Original subtitles

The book, Yoni Shakti, I wrote between 2010 and 2012.

And Yoni Shakti is a women's guide to power and freedom,

through yoga and tantra.

It's about bringing people back into a respectful reconnection

with the rhythms of Earth and the vitality of life.

Om

I was interested to see who else is connecting to these practices.

And that is how I found out about the school in Denmark.

And I was, like, "That is interesting."

So I put a two-line reference, almost like a footnote.

And I didn't think anymore about it until 2020,

when I was contacted by a reader and she expressed horror.

Because she had been studying at that school,

and knew about the terrible things that had happened.

And then from that, I connected with other people

who'd had similar experiences.

So they all were saying the same kind of thing.

So, I found their website

and this little Danish yoga studio was actually part of this

Atman International Federation.

There are members across the world.

And when you look on each one, each one has got a different name.

In Romania, it's called MISA.

In Sweden, it's also called Natha Yoga.

So when you get to England… Tara.

So you wouldn't know that's anything to do with it.

And at this point I was, like,

"Oh… my… God.

It's everywhere."

It was my life.

Okay, this is ten years ago for me,

but there are still women going through this now.

They claimed that it was consensual,

and framed me as a liar.

Have you had sex with any of the followers of MISA?

I wanted to move, to leave from this position I was,

and he grabbed both my wrists

and put them on the bed. Like, "Be quiet."

Just felt like, "I gotta get outta here."

I couldn't take any more at that point.

He is…

portrayed as sexually obsessed.

This is what we see from the files.

Paris. Romania. Guru. Cult.

The testimony of Ashleigh.

He's the missing piece that I needed.

Just watch them squirm.

It started and ended…

with him.

July 2019, when I left Paris…

I guess I knew that there was sexual abuse happening, but I didn't…

at that point, piece together trafficking.

But I was just on this, kind of, constant reading rampage.

Becoming really, kind of, obsessed with understanding it more and more.

The school was still operating, everything was fine.

And I just knew that every single day more and more women

were going through those same experiences and being sent to Paris.

So Ashleigh got in contact with me

and basically revealed why she had left the school.

I was just, like, "The fuck is going on?"

So I confronted the main coordinators from Sweden,

and they're just, like, "It's all lies."

I think he, sort of, thought he could make some change from within,

and that perhaps people would understand and they could break free from Bivolaru

and continue all the good parts of the school.

And he wasn't able to recognize that Bivolaru was the school.

The response was,

"Our belief is so strong that we will do whatever it takes

and we will support him no matter what."

And in that moment I just felt, like, this shudder,

and this coldness come over me, and just thinking, like,

"That's the, sort of indoctrination that leads people to drink Kool-Aid.

That's their Jonestown, sort of, ideology of…

'You're so aligned with this individual

that you will do whatever it takes at whatever cost to protect him?'"

And I just got so scared, I thought, "Holy shit. These… They're gone."

So, it was around May, 2020,

that I first spoke out.

Hi, everyone, I'm Ashleigh, and I run the cult awareness page.

This is the first story I think that I'm…

There was a lot of fear of being judged or misunderstood.

At the time there was so much fear in me

and I was still trying to understand what had happened

and I still wasn't sure where I sat and how I felt about it.

And I was, kind of, oscillating between

being really certain that something was wrong, and that I'd left a cult.

And then also at other times wondering if I was wrong to leave,

and that perhaps I'd fallen off a spiritual path.

But I just, kind of, had this need that I needed…

I just needed to say something.

Ask the teachers. Actually ask them,

"Are you sending women to be initiated by the guru?

Is that happening?"

Just watch them squirm. They'll either deny it…

I thought that I would feel really silly

if I just went to my local police station, and said,

"Hey, I had this experience in France. Can you help me?"

I just felt really silly. I didn't know where to go.

So when I first heard about the experience of the people

in the first school, in Scandinavia,

they put me in touch with Ashleigh, Ashleigh Freckleton.

And what she sent me…

I've never forgotten it. I received it here.

I remember it coming through on the email, and it was her testimony.

"The photo was taken the night before I was trafficked to a foreign country

for want of a better of a word, a cult."

People don't show up at yoga classes,

'cause, you know, they wanna do bad in the world.

They're, like, looking for self-improvement.

To be a better human, to… That's why she's there.

And there she is in the middle of London looking like, really vibrant young woman,

who's totally destroyed by this experience.

It's just wickedness to do that, isn't it?

Uma wanted to publish my testimony anonymously in the book.

That was the first time I felt like she gave a voice.

Sort of, on a larger scale. But then they came after her.

In April of 2021, I got a letter of claim, a legal letter.

It basically says that all the allegations that I've made are,

"false, defamatory, severe."

And it's going to cause their client, "Loss of potential students.

Serious financial losses." Is their main concern.

Initially, I think I felt disbelief,

and then I was just terrified.

They want me to tell them,

"the identity and whereabouts of all the parties who provided me

with the information for you to make the defamatory allegations."

They wanna go after the survivors. That's what this is about, isn't it?

The whole process ended up with me going to court three times,

and it took about two years to complete.

And in the end, the judge decided that they had been out of time,

and that there were so many procedural errors

that I won the court… to get it thrown out of court,

and it couldn't go any further.

It was a disaster.

Financially disastrous, yeah.

But I kept thinking, you know?

The stress I was under was nothing compared to the deep suffering

that those young women had gone through.

What I felt was a kind of sickening sense

that these really, essentially good teachings

had been twisted up to serve…

the greed for power…

of the person who was in charge, who was teaching them.

People didn't really speak about him as a human being,

more of a spiritual being.

We were really encouraged to look at him

as somebody who was enlightened and elevated

and whatever he taught was the truth.

Almost as if he was Jesus.

I knew that the school had originated in Romania.

And I was told,

"Don't bother looking him up because there's

this long history with Romania and religious persecution.

And he started teaching yoga when it was illegal.

And he's been persecuted, and demonized by the Romanian authorities.

And that's all that you'll find.

So, don't bother."

This is a neighborhood in the outskirts of Bucharest.

It's called Ferentari.

And this is known because the houses

that are used as ashrams by the group, MISA,

most of them were around these streets.

You can see there are no windows or very small windows,

very high fences.

Many of them have very large satellite antennas.

And in 2004,

police got information that there was much more going on

inside these houses than some normal yoga classes.

Back then, I was the case prosecutor assigned to handle

the investigation into Bivolaru.

The police had received a lot of complaints coming from parents,

who told the authorities that their children were missing

because they had joined this movement, MISA.

They were concerned that their children

all of a sudden were part of a movement, part of a cult

and ended up breaking away from the family

without a very clear explanation.

Besides the fact that a lot of minors

were believed to live in those ashrams,

the police told the media that they had information

that there might be human trafficking going on.

That there might be organized crime activities.

There were some surprises once we got inside.

I was expecting to encounter people from the criminal underworld.

Some big muscular guys.

But no.

The women responded with silence to every question.

I didn't feel that they were free.

I can honestly say I was shocked.

There were about 20 beds.

Fifteen of them, if not more, had, at the end of each bed,

a picture of Bivolaru.

I was born in Transylvania, a magical place.

I got into yoga through people my mother knew,

who were seeking spirituality.

It was a more alluring world

that Romanians didn't have access to before,

because under Communism there was a more closed mentality,

and we didn't have access to such information.

After Communism, people needed something to cling onto,

something to believe in.

To put their hopes, their illusions in someone else.

I was about 11 or 12 when my mum started attending classes.

I wanted to attend, I was curious.

It was so captivating to discover that there was this spiritual guru,

who had created this school of yoga.

Someone with the answers to all of our questions.

Simply finding myself there, close to the great master,

it felt sacred to experience something so intimate.

The girls saw Grieg as the supreme being Shiva,

the symbol of masculinity and male energy.

As a 15-year old girl, I also began to see him as a god.

Even later, when the investigation started,

we were still indoctrinated with this idea

that those on the outside wanted to harm us.

That there was a conspiracy against us because we were too spiritual.

Right after the raids that were taking place,

MISA started building up a defense and organizing protests.

And then, exactly when all the heat was going on and all eyes were on MISA…

Gregorian Bivolaru decided to appear

on this very popular TV show, Marius Tucă…

just a few days after the raids had happened.

Good evening.

I would like to say from the very beginning

that I am not the leader of MISA,

but merely the mentor of this movement.

Why are you called Guru?

I am only called a guru by the press and those who seek to discredit me.

I have always considered myself

to be the yoga teacher, Gregorian Bivolaru.

Have you had sex with any of the followers of MISA?

I never have sex with anyone,

because having sex is something degrading.

Have you made love to any of the followers of MISA?

Did I make love? Yes, I did make love.

Not sexually degrading, but natural loving relationships,

as we all know them, based on love and mutual respect.

I was initiated at the beginning of 2000.

I was a virgin.

I won't go into too much detail

but it wasn't very special.

I didn't feel any pleasure, quite the contrary.

I remember that the bed was full of blood, but he wasn't upset.

I remember that tears were running down my face.

I was 15 years and 6 months old.

Everything is manifested, everything is harmony.

God is the supreme creator of all that exists.

We must come to know Him as deeply as possible

through the practice of yoga, in order to reach the divine state.

He had a certain charisma.

But it was not a physical charisma. He was never an attractive man.

We constantly transfigured him and put him on a pedestal.

Okay, I'm going to do this for everyone who follows me, for one minute.

I will create a state of happiness

for those who are open to receiving it.

Through my connection to infinite spheres of beneficial force

that exist in the macrocosm.

So, I will begin now.

He said that he's going to, kind of, transmit a state of absolute happiness,

to the viewers who are open to believing in his philosophy.

We burst out laughing when we saw this.

You would start to wonder if that man is okay from a mental point of view.

I've been involved in fighting

against types of movements and cults for many years.

So that's how I became to be interested in MISA.

I wanted to understand the modus operandi.

What was going on with MISA in France.

And I started to read and to slowly investigate.

It was something very well organized and always the same.

So they organized a, kind of, strategy

where they ask women from everywhere around the world,

except from France,

to come to France for initiation

to improve their personal development and so on.

After that they go back to their original country.

And when you are 1,000 km away, what can you do? Just nothing.

It's difficult to accept

that somebody is completely under the control of someone else.

First of all, you absolutely need to have testimonies from the victims.

And it was a, kind of, protection for Bivolaru

to not have complaints in France from French victims.

I had reported to the Royal Charity Commission in the UK.

Nothing had come of that.

Like, I put something on Crime Stoppers International.

And I followed that up, maybe once or twice,

and it never came to fruition. No one ever got back to me,

no one ever seemed to want to take my testimony.

I put some alerts on my computer.

Paris. Romania. Guru. Cult.

And I quickly found

this article in an Australian newspaper.

Paris. Romania. Guru. Cult.

The testimony of Ashleigh.

"Hello, Ashleigh,

allow me to introduce myself…"

It actually is… Yeah, it's pretty wild, because from where I was sitting

at that point he was just some random guy in France.

And yet,

he's the missing piece that I needed to connect in with the foreign police.

So I was in touch with Ashleigh, and transmitted this testimony

to the department of police

in charge of what is going on in terms of cults in France.

We knew there were some problems

with this movement, but before 2021

we hadn't really started investigating.

The crucial first step, is to hear from the victims.

Caimades, which is a very specialized anti-cult unit,

did reach out and said that they wanted to receive my testimony verbally.

Then they asked me if I wanted to make a formal complaint.

And I said yes.

We realized there was a clear possibility

that Gregorian Bivolaru was on French soil.

But it was very delicate, because there was a risk

that Gregorian Bivolaru would escape.

And with the network he had in place, he would have vanished.

Gregorian Bivolaru is on trial for five counts.

These include multiple sexual offenses

sexual corruption, trafficking of minors,

engaging in sexual relations with minors, and attempted illegal border crossings.

After the raids, Gregorian Bivolaru denied all of the charges.

What do you plan to do now? Will you try to hide?

No, I will not try to hide, I have no reason to hide.

But then a trial had begun, and he was nowhere to be found.

He didn't show up in court.

And the next thing we found out

was that Gregorian Bivolaru appears somewhere in Sweden.

Captured! Gregorian Bivolaru,

the most wanted Romanian in recent times, has been caught and detained in Sweden.

There had only been, like, 15 years

since the fall of the communist regime.

So MISA was using this argument that was still sensitive in Romania.

Saying that Romania is still a corrupt country,

is still a country where police use force.

Everything in order to convince

the Swedish authorities to refuse extradition request.

A body blow for the Romanian justice system.

Gregorian Bivolaru cannot be extradited.

That's what the Supreme Court of Justice in Stockholm ruled today.

Swedish judges feared that the spiritual leader of MISA

would be persecuted in Romania.

In 2004 he escaped Romania to go to Sweden.

So officially he was living in Sweden.

But there is evidence that since at least 2007,

he went to France and stayed in France.

Everything I did was very much connected with the school.

It was my life for quite a few years.

And then I started to date people outside of the school,

and met somebody and had a child, so my focus shifted.

I was quite disappointed, because there wasn't so much understanding,

that life with a small child requires huge amounts of dedication and energy.

And I felt very much left behind.

I was dedicating myself wholeheartedly to motherhood.

And a friend of mine called me and said,

"Look, you know, there are some things that I would like to share with you."

So my friend came one evening and sat on the sofa,

and began to give me accounts of women having really awful experiences.

For me, I went in because I wanted to.

Like, I really, really wanted it.

So I never felt that I had to do anything against my own will.

It was 100% my choice.

But at the same time,

there was a huge underlying pressure for a lot of people to do things

against themselves, and against their will and against their boundaries.

Because there wasn't really that safety

to say, "Actually I don't want to do this."

Webcams were quite a recent business

when I got to the core of MISA.

Officially, I wasn't allowed to do webcam work because I was underage.

But it was considered completely normal to make a few appearances

using other girls' passports.

As long as you looked similar you could do whatever.

That was when I understood the scale.

You saw that they had 40 ashrams.

Entire buildings were purchased, their HQ and hotels in Costinești.

I understood that all the prosperity of this "not for profit" organization

came from the websites and the webcams.

I signed a contract, they took a photo.

And they said one of the reasons why

this place is so special

is because the profit from the site goes to him.

Goes to Grieg.

In terms of our growth and our development in the school,

it started and ended with Grieg.

There were very many teachers in the school

who were incredibly intelligent and charismatic.

And all of them were just so devoted to this human being.

But anybody familiar with the yin and yang symbol,

we know that in each light there's always a speck of darkness.

Just like in each darkness there's always a speck of light.

I guess I made an assumption

that the speck of darkness in him was really small.

But from everything that's been uncovered,

maybe the speck of darkness is much bigger than what we assumed.

MISA and Gregorian Bivolaru

have always presented Bivolaru as both a victim and a hero.

That he has always been oppressed, attacked, harassed,

jailed, tortured, beaten…

by the hands of the former secret police of Romania.

It's called the Securitate.

During the communist regime we indeed lived

in a closed and totalitarian society. That is true.

But now, years after, we can actually look up in these files

and see what really happened.

The first mention…

of the Securitate surveilling Gregorian Bivolaru

dates back from 1971.

Back then Gregorian Bivolaru was 19 years old,

and he was in his last high school year.

They discover that he was in contact with foreign citizens

whom he was asking for pornographic materials,

such as, like, photos, magazines.

So we have one of those letters.

I think it was '72.

"I know a lot of things

about your sexual freedom in Sweden, and I want to obtain pictures."

"Do you want to send me sexy photos and sexy slides from Sweden?"

Another letter,

"I have a great sympathy for the German people,

and in your sexy photos

I can see the emancipated comprehension of the sexuality in Germany."

Later on, he was actually convicted to prison

because he owned and distributed pornographic materials.

He was not jailed because he was a yoga practitioner.

This is what we see from the files.

In the summer of 1989,

raids were organized by Securitate in several cities in Romania

to dismantle groups that were practicing yoga.

Yoga had been forbidden since 1982.

Bivolaru was leading such a group, so he was, again, detained.

But this time the Securitate decided that his place was not in a prison,

but in a psychiatric medical unit.

He is basically portrayed as…

sexually obsessed.

So in his own words, back from 1989,

he tells the Securitate agents

that, "One day somewhere in 1986 or 1987,

I met near my house a young 12-year-old brunette girl,

I think she was a gypsy.

And I asked this close friend of mine

to have intimate relations with the girl.

And afterwards to present her to me

in order for me to initiate her in sexual tantras."

This shows a potential interest

in very young women since so many, many years ago.

And also it goes on saying that Bivolaru, over the years,

has asked his women friends to recruit other women for him.

He was subject to psychiatric exam,

which says that he lacks the mental capacity

to assess his own actions, his own needs.

And then just a few months later…

the communist regime in Romania fell.

And soon after, special commission of this psychiatric unit

decided to release Gregorian Bivolaru.

And soon after that, in 1990

the group called MISA took birth.

So after Prague, I travelled back to the UK,

and I started to realize

how extremist the teachings and practices of the school were.

And there was this website that was made by people

who were enemies of the school.

We were told that it was demonic and it was better not to look at it.

So New Year's Eve, '21-'22, at home on my own, I did look at it…

and it was like a mirror.

It just confirmed what I was already feeling.

All of those moments of doubt

or incongruence, now made sense.

And this word "cult", that before

I hadn't been willing to accept.

I thought that it was a term that was used to denigrate

religion and spirituality and keep people away from it.

At that point, on that New Year's Eve,

I realized for the first time that I had to leave.

And I had to leave completely.

And I had to do something about it and I had to speak out.

And then it became really clear,

their true colors and what they were actually capable of.

So, they claimed that everything was consensual and framed me as a liar.

And people who I thought were my friends were

lying about me and saying, you know, how I'd fallen from the path.

It made me feel sad that that whole foundation of community,

which had been such an important part of me remaining in there for those years,

was completely inauthentic.

Wasn't a real community, those weren't real friendships.

And there was no opportunity for you to truly be yourself.

I got a phone call from my first relationship at the time, Paula.

Initially, she wasn't prepared to discuss any of it,

but she revealed everything and it was just…

the final confirmation that I realized, like, this was the last straw.

The fourth and last visit was in October of 2019.

I wanted to move, to kind of, leave from this position I was,

and he grabbed both my wrists and put them on the bed.

Like, "Be quiet." And then, eventually, a little bit more after that,

he didn't keep them, but he put them, you know, and then took his hands off.

And then a few minutes afterwards

I started crying so that he will just get off me.

And then he was screaming at me for, like, three hours.

Saying that I was never gonna be invited there again.

'Cause I didn't deserve it, 'cause I didn't love him.

Then after I left his room and I went to a room with the girls,

he came into the room and he continued saying horrible things to me.

Like, he just repeated everything he said in his room to me alone,

in front of the girls.

At that point I said, "I'm never again coming here."

I had a really clear, like, "This is just…

This is the opposite of what I ever thought it would be."

You know?

Like, this is super traumatic, like, it's not enjoyable at all.

Like, I'm being forced to pretend that I wanna do something I don't want to.

And I'm being humiliated because I don't want to. You know?

That was the straw that broke the camel's back.

I just… I couldn't take any more at that point.

Just felt like, "I gotta get outta here. I can't do this anymore."

This investigator from France contacted me.

So I did agree to give my testimony.

It's not easy for victims of cult crimes to testify.

These victims are under someone else's control.

This psychological control prevents them from considering themselves as victims.

They have to trust the investigators to tell us what happened.

They have to feel that we listen and understand.

I was contacted by this special unit.

And through the questioning techniques,

and the use of language of this French unit,

I could tell that they understood.

I gave them my testimony.

I just knew that that's what I had to do. There was no other choice for me.

By the time they spoke to me,

they'd already taken statements from a few others.

And I really felt that, "Okay, this is ten years ago for me,

but there are still women going through this now."

I mean, I knew that I was a victim of sex trafficking and rape,

and that was clear from, like, even the therapy that I'd done,

and some of the things that I had read until that point.

But it was something about having the police actually say it back to me,

after hearing all of my very personal details from multiple days,

having them say, "Yes, this is what happened.

And it's a very serious crime under French law,

and we will be absolutely pursuing this as far as we can."

At the right moment, with the magistrate's permission,

we launched a large scale operation.

We had almost 170 officers on the ground.

Right before the operation, we still had some doubts.

What were we going to find behind those doors,

behind which no one had ever managed to catch a glimpse?

175 police officers mobilized. 40 simultaneous arrests.

All linked to a sectarian yoga cult.

"Tantric yoga guru arrested

over accusations of sexual abuse and exploitation in France."

He is suspected of abusing dozens of women.

Just elated. I don't know. It's just… I don't…

Like, I honestly when Ziggy called me, I didn't really have…

I don't… I can't really find the words.

The guru lived in this small apartment near Paris

where he was arrested yesterday.

It just feels like the start of the reckoning

that we all wanted to see happen.

He would choose a certain number of women

from all over the world to be initiated.

Sexual initiation under the pretext of personal development.

At first I wasn't sure if it was real.

It was, like, just a lot of shock and awe, and gratitude, and relief.

Come in.

Suspected of being the head of a cult.

Accused of rape, human trafficking and organized crime.

We're not there yet. This is just the first step

in what will be a pretty lengthy process.

But at least we know he can't be doing this any longer.

At the time of the operation,

the charges against the movement were as follows:

Abuse of weakness using psychological control.

Human trafficking and rape.

Do you think he's a criminal guilty of those crimes?

Once I took my experiences

and the events that had happened to me out of the context of their dogma,

and applied it to the context of other normal people's reactions,

my own feelings and experiences, legal definitions,

then I understood that what had happened was trafficking and rape.

This a… Yes, in my system.

And also the story's complicated.

But ultimately the responsibility lies…

with him.

To me it was just like a bad experience until then.

And then talking to my therapist, she was like,

"You know, let's just put the name for the things that happened."

"When you were kidnapped…"

She started to use all of these words in therapy. It was really conflicting.

It was like, "I don't wanna hear that."

"That's not what happened."

And she was like… She really helped me

to start putting names on the things that really, like…

To really name properly the things that happened.

And then when I saw the charges that we were accusing him of,

and then it said "rape".

And then it was an explanation of what rape means for the French law.

Any type of sexual interaction that you had,

that was done through manipulation or coercion,

it's also called rape.

We don't have to talk a lot. We just have to read

after your declaration, to check that there are no mistakes…

I do worry about the fact that I ultimately resisted,

and I ultimately did say no.

And I left and I wasn't initiated.

I didn't endure the same horrors that others did.

Therefore is that an indication that their consent was valid,

because I was able to say no?

So this is the beginning of the shops on the Cowley Road.

So you can see the sign from here. You see it?

They're not going to say that this didn't happen,

they're going to say that everybody consented.

And therefore no crime occurred.

That's the whole debate in this case.

That is what the accused maintain: that everybody was free.

Every branch that was open when I left is still open.

They target students particularly.

So it's really upsetting to think that

a young impressionable person, but potentially anyone,

could just walk into that yoga studio and have a yoga class, just like I did.

Without knowing that it's connected to Bivolaru, and MISA and that man.

I can see, as a lawyer

dealing in these kind of cases,

that all of these women were under psychological control

when they experienced the acts they have reported.

What is illegal in France, is when you're part of a group

and through a certain number of conditioning techniques,

you are stripped of your free will.

I think that if it makes it to trial,

it certainly won't happen within the next year,

and possibly not for two or three years.

We wait.

We wait proactively.

We have a saying in France. I don't know if the translator will get this:

"We wait like soldiers, weapons by our side,

ready for action."

It's been crazy actually. You know.

I'm just still trying to make sense of it all.

Just finding myself again.

I miss the community, I miss the teaching.

I miss being so incredibly inspired.

And I've also learned that we can't just keep a gaze up to the light,

when we're standing in a pile of shit.

The time that I spent actually in there and working alongside

the other community members,

I still feel like there's a sense of accomplishment behind all of that.

I have often wondered what my life would be like

if I hadn't been in this organization for seven years.

Maybe I would have had children. I don't know.

Like, maybe I'd have been in a long term, monogamous relationship for that time.

It's just really hard to know what would have happened,

and how life would have been.

I think it's good to be curious about

why we're here in this incredible planet.

But life is hard. Life is painful. Life is confusing.

A lot of really horrible things happen,

and we don't have the explanation for why,

and maybe we're not supposed to.

Some of my childhood dreams were shattered

by this cult and this way of life.

I think it's our moral duty to take a stand. To have a voice

and to not let ourselves be intimidated.

We have no reason to be ashamed.

As I like to say in English,

Only if you lose your fear, you have the power to take their power.

I'm still trying to figure out

where I sit on the spiritual spectrum.

Good boy, Gill.

There is a sense of spirituality there, but I don't know

what I believe in anymore, and I'm still trying to make sense of that.

Since then, I realized that I have this really deep connection

with the spirituality, if we want to call it god, or the universe or source,

that I have such a deep experience that I don't need a guru.

I don't need anybody else. All of this exists within me.