Who is Gregorian Bivolaru the guru at the head of

Who is Gregorian Bivolaru, the guru at the head of an international yoga sect?

End of the run for Gregorian Bivolaru. After six years of persecution by Interpol, the guru suspected of being at the head of a sprawling sectarian yoga movement is now in the hands of the French justice system, facing charges of sexual violence and human trafficking.

• Also read: International yoga sect: Guru accused of sexual violence in France

• Also read: International Yoga Sect: Arrest of Guru and 40 People in France

Born in Romania in 1952, the trained plumber became a yogi at the age of 20. Convinced of his extraordinary talents, he founded the Movement for Spiritual Integration to the Absolute (Misa) in 1990 after the fall of the communist regime of Nicolas Ceaucescu, which until then had banned the teaching of this ancient discipline.

Within this now-international movement, which focuses on the teaching of tantric yoga, a practice from Hinduism aimed at sexual fulfillment, former followers accuse him of abusing them.

According to the Sectarian Phenomenon Study Group (GéPS), which has been working on this movement for 12 years, he was convicted twice by the Romanian justice system, in 1977 and 1989, for disseminating pornographic or obscene material. This initially earned him a one-year prison sentence and then a stay in a psychiatric hospital.

A report cited by the GéPS portrays him as a man with “obsessive tendencies,” “paranoid” and “a high level of social danger.”

However, this conspiracy theorist and author of several books travels to preach his ideals and meet his followers. His ashrams in Europe are flourishing. In 2005 his movement counted almost 30,000 followers in Romania.

However, in 2008, Misa was expelled from the International Yoga Federation and the European Yoga Alliance for “commercial practices deemed illegal.” “Pornographic” activities “which have a high price in France and abroad” are prosecuted, particularly in Italy.

According to GéPS experts, today there are branches in around thirty countries and the number of followers exceeds 100,000. In France there are several hundred, according to a source close to the investigation.

The guru officially retired from leadership of the movement in 1995 but remains its “spiritual mentor,” according to the study group. What the person concerned denies in police custody is that he is a simple professor and lecturer.

Lascivious poses

Misa, which was renamed Atman during its expansion outside Romania, is accused of using tantric yoga as a pretext to trick victims into accepting sexual relationships, particularly with its spiritual leader Bivolaru.

Recruitment was “progressive,” as the GéPS shows. During yoga “classes,” people claim they were “forced to pay for their stay, for women by engaging in sexual video chats and for men by doing manual labor,” according to a source familiar with the case.

The most loyal fans were then invited to an event on the Black Sea coast: a summer beauty contest in which women appeared naked on stage in front of thousands of people, posing lasciviously and even masturbating.

Some were chosen by Bivolaru before being brought to him. In police custody, the septuagenarian claims that these women “loved” him, but the victim’s version is different.

Ashleigh Freckleton, a 31-year-old former Australian devotee, tells AFP how she was invited to France in 2019 to follow a “rite of passage”.

As other victims say, she was then picked up by a driver at a Paris airport and taken to a villa in Villiers-sur-Marne (Val-de-Marne) with blacked out windows, her phone and passport were confiscated.

For two weeks, followers are exposed to pornography and encouraged to take part in sessions that combine hypnosis, sexual orgies and urine consumption. Everything to prepare for her meeting with Bivolaru.

Ashleigh Freckleton ultimately refuses to offer herself to him: “I knew I had to leave.”

According to the police, more than fifty women of different nationalities (Romania, Argentina, Germany, Belgium, USA) were found in the two “women’s boxes” searched last week in Villiers-sur-Marne and Vigneux-sur-Seine (Essonne). searched…) were found.

As well as sex toys, pornographic objects, documents about “rules of life” and even photos of the guru.

In cramped conditions and deplorable hygiene, the victims were able to be “separated from the sect,” according to the police.

public Enemy number 1

In 1999, Agnes Arabela Marques was 15 years old when she met Bivolaru, who was then living in Bucharest. Together with her already indoctrinated older sister, this Portuguese woman visited the Guru’s ashram for a while.

He pressures her to lose her virginity. “We were told that the sexual act with Bivolaru was a consecration,” she recalled to AFP.

Four years later, she left the movement and also said that she was sent to Japan several times to work in nightclubs with other women. She donated almost her entire salary to Misa.

In 2004, Bivolaru was arrested in Romania and prosecuted for sexual relations with a minor and sexual perversions. He fled and was arrested in Sweden the following year. But Stockholm refused to extradite him and in 2006 offered him political refugee status and a new identity: Magnus Aurolsson.

As public enemy number 1 in his country, the Romanian justice system sentenced him to six years in prison in his absence in 2013. According to GéPS, Bivolaru is no longer in Sweden, but in France, where it has relocated its teams.

He was arrested in Paris in 2016. Police sources believe he benefited from “numerous consequences” and “support” during his years on the run, particularly thanks to Misa supporters.

After his extradition to Romania, he served a year in prison and benefited from an early release.

After his release in 2017, Finland launched Interpol to track him down for sexual violence and human trafficking. Several Finnish women said they were forced into sexual relations with the guru in Paris.

But Bivolaru disappeared again.

A God”

The guru, with white hair and a full beard, was finally arrested last week in the Ile-de-France during a large-scale search in the Paris region and the Côte d’Azur that also made it possible to stop other Misa officials.

The septuagenarian was charged on December 1 with rape, abuse of power, kidnapping and human trafficking in an organized gang and detained along with five other people. Nine suspects were also placed under judicial supervision.

According to a police source, books and pornographic content, false identification documents and more than 200,000 euros in cash were confiscated from his apartment in Ivry-sur-Seine (Val-de-Marne).

Following this large-scale operation, the Atman Association denounced a “slanderous witch hunt” and ensured that it was “not responsible for the private lives of students and teachers of its member schools” and acted “independently.”

“Yoga is not a practice to be stigmatized,” but can become a “gateway to sectarian excesses,” recalls Marie Drilhon, vice president of the National Union of Defense Associations. families and individuals.

Thanks to meditation and Ayurvedic remedies, devotees “surrender their own values.” Humiliation and flattery ultimately end up “destroying their ability to think,” she explains.

Like Agnes Arabela Marques, Bivolaru’s victims gave him the nickname “Greg” or “Grig,” and everyone, according to this Portuguese woman, saw him as “God.”