‘Shame and betrayal’: Sexual abuse within the spiritual healing industry is exposed

Shamanic healing or opportunity for ritualized abuse? A lawsuit filed in New Mexico last week alleged that a “shamanic master” assaulted a woman during an “energetic medicine” training in March.

The claim, which is currently under investigation, could shed more light on what some see as the dark side of some trends in modern spirituality, especially those involving the ceremonial use of often intense psychedelic treatments.

The New Mexico woman, identified in the complaint only by the initials MG, says she paid thousands of dollars to the Four Winds Society and the Chi Center to become a certified energy medicine practitioner with “an extraordinary life of health, goal and purpose.” inner guidance”.

The lawsuit, first reported by the Santa Fe New Mexican, says the woman scheduled a session with an unknown Peruvian “wisdom keeper” and “shamanic master of energy training” and informed him that she had been sexually abused as a child. The man indicated in Spanish that he understood.

But after ordering her to lie down on one of the beds in his room at the Chi Center, the shaman used the healing session for “his own personal interests or gratification.” The lawsuit alleges that at least two other women had similar experiences with the man.

A senior teacher at the center told MG that “what was done to her was not a standard part of the healing session” when she expressed her concerns, according to the complaint. The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office said the woman did not complete a sexual assault nurse’s investigation because she “left the state and waited to report the incident by phone from California.”

The shaman had then left the US and flew from Houston to Panama, and Santa Fe Sheriff Adan Mendoza said a criminal case was “challenging” because the accused shaman was from abroad.

Yet the accusation follows a long line of claims against spiritual gurus that suggest some shamanic master practitioners may engage in sexual abuse, a disturbing trend previously associated mainly with more mainstream religious practices.

Last year, Jeffrey Glattstein, a shaman in Georgia, was accused of sexually assaulting staff and clients, including at least three women who said they were attacked “under the guise that he would heal and help them.” The defendant subsequently filed claims against two former employees under the Slapp defamation laws, which later failed.

Sex scandals in spiritual or self-enlightenment communities are hardly new, says Patrick Paul Garlinger, a former lawyer and author of a 2022 essay titled The spiritual world has a sexual abuse problem.

“We’re seeing an increase, and part of that is the growing number of people donning the mantle of spiritual master. But this also has a long history, in Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, in New Age circles, and there are clear parallels with the sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church.”

The proliferation of spirituality, coupled with the willingness of victims to come forward in the #MeToo era, has created the conditions for an increasing number of claims to come to light. “The power differential between a master teacher, who is treated as enlightened or ascended in some way, is often used as a justification for why this is not abuse,” says Garlinger.

Scandals within such organizations date back at least to 1983, when Richard Baker, then head of the San Francisco Zen Center, was fired for having affairs with several students. Ten years later, Amrit Desai, the spiritual leader of the Kripalu yoga school, was taken down in the same way. More recently, Bikram Choudhury, the founder of a popular form of hot yoga, was charged with sexual assault in 2016 and fled the US for Mexico.

Sogyal Rinpoche, the author of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, was accused of abusing students in 2016; three years later, Sakyong Mipham, the leader of the Buddhist meditation organization Shambhala, was exposed and the Zen master Joshu Sasaki, accused of abusing students, It was said that he converted that the way to inner peace was to touch his penis, because “true love means giving yourself to everything.”

The increased use of psychedelic drugs such as ayahuasca, often amid claims that they promote spiritual growth or emotional healing, and an increase in shamanic tourism, could also be exacerbating the problem.

Ayahuasca ceremonies, usually held at night, involve drinking a sticky brown liquid – a concoction of two Amazonian plants – followed by vomiting before the drugs take effect, often with powerful visions. In such circumstances, consent to any form of sexual contact is not possible.

In one case a hypothesized one taitaor shaman, Édgar Orlando Gaitán, was convicted by a Colombian court of raping women and three counts of sexually abusing minors with disabilities, some during “traditional indigenous” therapeutic practices.

Academic Daniela Peluso has warned of “increased abuses of power, cross-cultural misunderstandings, the proliferation of inexperienced shamans and vast power differentials that have fueled the unacceptable reality that ayahuasca ceremonies can become potential spaces for sexual abuse to take place.”

The dark side of the ayahuasca scene led to a code of conduct co-authored by Peluso, with the aim of helping individuals within the psychedelic community understand the common scenarios that can lead to abuse during ayahuasca consumption.

The authors warned that “mutual cross-cultural misunderstandings and misconceptions between healers and participants can at least cause confusion, and at worst can be brutally manipulated” under the guise of spiritual empowerment or through the use of “spells.”

“As the popularity of ayahuasca increases, incidents of sexual abuse of women are also increasing at an alarming rate,” they wrote, noting that “the majority of such cases involve abuse of female participants by male shamans.”

This, the authors add, “is especially harmful and shocking because many women who drink ayahuasca are seeking healing from sexual trauma they have suffered in the past.”

A separate study published by Psychedelic Invest warned: “Many of the people running these programs are not qualified to work with people suffering from the aftereffects of trauma. Others have qualifications, but cross important boundaries because they think they are entitled to them.”

But a code of conduct is a poor alternative to the possibilities for complaints and redress. Garlinger writes that the master-student relationship is problematic from the start, especially if the approach to sexuality is not clear.

“There is a lot of shame and a sense of deep betrayal in an environment that is very meaningful,” he says. “These abuses are difficult to investigate, and historically there have been attempts to silence victims, reframe their experiences as part of their spiritual growth, and the need to protect the teacher and the institution.”