WHEN Netflix’s Wild Wild Country told the story of a sex cult it centred on the guru with 96 Rolls Royce cars and terror plots.
But The Sun can reveal that the mystical organisation with thousands of followers across the globe hid far darker secrets in the UK.
We have spoken to women who claim they were the victims of child abuse at two of the schools run by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh’s adherents in England.
Six women have reported attacks to British police and 12 wish to bring a civil action against the Osho International Foundation, which has kept the Rajneesh flame alive since the guru died in 1990.
A new documentary titled Children of the Cult, which airs on ITV on Sunday night, tells of boys and girls being treated like playthings by predatory adults at the cult’s bigger establishments in Oregon in the United States and Pune in India in the 1980s and 1990s.
In the US girls as young as 12 were fitted with contraceptive devices to prevent them getting pregnant by the adult men.
The victims are angry that no one has been questioned or charged over alleged offences despite the fact that at least two of the men have admitted to having sex with a minor.
In the film one man speaks of his shame at sleeping with underage girls in the cult that promoted free love for everyone.
The Sun can reveal that one of Rajneesh’s schools in Devon was raided by the police in 1992 after images of young children in a state of undress were developed at a Boots store.
The chemist’s staff reported their fears to the authorities and social services were concerned that pupils could be “at risk.”
Photographs were taken away by officers during the search of the premises at the boarding school called Ko Hsuan, where boys had slept in the same rooms as girls.
But the school appears to have been tipped off about the raid and no further action was taken.
At the time the local MP Tony Speller called for a government inquiry, with concern already raised about the school in the village of Chulmleigh two years earlier when a male pupil was found hanged after a clothes-swapping game with some of the girls.
The school, which has now closed, also came under fire in 1996 when it was revealed that pupils were being tested for AIDS.
A woman named Alok claims that a headmaster sexually assaulted her when she was aged ten in 1990.
The same man, named as Sharna in the documentary, is alleged to have abused other children at an Osho school in Suffolk called Medina.
Sargam, 54, originally from Somerset, who alleges she was sexually assaulted in Medina by Sharna and raped by another man in Oregon, tells The Sun: “If you are removed from your parents and abused in other countries you are trafficked, that’s what happened to me.
“There really is a lot that has not been investigated in the schools in England. It’s shocking really.“
She is being represented by Leigh Day solicitors which is investigating allegations of historical sex abuse at Osho International communes and schools.
There are claims that Sharna was not the only adult sleeping with young students at the Medina school.
The documentary Children of the Cult paints a very different picture of Osho to the Netflix series.
The show focused on the mistreatment of adult women in the spiritual organisation, where they were raped and beaten in orgies.
Even though the cult’s founder said that children as young as 14 could swap partners, there was no mention of child sex abuse in the streaming giant’s six-part series.
There really is a lot that has not been investigated in the schools in England. It’s shocking
Sargam
Sargam, born in Weston-Super-Mare, was taken to Rajneesh’s main “ashram” in Pune, India when she was aged six in 1976.
There she met the guru, also known as Osho, who preached sexual liberation.
Sargam says: “We were told we should watch adults having sex, we were told to go and watch.
“It normalises sexual behaviour, from there we were sitting on guards’ laps, French-kissing them in front of the community.”
But Rajneesh told his followers it would be better if they were “freed” from their offspring and many of the children were sent abroad.
Sargam returned to England aged 11 in early 1981, attending the cult’s main school called Medina in the village of Herringswell, Suffolk, where Sharna was in charge.
She claims that he asked the girls to sit with their private parts exposed on a photocopier.
Sargam says: “The photos were distributed around Medina.”
She also alleges that Sharna would sexually assault her during a piggyback ride.
Matters got worse when six months later she moved to the city Rajneesh started building in Oregon in that year.
There she claims she was raped by a man going by the name of Nityanando when she was aged 12.
Sargam recalls that her attacker “did say sorry, but he said I groomed him. A 12 year-old can’t groom a 30-year-old man”
In the Children of the Cult documentary the Dutch director Maroesja Perizonius, who was also sexually abused in the cult, confronts Nityanando in a phone call about what happened to Sargam.
He says: “Obviously, the kids got hurt. I hurt Sargam.”
Nityanando adds he takes “absolute responsibility” for having sex with a child, but denies it was rape, saying “technically it was a crime that was committed, but we were living in a different context”.
He wasn’t the only one who thought that way, with other men raping her in Oregon.
Sargam, who bravely waved her right to anonymity, says: “I was then raped 50 times in three years. I was a child sex slave – that’s how lawyers later told me that the law would see it.”
The Medina school closed its doors shortly after Rajneesh’s “city” in Oregon was raided by the police in 1985.
Detectives in the US uncovered a plot to poison citizens in Oregon with bacteria and the cult’s secretary Ma Anand Sheela pled guilty in 1986 to assault and conspiracy to commit assault.
But the Osho organisation continued, setting up as a foundation in 1984, which has an estimated 300 communes worldwide.
Alok, originally from Germany, was aged ten when she was called into the headmaster’s trailer at Osho’s Ko Hsuan school in Devon in 1990 for what she was told would be an “adult massage”.
She alleges it proved to be a serious sexual attack.
Alok, which was the name given to her by the cult, says: “After what seemed like hours of my crying and not enjoying the adult massage he gave up and said I can leave.
“I went straight to my friend crying saying that no one will believe me and told her what had happened.”
Afterwards, Sharna denied the assault in a special meeting held in front of other pupils and teachers.
At the time Alok did not tell her parents what happened, but they took her out of the school because they realised she was “miserable” there.
In 2016 she reported the assault to Devon police, but later that year was informed that they would “at this time not be proceeding with any charges” because they were “unable to locate the person responsible.”
Alok, now 45, who has undergone therapy, is concerned that her alleged attacker might have continued to offend and hopes that by highlighting the case he can be tracked down.
The Ko Hsuan school opened in 1986 with parents paying £3,750 a year for their children, aged seven to 15, to board there.
The death of 13-year-old Australian pupil Nicholas Shultz in 1989, who was found hanging on a swing, put it in the spotlight.
There were reports that he was upset after swapping clothes, but the coroner ruled that it was death by misadventure rather than suicide.
After a Department of Education inspection, children of a different sex were no longer permitted to share bedrooms.
But in February 1992 several police were dispatched to the school following the discovery that pupils had been taking naked photos.
In an 2016 article published on Osho News, an online magazine produced by followers, Surendra, a qualified social worker who worked at the school, denied any of the 15 adults working at the school were engaged in sexual relations with the pupils.
But Surendra did describe the teenage girls as “nymphs” and wrote: “All the children in our care were appealing, those with feminine charms and attractive bodies, sometimes especially so.
“Sooner or later the men were going to get turned on by the girls.”
It seems someone was tipped off about the raid because a member of the press was there when the police arrived.
Despite several freedom of information requests being made to the police and social services to obtain the reports about the raid, they have not been found.
I went straight to my friend crying saying that no one will believe me and told her what had happened
Alok
What we do know is that the school stayed open until 2002.
The attitude of some senior members of the cult towards adults having sex with minors is laid bare in the ITV documentary.
Ma Anand Sheela, who has been described as the most devoted disciple of Ranjeesh, tells Maroesja: “If it happened it is the children’s choice”.
The Sun asked the Osho International Foundation for a comment, but did not receive a reply.
Devon and Cornwall Police said: “Devon & Cornwall Police received three reports into child sexual abuse at a school in Devon in 2014, 2020 and 2021.
“Numerous enquiries were carried out into those cases, including a media appeal for further information, however, due to a lack of information and evidence at the time, the cases were filed.
“We take all reports of child sexual abuse extremely seriously, no matter how much time has passed and would urge anyone who has been a victim to contact us.”
Children of the Cult is broadcast on ITV on Sunday October 13 at 10:15pm
Inside the most infamous cults in the world...
The NXIVM Cult – Pronounced “nexium,” this New York cult, led by Keith Raniere, claimed to be a self-help group. However, women and girls as young as 15 were emotionally and sexually abused, trafficked and subjected to forced labour, and referred to as sex slaves. They were also permanently branded with Raniere’s initials. Raniere is currently serving a 120-year sentence for sex trafficking and racketeering charges. He was also ordered to pay a $1,750,000 fine. His deputy Clare Bronfman was sentenced to seven years in prison.
Manson Family – Charles Manson predicted a violent race war, and planned to have his Manson Family hide out during this before emerging to take control when it was over. To help instigate this race war, Manson ordered his followers to carry out murders, intending them to be blamed on black people. In August 1968, family members repeatedly stabbed several people to death, including actress Sharon Tate. Manson and his cohorts were sentenced to death, but got life in prison. Manson died in prison in 2017.
Order of the Solar Temple – Joseph Di Mambro and Luc Jouret founded the Order of the Solar Temple in Geneva in 1984, with Jouret claiming to be both Christ and the reincarnation of one member of the 14th century order. In 1994, Di Mambro and Jouret said the end was near and in order to enter a higher spiritual plane, 53 members of the order committed suicide or were murdered in Canada and Switzerland. The buildings they owned were also set on fire after the deaths, and Di Mambro and Jouret’s remains were found. It was later revealed that Di Mambro had recently ordered the murder of an infant he believed to be the anti-Christ.
Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God – Founded by four ex-Roman Catholic priests, two ex-nuns and one ex-prostitute, MRTCG predicted the apocalypse would occur on Dec. 31, 1999. However, when the end of the world didn’t come that day, the leaders quickly altered their prediction to March 17, 2000. When the day arrived, police discovered an explosion and fire had killed hundreds of the group’s members. Although at first this was assumed to be a mass suicide, the evidence and subsequent uncovering of more bodies at other sites soon pointed to murder. It was never determined whether the leaders killed themselves or fled the country
Angel’s Landing – Led by Lou Castro, who claimed to be a “centuries-old angel” who could see the future and cure diseases. He convinced a lot of his followers that he had to have sex with young girls (usually their daughters) in order to remain alive. Over a period of seven years, six “accidental” deaths resulted in steep insurance payments – which funded the commune. Castro was arrested in 2010 and charged with multiple rape counts, first-degree murder, criminal sodomy, aggravated assault, and sexual exploitation of a child, among other charges. He was eventually convicted on all counts and sentenced to two life terms, with an additional 46 months added on.
