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00:13I promise not to speak of going there or meeting him.
00:20The journeys, the houses, that was part of the vow.
00:27It was so beautiful to be part of the sisterhood, I promise not to, not to share any of it.
00:42Tous les gourous vous disent, mais les adeptes sont libres, ils n'ont pas de chaînes aux pieds, ils n
00:49'ont pas de chaînes aux mains.
01:09Cette absence de liberté, c'est parce qu'il y a des barreaux dans le cerveau, des barreaux
01:16qui ont été mis par le gourou dans la tête.
01:20French law is spécifique.
01:23If you are abusing people who are under influence, that's a big problem.
01:29I cannot sit on my hands and do nothing.
01:58I went on the train to Paris.
02:03The receptionist at Tara Yoga Centre in London, she sent me the number for a woman I'd never
02:09met.
02:10I think she was Romanian and I had to communicate with her via telegram, so via a secure messaging
02:16app.
02:17But she said, but I had to, there was an understanding I had to delete those messages as soon as
02:20she'd
02:21sent them.
02:24She was telling me that it was absolutely secret and I couldn't tell anyone where I was going.
02:32And I had to just tell my parents that I was going on a silent retreat in Denmark.
02:39It was easier to not question, just go with it and just trust, trust that I was where I
02:45was meant to be.
02:48That was how I got around the fact that I was going to be uncontactable.
02:59My invitation came after the end of the second year and said, we've been invited to meet
03:06Grieg.
03:06It's a spiritual retreat.
03:08It's going to be really beneficial for you.
03:10I flew there from Copenhagen to Paris.
03:18At the train station, a girl came to me and she said, are you Claire?
03:22Claire's my middle name.
03:23I don't know why they thought my name was Claire.
03:25She's like, are you Claire?
03:26I said, well, no, I'm Ashley.
03:28And she took me to a car.
03:34I had to give her my phone.
03:38She took the SIM card out of the phone and wrapped that in foil, wrapped the phone in
03:42foil.
03:43She said, oh, we're like the FBI, you know, or the CIA.
03:47And they said, for your protection, we need to, it's important you don't know where we're
03:53going.
03:53And so in order to do that, I need you to wear this hat and sunglasses that are blacked out.
04:01They said that Interpol have a warrant out for his arrest.
04:06The spiritual guide, he was a fugitive, but he was in hiding.
04:11And they said he was a victim of human rights violations.
04:17The corrupt Romanian police had been responsible for this.
04:24I was nervous, but there's this overall trust of the organization.
04:29Like, okay, there's a secret thing happening.
04:31They're trying to protect us.
04:33We need to not know where it is because he's in hiding because all of these things have
04:37happened to him, right?
04:43He wasn't really showcased all that much to the men in the school.
04:50So I was curious.
04:54I also asked whether my tantric partners had seen him as well or visited, when they quickly
05:01dismissed it and made it very clear to me that no, they've not seen him.
05:06I had no reason to not believe them.
05:09I just thought, oh, okay.
05:11But that was the sort of first time I actually did question, are there people going to see
05:17him that we're not really aware of?
05:19There are all these hidden camps and retreats that people just disappear for weeks on end.
05:25And you hadn't told Ziggy?
05:28No.
05:30Why?
05:32Because I couldn't.
05:33Like, I had made a vow.
05:34I wasn't allowed to talk to anyone.
05:36So I couldn't say to Ziggy.
05:38I was, like, under oath.
05:43There was some interesting pieces through the media back in Romania.
05:49All of these wacky stories, these constant scandals.
05:55Our teacher told us he was wrongly trialled and wrongly prosecuted back then.
06:01The same thing's happening now.
06:03And that was pretty much all we were told.
06:09I got the sense that we were driving pretty far away from the city into the suburbs.
06:15I was just telling myself, surrender.
06:19Just surrender.
06:21Surrender.
06:25Eventually we pulled up at this house and with the hat and glasses still on, I was taken inside.
06:35The house kind of confirmed for me that we were definitely in a suburban area.
06:39It was a three-story house.
06:41It was quite big.
06:42It had lots of bedrooms.
06:44And the fence had this kind of, like, greenish sort of, like, almost like a tarp or like a netting.
06:51So, let's stop.
07:01Grigno Wann de Villarroo, il est connu dès 2016 par les autorités françaises.
07:09Mais, avant ça, on savait qu'il n'était pas un mouvement de yoga normal.
07:16the movement MISA had already been mentioned auprès of the local police authorities
07:22because the activities generated a nuisance of the inquietude of the
07:26part of the voisinage. The investigation that we have made
07:31has allowed to identify a half dozen places with many participants, many victims,
07:39which potentially happens on a very long time period.
07:45The questions we have to ask at this moment are, first,
07:50is it an issue of organized criminalization, of proxenetism, of treating human beings,
07:55or is it an issue of sectarian deterrence?
08:02We go into the house and there were these two
08:08girls just lying on the couch watching pornography, like hardcore porn, on the television.
08:14And they just sort of giggled and switched it off and scattered around, scattered off to another room.
08:21Then they settled me into my room.
08:28When I arrived there were over 20 people, all women, and some of them were girls that were just in
08:35the
08:35process, the same as us, just visiting, and others were controlling the operation or in some position of authority.
08:45Those were the ones who received us and they're all Romanian, so anyone in any position of authority
08:50while I was in Paris is Romanian. And there's this feeling that you're inside this well-oiled machine.
09:01The first thing they did is they went through all of our bags and they looked for certain things,
09:05maybe an extra phone or some other paperwork, and they took anything, any identifying details,
09:10and any electronic devices. And then they introduced the program and they said,
09:17you will eventually be taken to meet Greg. But before that happens, there's all of these other things you need
09:23to do.
09:26I had to do the vows. Again, putting my hand on the Bible and taking those vows on my health
09:32and my spiritual evolution that I would never speak of anything that happened there. And then I had to write
09:37these forms, write on these forms agreeing to punishments. One of the things I had to sign was agreeing to
09:44the punishment of shaving my head for five years immediately.
09:48If I was caught trying to steal any of the secret teachings from the house.
09:55And knowing that in Tantra, sexual initiation was a thing, I had gathered this impression that
10:03it was likely that sexual initiations were happening and that the spiritual guide was probably engaging in them.
10:15I knew, I knew that it would be a sexual initiation. And here was this opportunity for
10:26beyond satisfaction, a kind of ultimate happiness and enlightenment. It was a promise. You will
10:36experience these things and everything will change.
10:45I grew up in Oxford.
10:49I had a privileged upbringing. We were, we were very lucky. I went to a private school. We went on
10:58great holidays.
11:01I was a very sensitive child, very shy. I changed quite a lot as a teenager.
11:09You know, we started to go out drinking and, you know, smoking and, um, having fun.
11:24I reached a point in my late twenties when I was partying a lot. I was in quite a difficult
11:30relationship.
11:31I noticed that there was a pattern in terms of the relationships I was in and the type of people
11:36I was being attracted to.
11:38And my answer would be to go out and get wasted.
11:41It numbed the feelings temporarily. When I was 29, I started going to 12 step groups.
11:50I really cut down on the partying.
11:53I started to look into yoga and meditation.
12:01So when I found Tara Yoga Center,
12:08there was a sense of like a click and aha moment.
12:13I was completely intrigued by the possibility that I could have a deeply spiritual experience
12:21in lovemaking.
12:29For the first week in Paris,
12:32I was just focused on getting those tasks done, watching the films.
12:36We had to watch a series of porn films,
12:39write about how we felt about them and what kind of states we perceived that the women were having.
12:45It was like everything that had ever happened in the school had been leading up to this.
12:55Yeah, there was a woman there who'd been there for like two or three months and I said,
12:59when are you leaving? And she's like, soon, I hope.
13:02But like he had to wait for his permission to leave. Like she couldn't, she didn't know when she was
13:06going.
13:06I remember walking out once and seeing the girl that won Miss Shakti back in August.
13:12She was there and her head had been shaved.
13:16And there was this note about her, how she, her ego had gotten so big and she needed to kind
13:21of be put back in her place kind of thing. But she was sort of like cut off from everyone.
13:26It's like, that's what happens to Miss Shakti. That's what happens to the winner.
13:30Her head gets shaved.
13:35It was becoming clear that every single woman who was there had been initiated.
13:41They did say, no, sometimes he doesn't. But I didn't see anyone there who hadn't been initiated.
13:50So they kind of feed you through this thing for quite a few days. And it was about day five
13:56or six,
13:57where they said, okay, now that you've done all these things, we can tell you that
14:02the reason that you're here, when you meet with him, there'll be an opportunity to
14:08receive sexual initiation from him. And they framed it as if it was an option.
14:23As it happened, he decided that I should arrive to him on the day of my 30th birthday.
14:31I was taken by a driver again,
14:36with the hat and the sunglasses. And this time I was to an apartment,
14:41and I believe that he parked in a kind of underground parking garage.
14:48Most of my friends had been there already.
14:53I found it quite incredible that after so many years, none of the,
14:57none of the neighbors sensed that these guys were coming in and out of that house.
15:18And he knocked at the door and we had to wait for a minute before it was opened.
15:24And then it was Grieg who opened the door and he welcomed me and gave a hug and said happy
15:30birthday.
15:31and um then he kind of sent me down the hall and went back into his room oh well okay
15:39it's the
15:40real person that everyone's so obsessed with it's this guy and he's really old looking into
15:47into his eyes it was almost like a like an empty space that pulls you in at the same time
15:58as being
15:58empty I couldn't sense any emotions from him nothing I'm in this weird really tiny apartment
16:16there's just books everywhere there's bookshelves on each side of the hallway and his room and the
16:26other room if you go down the hallway there's a the toilet and the bathroom a tiny little corner
16:41where they have like a bath fridge a really small fridge and then there's the actual bedroom which
16:48is just an average size bedroom and that is where the girls are kept who are taken to him for
16:55sex
17:00at any point there's always a few girls there
17:06everyone's sweaty they take your clothes so you don't really have like sometimes people are naked
17:11or you're just wearing something very minimal so you don't really have your own clothes the place
17:17is locked from the outside so you can't open the door from the inside
17:24and you're sleeping there you're eating there you're doing everything in that space
17:30he had a team of girls who were cooking for him so they will send it to him he will
17:34eat a little bit and
17:35then he will give all the rest to the girls they will store it in the fridge but the rule
17:41was like
17:42you couldn't throw anything on the garbage so you would have to eat everything which was there before
17:45you could open a new one a new batch of food and it would be like just like girls just
17:49like eating
17:50this moldy food like because they had to otherwise like that was the rule otherwise you would get like
17:54in trouble and stuff every so often someone gets called in to meet with him
18:02you hear them having sex for hours you hear really loud music
18:08she eventually comes out and really soon after that she's picked up and taken away to the third
18:13house and then often not long after that someone else turns up and takes her place and there's
18:19there's people there saying i've been here six times i love it it's the most amazing experience it
18:25gives me so much um and then they believe that do you believe that maybe in some way i still
18:36felt
18:36really uncertain um but i felt like i was open to to see
18:48i had a fantastic experience we started the the the ritual going deeply into the transfiguration
19:01just as we were taught in the tantra classes
19:08of seeing ourselves and seeing each other as these deeply spiritual beings
19:17it's the perfect union of the inner masculine the feminine the yin and the yang shiva and shakti
19:31i almost ceased to exist
19:38somehow i traveled outside of my body
19:44and he guided me through every single little step
19:54for me it was a spectacular really beautiful meeting and after that i was complete
20:06like i wanted to to believe that that it was going to you know be like a milestone for me
20:13my spiritual
20:14path i wanted it to be of course
20:20it was always difficult for me i never felt that i was you know voluptuous full of vitality
20:29i never felt that i fell into the category of you know this kind of awakened shakti woman
20:38i am from the south of argentina a city called bariloche um it's in the mountains in the limit with
20:46chile
20:47when i turned 18 i decided to move to buenos aires on my own
20:54back then i was taking drugs on weekends
20:59and then when i found atman at the time of course it came with all of these nice people
21:04that cared for me they were much more focused on spiritual things
21:11it was just like such an upgrade
21:15and i could see how much trauma and how much pain i had inside of me from my childhood that
21:23i had never
21:23really addressed i wanted to be more involved in the school so i moved to denmark
21:34i lived in the ashram i ate there i did everything there i barely went outside
21:41i really thought that to have an initiation with him that it would help me i thought it was like
21:47the next step i had to take in order to evolve
21:58before you go there basically you will drink water like uh two liters of water or like a lot of
22:05water
22:07you also need to bless the water with a special formula that you are given by by greek
22:15and then you need to shower before and shave you have to shave completely
22:22they say that if you do enough yoga and meditation so that you're in a really good spiritual state
22:28um to prepare yourself sexually in some way to to be centered and grounded and focused and ready
22:35um to meet him
22:43he came in the middle of the night i was sleeping
22:46he touched with his finger the sole of my feet while i was sleeping and i woke up like that
22:52then like it's your turn everything had been leading up to this is this monumental event
23:05but this repeated thought just kept coming into my head you're going up a mountain
23:11and shiva's at the top you're going up a mountain and shiva's at the top
23:20i don't remember much about the sex i was very out of my body very disorientated and frozen um
23:28and even in the memory i blocked a lot of it out which is convenient
23:34but yeah it was a long process could have been two hours in total
23:43you start doing one one of the positions which i think they come from kamasutra
23:47so besides learning the postures you also learn how to move from one to another
23:52in a graceful way so that you will still remain like you know uh in penetration somehow
24:05i felt it just came in i don't want to do this
24:11and then almost immediately another voice came in
24:17you're being superficial you're being shallow you need to transfigure him
24:24transfiguration the doctrine of the school they say with the tentacles
24:31don't focus on the physical don't be superficial it's not a spiritual attitude
24:38and did you transfigure him yes
24:59the idea is that you could look at a person and really genuinely the shape of their body would
25:08start to change and would look different
25:21when you're transfiguring your lover into the shiva and the great man that he can be he will become that
25:34so you have to have a lot of transfiguration be able to see beyond what's there because otherwise
25:42yes an old man like why would you want to be with him you know
25:49but if you can see it as shiva the spiritual master that's going to help you evolve spiritually
25:57then okay that's a different thing i just knew i really really really didn't want to go through
26:03with the initiation and then they said you need to write to him and tell him
26:09and i said that i needed to work through my own demons but i really hoped that he could support
26:14me if
26:15he was my master through the yoga practices and the meditations and he wrote back to me full of
26:24it was like he was yelling on the page you could feel the anger and the heat and the rage
26:29through
26:29the pen it was just capital letters in this like red fountain pen and he said you lie
26:36and then i was like but how am i lying like that's my feeling you lie because you have a
26:42big ego and a
26:43great bad will and he said on this note that only you have this response because you are manipulated
26:52by demons who don't want you to receive divine power and for all the love that i manifest towards you
26:58your reaction is bizarre morbid sickly perverted completely lacking any goodwill or any aspiration
27:07to know god do you feel empathy now answer me like it was like he was like yelling at me
27:14he said
27:16the initiation will exercise your demons as in and as in like exorcism and they said you've been
27:25summoned to see him tonight when they gave me this letter like he wants to see you tonight you've been
27:30summoned to him and i went down to the meditation room there's a meditation room in the basement where
27:34it's silent and i went sat in there because i knew that no one could talk to me in there
27:38and i prayed
27:41um i prayed to my nana i said nana just please just give me a sign what i should do
27:49just give me a sign
27:52and that was when i first had the thought like maybe i could leave that was but before that like
27:58that thought was too crazy like i wouldn't wouldn't have thought to do that i mean there was big fence
28:05with a locked gate they had all of my belongings they had my phone they had my wallet i had
28:13no way
28:14of speaking the language i didn't know where i was nothing felt real anymore and i actually thought
28:22i was going crazy i thought maybe i was in a state of psychosis i didn't know what world i
28:30lived in
28:30i couldn't trust myself but i also couldn't trust them no this is wrong this is wrong that in that
28:40moment something snapped i need to go i need to get out of here right now before i was allowed
28:51to leave
28:52they made me write this multi-page statement that you have to copy out in your own handwriting
29:00word for word and then you have to submit it to them to to cross check it to make sure
29:05that you've
29:06included everything in it and that it's correct and then they said oh yeah we we need to get a
29:11video
29:12of you reading out this statement and i wasn't about to resist or object to any instructions at this
29:17point i just wanted to get out during my meeting with greek everything went on normally naturally
29:25and with much common sense so that i cannot complain of anything that throughout the meeting
29:31with greek may have traumatized me it was like a legal document i specify the fact i had to read
29:37it
29:37on camera and i remember just thinking in my head they're going to try and use this against me one
29:41day
29:42i specify the fact that there was nothing that happened against my will and i have not been raped
29:49neither forced nor aggressed or blackmailed or hypnotized or beaten or cursed or humiliated
29:59or tortured or offended or locked up something really legal sounding to say that nothing happened
30:07to me here and if i say anything to the contrary this proves that i'm lying this final declaration
30:13of mine has been signed by me personally in the presence of two witnesses that guarantee that i was
30:19in a normal state of mind when i finalized and signed it doing that gave them permission to let me
30:26go
30:27find ashley freckleton
30:35and the driver said where do you want to be taken to and i said just take me to the
30:38cheapest hotel you
30:39can find in the city this can't be real it has to be a nightmare how do i wake up
30:46from this
30:53in france on a dispositif specialised to fight against the infractions who are committed to the
31:00dérives sectaires and in fact this notion of mental health that we developed in the case
31:07of the dérives sectaires so i know that this dispositif is very particular to the france
31:14un abus de faiblesse donc on va abuser de la faiblesse de quelqu'un et c'est pas une
31:19personne qui est en fait en tête faiblesse parce qu'elle est âgée ou malade mais parce qu'elle a
31:23été placée en état de suggestion psychologique progressivement par des techniques l'emprise
31:30mentale va être mise en place et va permettre de d'annuler le libre arbitre des victimes une
31:39personne perdre son libre arbitre et accepter de subir des choses qu'elle n'aurait jamais accepté
31:45autrement after the initiation with the spiritual guide i was exhausted disoriented i felt really shaky
32:05and i think i was even physically shaking but then one of the coordinator women she approached
32:13me she said i'm part of a very special women's integration it's all women but it's in a different
32:21location we've got a swimming pool it's near a really nice city and people call it the garden of
32:32miracles and then she said now that you know these things that most people don't know you have a
32:39responsibility it's your responsibility to not lower your consciousness and go back to doing things the
32:49way that you did them when you didn't know she asked me if i was interested and i said yes
33:00and so we went together to the bus stop in paris
33:07it was my first chance to sleep for like almost 42 hours probably
33:15then when we got to prague we were taken to a suburban house on the main line heading out of
33:23prague
33:27they sat me down and they explained to me what would be happening in the house
33:33we would do erotic rituals in the morning
33:40and then after that you had to do a four-hour shift six days a week on camgirl site
33:56the way that they spoke about it is that because we were doing the rituals in the morning
34:02that energy from the rituals was going to amplify our power and our magnetism in karma yoga and on the
34:12site and we were going to be able to transmit that energy to the people watching us and to the
34:20paying
34:20clients so that then these men could hopefully start to connect to an energy beyond the base sexual energy
34:30the idea of karma yoga is that selfless service and you're you're offering for a greater purpose
34:41we were going to be saving their souls in a way
34:53so you walk down the stairs to the basement and if you went round to the right there was the
35:01hot and
35:01wet channel room tiny room airless hot no windows
35:10so you logged on and then you had your page and your chat up where you saw the image of
35:18yourself being streamed
35:22sometimes the guys would ask you you know what did you do yesterday evening and we were told pretend
35:28that you have a normal life tell them that you went out for drinks with your friends you went home
35:33and
35:33cooked pasta we were told to be careful we got told that there were people who were spying on us
35:41who
35:41would try and trip us up they'll ask oh you know would you practice yoga and we're out to blow
35:49our cover
35:52in those six months i was never paid for any of the work i did
36:00there was this notion that when i looked at myself on the camera
36:04i was seeing past the cheap outfits
36:11and as i had done many times before over the past few years looking at my body and seeing something
36:19divine
36:26so much is at stake if the answer to the question which has always been yes yes yes i believe
36:32i
36:33trust and then you get to a point where it's a maybe or a no there's so much of your
36:42life your
36:43internal belief system your relationships it's just everything you stand to lose as far as you can
36:51perceive everything including your your own spiritual future or salvation
37:15i booked the next flight that i could get back to australia
37:20i just wanted to be at home with my dad i just wanted to catch my breath
37:25i didn't work for about a month and i just tried to
37:28figure out what happened just try to unpack it i just was so confused
37:34maybe a few months after i got home i got really drunk at a party like really drunk and i
37:43think i
37:43just word vomited to a friend i ended up just telling him when i was telling him about what had
37:50happened i just saw the look on his face of just shock and just he's like this is really bad
37:56like this
37:57is really really bad that was when i sort of started i think to talk more about it
38:04i get a call from ashley basically explaining why she left i felt such shame and guilt
38:18because immediately i'm thinking to myself here's ashley barely involved with the school
38:24if a woman with that level of commitment to the school is getting brought in to meet the spiritual
38:31guide then obviously you know my partners practically all the women of the school have probably gone and
38:39had this experience too this is so sick these poor women
38:47who on earth is this guy
38:48who on earth is this guy
39:19i was a student in university when the scandal broke back in 2004
39:27i remember seeing all those images on tv about gregory ambivalaru
39:35more recently i became a investigative reporter
39:41i started looking more into this group
39:50this newspapers cover a very large period of time starting from the early 90s until 2004 when the scandal
40:00really broke
40:03i really was surprised that this was still going on
40:09because this is an old story in romania it has been a story for 30 years now
40:29everybody in romania knows who the grand bivolar was he was basically a household name
40:36so
40:36i
40:36i
40:36i
40:37i
40:38i