Sathya Sai Organisation Deception - revealing documentation by Dr. John Hislop

SATHYA SAI ORGANISATION COVER UP OF COVER-UP
('JACK HISLOP' LETTERS)
ON THE MAJOR SEX REVELATIONS ABOUT SATHYA SAI BABA IN THE SAI ORGANISATION AROUND 1980/2

The infamous cover-up by Dr. John Hislop of letters of complaint about sexual abuses by Sathya Sai Baba
These are scans of the letters as received in photostat form (but signed) as annotated by Timothy Conway PhD. He has sworn an affidavit that these are genuine,
and that the 'cleaned up' copies of them originally posted by ExBaba.com also are the same as the originals in content. His formal statement on this issue is found below (here)

Letter 1 Jan. 18 1981 To Directors (SSO)
Letter 2 Feb 21 1981 To Directors (SSO)
Letter 3 Feb 21 1981 to Terry Scott and Mrs. Payne
Letter 4a & page 2 4b Mar 25 1981To Directors

A glaring example of how the Sathya Sai Organisation suppresses freedom of speech and accountability through secret top-down decisions and destruction of evidence is clearly demonstrated by a number of letters from its US leader in 1981, Dr. John (aka 'Jack') Hislop. This has been continued and even strengthened under the present International Chairman and US leader, Dr. Michael Goldstein, as thoroughly exposed by BBC TV in the documentary 'The Secret Swami'.

The final letter by Dr. John Hislop - in the scanned version below - cuts off further contact with the Payne family by rejecting totally - and without speaking to any of them - the credibility of their son's account of sexual abuse by Sathya Sai Baba. This letter casts permanent shame on Dr. Hislop's memory for not even having the decency or personal courage to hear on the telephone anything more about the events. Not that this was an isolated case... as Hislop wrote, it is but one of a series of sexual abuse allegations made against Sai Baba and sent to him, as head of the US organisation!

One other person who told Hislop of being homosexually abused (well before 1980) when a young man by Sai Baba was Mr. Mark Roche, who was with Hislop and the Cowans in a dozen interviews with Sai Baba. This was the time when Sai Baba falsely claimed to have resurrected Mr. Walter Cowan from death. I spend several weeks together with Mark Roche in 1994 and know him to be a very intelligent and decent person of balanced mind and deeply-rooted human values. He has bravely stood forth and given his evidence of being sexually abused by Sathya Sai Baba on the BBC documentary ("The Secret Swami"). He has also stated he knew that the Cowan 'resurrection' never took place, as also the persistent and thorough investigations of this issue by Dr. Erlendur Haraldsson have definitively proven (see 'Modern Miracles' by Erlendur Haraldsson. Hastings House. N.Y. - Revised edition, 1997). It may be that 'dead men tell no tales', but when one has been a prominent recruiters to what has become a major cult, and has set a dangerous precedent for denying accountability or protection to members against sexual abuse and even worse crimes, the legacy they leave behind them is necessarily open to examination in the public interest and must be examined and shown for what it is.

After such a reply to the Paynes, Hislop ends "With kindest regards to yourself, wife and son." This kind of blatant hypocrisy is typical to and common in the Sai movement, and is documented in many religious sects and cults. Always speaks as if one were kind and nice. (whatever one's heart harbours). This is SB's command. Those who do not follow it are said to be evil, even demons. (More shameful is that SSB often breaks his rule himself, both in his ranting discourses - identifying people as demons - and making harsh comments at various persons' expense in interviews).
The reference to 'Richard' in one letter, is to Richard Kaplowitz, a long-term US resident at Prashanthi Nilayam (with his wife Michelle Kaplowitz) and former instructor at the Sai Baba college there. [Note: A relative of theirs, Lori Kaplowitz, did resign from a leadership position in the Sathya Sai Organization - see here].

We can see from Hislop's total disbelief and hurtful rejection of trustworthy persons well known to him how troubled he was by the matter, which would not go away. "How I wish this whole matter would drop lifeless and never breathe again!" is Hislop's virtual prayer in the above letter. But the matter remains as an indelible stain on the reputation of both Sai Baba and Hislop. Hislop gives his game away with "I can never believe any story from anywhere which accuses Sri Baba..." In short, Hislop makes no effort to conceal how wholly prejudiced he is on the matter and makes clear almost proudly that he bases his views on belief, i.e. not investigated fact. The matter will never go away now, and doubtless as time goes by the full truth will become known, when sexually abused students become stronger and mature The many students who are widely reported by numerous Westerners who have spoken to them to have been abused sexually by Sathya Sai Baba will eventually have the maturity, strength, security and political power to speak out freely without fear of being persecuted or murdered (as were four young men in Sai Baba's bedroom in 1993, and the investigation was quashed!). Hislop's suggestion that Dr. Samuel Sandweiss be asked to 'describe escape mechanisms' is like letting a prosecutor masquerade to a prisoner as his defense attorney... Sandweiss has fully exposed himself as the most partisan and fully self-brainwashed Sai follower as can be, a believer in denial with a cognitive disorder built up over decades and which he cannot transcend. But then Hislop was in the same boat.

Dr. John Hislop was revered by many people in the Sai movement - still most likely is, and mainly because of his being often able to meet Sathya Sai Baba at length, which is perceived by believers to be a sign of blessedness. (Yet David Bailey also had a hundred interviews and Conny Larsson around fifty! Then there was the defector Dr. Naresh Bhatia too with hundreds of interviews). Hislop's accounts of his experiences and his questions to Baba in recorded interviews illustrate a person who accepts everything uttered by Sai Baba as deep wisdom and/or a spiritual test. More likely he was tested as to the extent of his gullibility and hence continued usefulness to Sai Baba as a cover-up agent. He passed that test for certain! He believed fully when Baba told him that saris rejected by 'Baba' actually shed tears. Just as credulously, he was enthused when Sai Baba 'transformed' two common crossed twigs and said he had thus 'found' for him a piece of the actual wood of Christ's cross [and we all accepted that] - but subsequently experts have studied a macro-photo of the item and concluded that the small crucifix has all the signs of being just one of a mass-produced artifact often sold in the past as a Christian necklace, not least in India. These are but two indications of Hislop's constant unbridled acceptance of absolutely anything he was told by his 'God Incarnate', and it goes a long way to explain his rejection and actual vilification of people who had other experiences of SSB. Hislop doubtless felt some regret about the Payne family's situation, but more so for the reputation of 'his Baba' than the Paynes, whom he tried to influence against going public by painting a grim picture of the consequences for them. We need not doubt that Hislop's final 'advice' to them was heartfelt; it was a good try at silencing them.

If anyone should still believe that Dr. John Hislop was not fully informed about Sai Baba's oral sex, consider yet another account by my friend, Conny Larsson, the famous Swedish actor and author, as posted on ExBaba. Here is an excerpt:

"Since he heard my story with Sai Baba he told me that he was that particular Dr.Hislop that Maharishi sent the letter to 10 years earlier and we fell in arms of each other praising the Lord Sai's skill in planning his mission for us for so long. This was what we believed. After the sharing meeting for the devotees he asked me to stay with him and then he asked me why Sai Baba had so many interviews with me. And since I was thinking that everything Sai Baba was doing with me was divine, I told him the Whole story about the sex we had that was on his (Sai Baba's) own wishes, not mine, both oiling, masturbation, and oral sex etc. I saw in his eyes he was shocked, and he also told me that this was something he had to talk to Sai Baba about. When we left each other, he was shocked and what had I unknowingly caused in him? Since I thought it to be divine and was thinking that I had done no wrong by telling him.
It took one day for Dr. Hislop to get himself invited for lunch together with Sai Baba. Out he came on his feet faster then ever since he had brought up this question with Sai Baba about his sexual interest in me. We all know Dr. Hislop as a sincere seeker who wasn't going to stop his investigation. And he certainly didn't. Once more he talked to me about it and then he told me, that when he brought up the question with Sai Baba, Baba had answered him "This is not for you, you don't understand the divine". When he asked Sai Baba further, he was thrown out from the room and asked to leave. Sai Baba had been very upset with him he told me.
Since I now had childlike shared all my experience with Dr. Hislop around Sai Baba's sexual play with me, it was absolutely clear to him what was going on. He even asked me if I enjoyed it myself. I told him "NO this was Sai Baba's acts not mine". He asked me if I ever had felt any improvement in my life force or Kundalini and I told him "No".. Sai Baba wanted to do this with me and I let it happen because he was my God. At that moment I had never questioned this God. We never came to talk about this anymore and we left Puttaparthi."

Formal statement provided to ExBaba by Dr. Timothy Conway Ph. D. concerning the Hislop letters.

"The authenticity of the four letters written by Dr. John Hislop has been wrongly contested by a person who has no knowledge of the true state of affairs. There were three memos from Hislop to the Directors, one of which was 2 pages long (front and back of a piece of paper). Then there was a letter to the Paynes, dated the same day as Hislop's second memo to Directors (namely, 2-21-81). It was Dr. John Hislop's custom during the early and mid-1980s (if not earlier as well) to type out monthly or nearly monthly memos on his typewriter and send Xerox copies to some 15-20 persons on his mailing list (Directors and Officers for the Sri Sathya Sai Baba Council of America).
The scans and transcripts of all the four Hislop letters posted on ExBaba are genuine copies of the contents of the original letters, which were handed over to me by the former President of the San Francisco Sathya Sai Centre after I had taken over from him. This applies to the 'cleaned-up' versions of the scans on the URLs listed below, apart from omissions of two minor words in one of the scans, which do not alter the veracity of the text in any way. I cannot find any other differences in text upon a fairly exhaustive comparing of my pages of the Hislop memos with those online. I have already provided a statement affirming all this on August 19, 2005, attested by a Public Notary in Santa Barbara County, to those exposé activists who are considering legal actions, to whom scans of these letters have again been provided."

Timothy Conway Ph.D.
____________________________

Further, view the original annotated versions of the letters from Hislop to the leader of the San Franscisco Sathya Sai Centre, John Prendergast.
(One scan was never cleaned-up or brightness/contrast adjusted)