Transcript of The Bad Guru: 5. The Breakthrough

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This week on Witness History. 1 day in 1980, Thomas Keneally went into a shop to buy a briefcase, But the store owner told him a remarkable tale, that of Oskar Schindler, who saved more than a 1000 Jews during the holocaust. Thomas published the story in a book in 1982, which was made into the award winning film Schindler's List, For the biggest moments in history told by the people who were there, search and subscribe to Witness History wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

This episode contains sexual content. How does a yoga movement become a recruiting ground for camgirlwork? Someone who was once involved in the business side has agreed to talk.

Yeah. Yeah. I I did all kind of stuff for for people who were colleagues with me at the yoga classes.

What he's about to tell us will help explain what happened to Miranda, a university tutor from England who joins a yoga school in London called Tara Yoga Center.

All of these nice, smiley, shiny, happy, good looking people.

And through a series of encounters with different bits of the international movement it's part of, ends up working in a topless massage parlor in London and being taken to Prague to work in a live online pornography business.

She said, look, we do cam girl work, and you need to pay for your passage here.

The women she works with in Prague are from around the world. Most, if not all of them, are, like her, students of an international yoga movement inspired by a guru called Gregorian Bivolau. I've been trying to work out the relationship between the yoga schools, the guru, and livestream pornography, and now someone is about to explain how it works right from the start.

The, the video chat business, I think it started in 1999. It was a legitimate business in Romania at that time.

Mihai Rapskar was close to the guru in the yoga movement's early days in Romania. He says he even acted as his lawyer. After Webb coming took off in Romania, some individuals in the yoga school asked Rapture if he could do the legal paperwork to help them set up their own operations.

With girls from the yoga classes, you know, they they met the girls there, and they proposed. Yeah. You can work for me, but nothing nothing organized.

Raksha thought he should consult their guru, Gudorian Bivolaro, about this. Bivolaro was against prostitution, but webcaming, the guru said, was different. In fact, he said he thought there might be something spiritual in this work.

Because the girls, have this kind of power of transmitting something spiritual. And he he was very, very categoric on this, that it's prostitution only if you are physically involved in a relationship sexual relationship with somebody. And nothing wrong if you are making video chat, And I think he encouraged the girls to to do this, proclaiming that in this way, they become more feminine.

Mihai was doubtful.

That guy who is at the other part of the camera, he he's jerking off. You know? This is his main purpose. So there's nothing spiritual here.

Andy says that as the years went on, he saw women from the yoga school being financially exploited in businesses where they did erotic performances. I had wondered if Gogor and Bivilaru owned these businesses, but Mihai is sure.

No. No. No. No. No.

He was involved only in writing books, studying, and having affairs with girls.

So Bivilaru doesn't own his businesses, but he encourages members of his international yoga school to work as cam girls, and they donate their earnings back to the guru and his network. Rapture thinks it helped the movement grow internationally. Rapture was concerned about what it had become.

It's already a cult.

He says in 2009, he told the guru it was time to get out of the sex business.

Maybe we we can go back to only simple yoga. We have enough. We have everything we need only to do yoga, and that's it.

You know? We wrote to the Romanian yoga organization, MISA, which was founded by Gregorian Vivilaru. They told us that mister Rapture has long been a fierce enemy of their school and Gregorian Bivilaru and accused him of making false accusations. We also wrote Gregorian Bivilaru through his lawyer. We did not receive a reply.

Mihai Rachar left the movement in 2011. He wasn't able to stop the sex businesses from operating, which is 1 of the reasons why, in 2019, Miranda, a university tutor from England, was working as a cam girl in Prague. But she's starting to have the same doubts as Rapture.

Oh, god. Maybe this is cult.

This is World of Secrets, season 6, The Bad Guru. Radio 4 investigation, episode 5, The Breakthrough.

We should put on 1 of these pairs of dark glasses, which had masking tape on the inside, so that we couldn't see where we were going.

You wouldn't be let out of the car.

This is really really really big.

After Miranda has done 6 months in the Cam Girl house, she goes to live in Hungary in a commune of Bivolari's followers where she'd spent some time before. Although she's dared to think that maybe she's in a cult, she hasn't decided yet. And this movement instilled her whole life. In February 2020, she takes a trip back to London to help out on an open day at the Tara Yoke Center. But then

The prime minister has announced a series of restrictive new measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus. He said the country was

Lockdown. Overseas travel is banned. Yoga classes are off. Miranda decides to stay in London for a few months, and then she moves to Oxford, just a few miles away from her parents. For Miranda's mother, Penny, it's a sign of hope that she might get Miranda back.

She was back here. She wasn't talking about going abroad again and she seemed happier. So I thought, okay, I I I think things are normalizing.

I've heard that sometimes when people decide to leave a cult, they have a light bulb moment where everything clicks into place. That wasn't the case with Miranda. Although she's having doubts, she can't fully admit them to herself or leave the community of Gregorian Bivillari's followers. So she starts attending the Tara Yoga Center in Oxford. 1 of the people she meets there surprises her 1 night when they're having dinner, and they start talking about Gregorian Bivillarou, or as Miranda now calls him, GB.

And he said to me at some point, GB is always calling other people demonic. He's calling everyone else demonic and awful. What if he's the demonic 1? What if he's the awful 1? And to me that phrase was just sacrilege.

I could barely, you know, comprehend that he had said that and I was really angry. And then he went on to say, you know that you know that it's a cult. Right? You know that you're brainwashed. And, again, I was extremely annoyed and angry.

It took me quite some time to process that. I think I didn't talk to him for a few days. But on some level, I was beginning to be ready to hear it. And gradually, over the next few months, it did start to sink in.

Feel free to either write in the chat or even better to unmute yourself and ask directly.

Miranda's journey to the heart of Gregorian Pivilari's international movement started with the yoga classes she attended at Tara Yoga Center. I've spent hours watching the center's video lectures and webinars, like this 1, entitled The Transforming Power of Pleasure, hosted by Maria Porsveld, then 1 of Tara Yoga's directors in London. There's a clue in her talk about why so many people like Miranda might find it difficult to break away from spiritual organizations, even if they go on to be treated badly. It's the promise that if you stay, life will be amazing.

Ecstasy is not so difficult with a little bit of of training, coming with many more benefits than you can anticipate.

The lecturer, Maria, is a blonde, radiant Dane who looks younger than her 40 years. As I stare at her smiling sweetly and talking gently, it's hard to believe that she could ever be connected with anything sinister. And as for having anything to do with the cam girl business, well, exploring erotic pleasure without a partner, she says, is just not the tantric way.

From a tantric perspective, in order to really have these, profound experiences of orgasm, you do need someone else there. I just want to mention that we are a charity, and donations, however big or small, are always very warmly welcomed.

You might assume, from Maria's slightly disapproving tone about solo sex, that she'd want nothing to do with the sort of webcombing business that Miranda and other followers of their guru ended up working in. But in December 2023, something comes to light that directly links a house once used for webcombing in the Czech Republic with Maria and another senior figure at Tara Yoga. An investigation by the Czech newspaper says Namzapravi uncovers a webcam house 80 kilometers north of Prague. And like the house Miranda lived in, most, if not all, appear to have attended yoga schools affiliated to the Outman Federation. The newspaper's reporter, Kristina Sirikova, gets hold of the purchase agreement for the house.

Unlike the house that Miranda lived in, this house is actually owned by the Outman Federation. The agreement is dated September 2020. And the 2 people who have signed the purchase agreement on behalf of the federation are 2 senior teachers from the Tara Yoga Center in London, Maria Porsfell and Bogdan Radasanu. Both were directors of the Atman Federation when the webcam house was bought. As the guru Bivilaru's former lawyer told us at the start of this episode, the sex businesses are usually owned by followers of Bivilaru, not owned by Bivilaru himself or by the yoga schools.

For a house like this to actually be owned by the yoga schools umbrella organization is surprising and, you might think, revealing. We asked the Atman Federation to tell us what they thought the house was being used for. They didn't answer this question directly, but they did say, the Atman Federation categorically condemns any kind of abuse. We also asked Maria Posfelt and Bogdan Radasanu what they thought the house was being used for. Neither replied.

This week on Witness History, 1 day in 1980, Thomas Keneally went into a shop to buy a briefcase. But the store owner told him a remarkable tale, that of Oskar Schindler, who saved more than a 1000 Jews during the holocaust. Thomas published the story in a book in 1982, which was made into the award winning film Schindler's List. For the biggest moments in history, told by the people who were there, search and subscribe to Witness History wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

It's New Year's Eve, and instead of going to a party to welcome in 2022, Miranda is at her parents' house in Oxfordshire, in her bedroom, watching documentaries about colts.

I just knew. I knew in my heart, in my bones, in my body that I had to leave and I had to tell people. It wasn't an easy thing to admit. It was very difficult. It's very difficult to admit to yourself.

Let alone admit to your friends and family and others that you made a mistake.

The next morning, on New Year's Day 2022, Miranda sends a message to a friend of hers who was in Tara but left.

And she put me then in touch with some other people who had left, and and I knew. I mean, I knew even before I spoke to her. But once I spoke to her, it was confirmed that I had to leave.

Miranda also called her mother, Penny.

She invited me to come and have a coffee at a a cafe in Oxford.

On winter's day in January 2022, Penny navigates her way through the tables and jolly groups of people, peeling off their coats, ordering coffees and hot chocolates. Penny sits down at a table opposite Miranda. Penny likes to think of their relationship as close, but the truth is that she knows very little about Miranda's life over the past 4 years. She doesn't know the full story of why Miranda abandoned a career as a university lecturer in London to seek spiritual salvation. She doesn't really know much about what Miranda was doing when she lived in Prague and why she really heard from her.

All she knows is Miranda joined a yoga group in Clerkenwell, Central London called Tara Yoga Center, and then became involved in the international movement of which it is part.

And she told me in broad brush terms, that the organization was was a cult.

Miranda takes the gulp of her drink and starts telling her mom the full story. Miranda tells her mom everything, even about her so called initiation with the spiritual guard with Gauri and Vivilaru, whom Miranda now calls GB. The initiation was, in fact, a really traumatizing sexual encounter. Miranda has no idea how her mom will react to her revelations.

And it was difficult. It was painful, it was embarrassing, it was vulnerable. Not least because everything that I believed in so much and preached to other people about how wonderful it was and even tried to get other people involved in, you know, there I was admitting that it was a cult and a sex cult and that they abused me. And, you know, to admit that to to my mom, to someone who I even invited to attend events there was, yeah, it was awful. It was horrific.

Extremely, you know, painful and embarrassing.

And I just sort of listened and said, uh-huh. I mean, it's such a mixture of emotions. I mean, there's such relief that she saw the light. But what parent, in particular, what mother would not feel in the very core of her being some of the emotional stuff that her daughter has been through. And, you know, as a parent, especially when they're very small, you want to protect them.

You wish you could keep them in in that bubble, that they never have to deal with the crap in the world, but of course they do. But you still retain, even when they're in their thirties, some of that desire, that wish that they didn't have to go through tough stuff. This is beyond tough.

And what was it like for you as a mother hearing her talk about going to Paris and GB?

That really shook me, actually, because I had no inkling about all that. I was horrified. Absolutely horrified. A shock that it can happen to your daughter with all the advantages that she's had. We somehow think that those advantages should protect someone from from having to experience that.

Well, fact is they don't. Nobody joins a cult. You just get sucked in so gradually, and it's done so skillfully that you don't realize.

How do you feel towards the organization now?

Absolute revulsion. I couldn't despise them more. I think to hide behind something as ancient and spiritual as yoga is particularly reprehensible.

How would you describe GB?

A complete shit.

Elsewhere in Oxford, Laura Hancock, an independent yoga teacher and founder of the Yoga Teachers Union, has spent years investigating Tara Yoga Center and the wider international movement it's part of. Miranda hears that she's working with a journalist called Kat McShane. That's me. And as I explained in the first episode, Laura is the person who got me started on this investigation. Laura and I have exchanged hundreds of messages and spent hours on the phone together, investigating everything we can about this yoga network.

Morning, Kat. I just wanted to say that I've updated, the spreadsheet

with a few more links.

I'm feeling a little

bit unsettled about the, entire case.

We did calls with people from Australia and Denmark as well as the UK, but we hadn't spoken to anyone from Britain who had the whole story and was willing to go on the record. We didn't know about Miranda. Now, just a couple of weeks after Miranda had stayed up on New Year's Eve watching cult documentaries, I get this voice note from Laura.

Sorry. A slightly urgent message coming through. I got a

message from Miranda late last night.

Miranda had decided that the best way to stop other people being exploited in the same way she had been was to talk publicly about her story.

It'd be

good to get your thoughts before I reach out to her. Cheers, Kat.

A few days later, Laura and I have a Zoom chat with Miranda. We learn the true scale of exploitation. It's the story that you've just heard. There is a psychological reckoning for ex members who have to reconcile all the good they think they experienced in the movement with what they know now. Some people I've spoken to still speak of their time in the movement lovingly.

1 person, even with tears in their eyes, the community had become their family, and sometimes they still miss it. Yes, they might feel that they had been manipulated, but many of the people they might now see as the abusers, or the enablers, were or are themselves victims too. Miranda wants to ensure that nobody else is manipulated. Going public will be part of that, but she also wants Laura to help her get the police involved.

When I heard Miranda's story, for me, that was like, I cannot justifiably not take this to the police. Like, this has to go to the police.

-So Laura talks with Miranda and other former members and then goes to Thames Valley Police.

-They didn't, like, end the meeting and be like,

right, we're launching into investigation right now, da da da, which I think a part of

me was kind of hoping they would do.

-Thames Valley Police do an investigation, but then it goes quiet. Thames Valley Police told us that they had done a thorough investigation, but concluded that no offenses had taken place in their area, so the case was filed.

Like, it disappeared into the ether, and there were no updates. We knew that, yeah, that wasn't gonna be an effective route.

In summer 2022, Miranda's been driven by a friend to Glastonbury. The atmosphere in the car is slightly awkward, because 1 of the other passengers is someone who is very involved with Tara Yoga Center. The other passenger doesn't know Miranda's story, and so goes on about how wonderful Tara Yoga Center is and starts praising 1 of the teachers.

I could just feel this anger bubbling up inside me.

Eventually, Miranda can take no more, so she tells the other passenger her whole story.

And she had the strongest reaction to it of anyone, Sly and the organization had told up until that point. The most humane and compassionate reaction. She was genuinely shocked and upset. And she said almost straight away, I I want to help. I feel that I need to do something about this.

I felt this, like, sense of solidarity from her that I hadn't felt from anyone else still in the organization up until that point. And a few weeks later, she told me that she'd been talking to a few of her friends and she was going to organize a meeting in Hyde Park. And if I wanted she could tell my story second hand or if I wanted I could go there and tell it first hand to still current students. There was a group of, I don't know, about 7 or 8 people when I arrived, and then more people came.

Miranda decides she's going to address the group herself.

So whenever you get in a car, you have, you have to wear dark glasses with tape on the inside and wear a hat and pull it down over your eyes so that you can't see where you're going. I started to to share my story and to speak. Most people were respectful and understanding. Maybe we do questions up until now. How does everyone feel about that?

Good. Good. Good. Good. Yoga.

There was 1 person who wasn't understanding.

1 of the teachers from Tara Yoga has turned up. He has a camera around his neck.

It was horrible. It felt very intimidating speaking to people who were still within the doctrine that I was speaking about, most of whom were completely clueless of what was going on, others of whom may have been complicit. But quite a few people after that challenged the teachers. Quite a few people left.

Maybe she doesn't realize it, but Miranda has declared war on Tara, and they are about to fight back.

We will start now with the presentation by the end of it.

This is a secret recording we've obtained. It's from 1 of a series of meetings Tara Yoga held about Miranda. It's the recording you heard right at the beginning of this series. 1 of the teachers, Bogdan Radasanu, reads out a letter. At the time, Bogdan is a director of the umbrella organization that Tara Yoga is affiliated to, the Atman Federation.

He is also 1 of the people I mentioned earlier who signed the purchase agreement for Cam Girl Health in the Czech Republic. The letter he reads out is apparently written by Gregorian Bivolaro himself.

The former student, Miranda, has cleverly taken advantage of the future of your NABT.

It's an attempt to discredit Miranda's account.

In order for each of you to be edified, we suggest you attentively listen to a recording in which you will hear what Miranda was saying 4 years ago about the experiences she has had, and which are of a completely different nature when compared to the statements she is now making.

A recording is played. The audience is told it was recorded on Miranda's trip to Paris to meet the spiritual guide.

In the house, I feel very wonderful,

and I feel like

Miranda has heard this recording of herself.

1 of the things that always makes me cringe when I listen back to myself is the intonation and the accent, and I can hear it there. How I sounded like the teacher sound and how I sounded like this kind of prototype, this cult personality kind of robotic prototype. I find it disturbing that they keep all of these recordings. It seems fundamentally unfair to play a coerced recording from someone's past to somehow suggest that they are lying in their present. That they think they have that level of ownership over my story, my reality, my voice.

That was 1 of the hardest times of of my life when those meetings were happening. You know, having this sense that people are sitting for hours talking about you behind your back and lying about you. It was extremely disturbing. It felt like a personal attack. It felt like a witch hunt.

We wrote to Tara Yoga Center and Bogdan Radhasanoo. We put it to them that the way Miranda was denounced added to the picture of their organization as a cult. They did not address this issue. Tara Yoga Center told us they unequivocally condemn all forms of abuse. Miranda wanted good Gugoyan Bevelara to be arrested.

She wanted no 1 else to go through what she's gone through. She's decided to sue Tara Yoga Center. Miranda has reported her concerns to Thames Valley Police. Local yoga teacher, Laura Hancock, has also spoken to Thames Valley Police about her concerns. She feels frustrated that more hasn't been done.

It's really hitting home. Like, I just need this

out in the open and feel, like, stuff to be done to change it.

Beck, another former follower of Gregorian Bivolaro, is in London for a few days, and I suggest we meet up for a walk in the park. Bec's the Australian we met earlier. She went to Romania for the yoga festival and had an initiation with Gregorian Bivolaro in Paris. She's trying to persuade the French police to investigate. Miranda is helping her.

But Bec is finding the process frustrating.

Well, a lot of women have spoken out. It's completely mind blowing. And when someone says to me, you know, about this organization, and I say, you know, women are held without their passports in houses, without mobile phones, without Internet access for weeks at a time, someone says, why is something not done? Well, good question. Hi, cats.

I'm delighted. It's huge. It's huge.

On the evening of 28th November 2023, my phone starts blowing up.

I'm kinda in shock, and I'm full of relief, and I'm kinda crying.

The spiritual guide, Gregorian Bivilaru, is arrested.

I'm totally just like, what the not being able to quite process that he's been arrested. I'm just like,

I can't I can't believe he's arrested. This is, like, 10 years of my life. I mean, I'm just I don't know how I feel. I just feel, like, joyful and also, like, it's like a relief, but it's also like, yeah, it's just like being heard.

We approached Gregorian Bivilaro through his lawyer for comment, but did not receive a response. MISA, a yoga organization associated with mister Bivilaru, strongly defended him, stating that he has been the victim of political persecution and false allegations, and that his teachings are followed by more than 40,000 people around the world. Next time, on World of Secrets, the bad guru.

That's the house and there's someone in that house. BBC. I can't I'm kind of shaking a bit.

World of Secrets, the bad guru is a BBC Studios audio production. It's presented by me, Kat McShane and produced by myself and Emma Wetherill. The executive producer is Innes Bowen. Subscribe to World of Secrets. Episodes will be released weekly wherever you get your podcasts.

But if you're in the UK, you can listen to the full series right now first on BBC Sounds.

In 1984, an IRA bomb planted under a bath in Brighton's Grand Hotel came close to killing Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet. It was the biggest direct assault on a British government since the gunpowder plot. From BBC Radio 4, I'm Glen Hadderson. And in the Brighton bomb, I tell the story of the deadly attack, unraveling the threads that brought all involved often by heartbreaking chance to that place and time. 2:54 AM on the morning of 12th October.

And I reveal why the police only just averted a follow-up bombing campaign aimed at England's beaches. To hear the Brighton bomb and many other great history documentaries, search for the history podcast on BBC Science.

This week on Witness History. 1 day in 1980, Thomas Keneally went into a shop to buy a briefcase. But the store owner told him a remarkable tale, that of Oskar Schindler, who saved more than a 1000 Jews during the holocaust. Thomas published the story in a book in 1982, which was made into the award winning film Schindler's List. For the biggest moments in history told by the people who were there, search and subscribe to Witness History wherever you get your BBC podcasts.