Agnes was 15 when she met Gregorian Bivolaru in Romania in 1999: “He preferred virgins.” This Romanian-Portuguese woman, like other women, tells AFP what she experienced with this guru, who was suspected of sexual violence within a widespread sect and was arrested in France after a long time.
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• Also read: International yoga sect: Guru accused of sexual violence in France
At that time, Agnes Arabela Marques was worried about her older sister, who had gone to Bucharest to the ashram of the founder of Misa (Movement for Spiritual Integration towards the Absolute). She decides to join him there.
Tantra yoga or “yoga of love” is taught there, a practice from Hinduism that aims at sexual fulfillment. During its international expansion, the movement was renamed Atman and is present in more than thirty countries. Today she has more than 100,000 followers around the world.
In the ashram, the teenager notices the presence of “important people”, doctors, lawyers… “I told myself that I was worried for nothing. And I ended up getting lost there too…” she confesses, contacted via video conference and met by AFPTV.
As for Bivolaru: “At first glance he seemed nice. He was a very respected person,” she said. “He never got angry. When he said something, people were silent.”
She stayed at the ashram for a while and then, she says, “he invited me to his house.” Bivolaru is already surrounded by a dozen women there. With them, the teenager took part in meditation sessions, was pushed into lesbian relationships… “It was part of the tantric initiation,” she says.
The women follow each other in the bedroom of the guru, who is now approaching fifty. “And then it was my turn.” He urges her to lose her virginity and asks her “not to say anything.”
A kind of “welcome gift,” she jokes to AFP. “We were told that the sexual act was a consecration, that it was authorized by God.”
She remembers a “methodical” man with long nails. “Grig,” as she called him, was considered a “god” by his followers.
“Miss Shakti”
She also says that at the age of 16 she took part in this summer beauty contest “Miss Shakti” on the shores of the Black Sea, where the most convinced members of Misa were invited: almost 300 women who parade naked, pose lasciviously on stage and even masturbate in front of several thousand followers.
Other events of this kind took place, particularly to celebrate the Guru’s birthday. Agnes also talks about adult sites that display photos and videos from specific fans.
“There was no minimum age,” “like me, most of them were underage,” she assures.
She will also say that she has traveled to Japan several times to work in nightclubs for Misa’s benefit. She took an oath to read the Bible and donated almost all of her salary and the gifts she received to the movement.
In 2013, the Romanian justice system sentenced Bivolaru in his absence to six years in prison, specifically for sexual relations with minors.
Agnes Arabela Marques sees this as a victory, but since her testimony in this investigation in 2004 she has been chased by car and threatened with letters several times.
Darkened windows
Ashleigh Freckleton, a 31-year-old former Australian devotee, says she went to Romania in 2018, to one of the Misa schools, to seek “spiritual elevation” in tantric yoga. In 2019, she was invited to France to undergo an “initiation rite.”
As a foreigner, like most potential victims, she was picked up at a Paris airport. Her phone and passport were confiscated and she was taken to a villa in Villiers-sur-Marne (Val-de-Marne) with blacked-out windows.
For two weeks, the women present at the villa are exposed to pornography and encouraged to take part in sessions that combine hypnosis, sexual orgies and the ingestion of Bivolaru’s urine before meeting him. He is portrayed as an “enlightened” being endowed with “supernatural powers.”
Ashleigh Freckleton ultimately refuses to offer herself to him. “I knew I had to get out.”
“Many women were slowly and systematically manipulated into believing that sex with Bivolaru was a spiritual gift,” says Kareen (not her real name), who requested complete anonymity. Aside from the “rapes” and “mental manipulation,” she also said she was “victim of sex trafficking” in Paris on several occasions during the six years she was a follower.
“Getting out of Misa is often a difficult process. Anyone who does will be judged harshly,” she said. Finally she managed to free herself from it.
According to Kareen, several thousand women have been victims of sex trafficking in Misa since its founding in 1990. Today a source familiar with the case speaks of a “crazy” case.
“The testimonies published today are just a drop in the ocean!” believes Agnes. “We are not isolated cases.”
Last week’s large-scale police raid in France resulted in more than fifty women locked in pavilions being “taken out of the sect,” according to police.