reference to this Seminar on The Tony Quinn site which suggests Quinn must have anticipated that he might face problems and therefore kept it under the radar.  There is an advert for a seminar in the Bahamas starting on Jan 31.

• http://www.tonyquinneducoseminarsonline.com/TQEFL-Welcome.htm
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Since that that time, some 1,194 posts and over half a million visits later, it is fair to say that our blog has greatly exceeded our expectations. One way in which this occurred was in how many comments that visitors to the blog have made – over 8,300 and counting. It certainly seems that people who visit our blog have a lot to say, and there have many threads filled with very lively discussion.

However, it is clear that due to how the blog software functions it is not an ideal platform for more in-depth discussion and commentary. With this in mind Dialogue Ireland has set up a forum to help facilitate such discussion.

The forum can be accessed here: http://dialogueireland.org/forum

Note that registration is required on the forum in order to post comments there.

Thank you to all our visitors, to all our commenters, to all those who have contacted us through the blog and to all those people who have contributed materials for the blog. We wish each and every one of you a peaceful and prosperous new year!

Happy new year,

Dialogue Ireland