← Australian True Crime
Australian True Crime
Shortcut: Escaping a Cult Posing as a Yoga Movement - ATC International
00:13:57
Loading summary
Transcript28 lines
- [00:00]
A
This is Australian True Crime International with Michelle Laurie. Twisted Yoga is a brand new short documentary series on Apple tv. It takes us into the world of Gregorian Bivalaru, who is the spiritual leader of an international tantric yoga movement and who was for many years one of Interpol's most wanted fugitives. Bivalaru is now in custody in France, thanks in part to our guest Ashley Freckleton. She joins us to talk about it. This is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation.
- [00:42]
B
Yes, I was living overseas and I was on a bit of a spiritual journey and I would really kind of think about it being a situation of vulnerability because I'd just moved overseas. I was 25, I was exploring my spirituality, my identity, what I believe in. I was in a new city going through a breakup, and I also really enjoyed yoga. And I was just looking for a really good yoga practice to start with. I wasn't looking for a spiritual yoga school. And then I got linked in with my brother's friends and they'd found this amazing spiritual yoga school that was going to change my life. And it just snowballed from there. So I was living in the UK and the online branch that I first joined is called Atman Yoga Federation. Then I eventually joined the London branch, which is Tara Yoga center. And they go by a whole list of different names depending on where you are in the world.
- [01:39]
A
When did you become aware of this individual who was the sort of the spiritual leader of the yoga group that you had joined?
- [01:48]
B
I became aware of him fairly early. I was doing the online classes and I was talking to this friend that had kind of drawn me into the school. And he was based in Romania at the time and we were talking online and he started to talk about his spiritual master or his spiritual guide. And then he sent me links and gave me his name, which is Gregorian Bibularu. And it immediately raised red flags for me because he said, he's in hiding, he's wanted by Interpol. But you know, look what happened to Jesus.
- [02:18]
A
Were you aware that there came a point for women in this group to be able to go and meet him and spend time with him and get sort of one on one time with him?
- [02:27]
B
So certainly not initially that was something that came into my awareness later on and it didn't all happen at once. It was more of an inkling or a suspicion, and then it just became more and more clear as time went On. But my initial suspicions, when I did some reading up on him online, I sort of wondered about it. And then I spoke to a friend who had nothing to do with the school. She was completely external of the school, studying psychology, really valued her opinion. And I said, does this look strange sus. Suspicious to you? What do you think? And she looked it up and she goes, oh, it kind of looks like a human rights issue. It looks like he was persecuted. It all kind of, you know, seems okay to me. And I was like, yeah, good, okay. I'm just being paranoid. Everything's fine. And there were smart people around me in the school. The people in the school were not stupid. I mean, one of my tantra teachers that I really looked up to was a psychiatrist working in the nhs. So I went to Romania for this one month camp and ended up getting into this secret women's ashram while I was there. So there's a men's one, there's a women's one. That kind of catapulted me towards the center very quickly. I was a bit of an anomaly in that sense. Most of the women that were there had been there for a really long time. And if they hadn't been there for a really long time, they'd been there for a couple of years at least.
- [03:41]
A
I guess my question is, you know, are you, are there scouts at this event? Are there people who are looking for young women that the leader might like to meet?
- [03:51]
B
I can't say with certainty because I think it's very different across different countries and different schools. In a sense, yes. I believe I have observed that phenomena happening in other areas. I've seen that there are women who are high up in the school, they're in the position of being a teacher, and they're observing women that are showing promise and also happen to be young and attractive and beautiful. And those are the women that are then given a lot of tension and given a lot of love bombing and brought into the inner circle and given invitations for certain opportunities. And it's just, it's a process of grooming. And I don't think it comes from a place of malicious intent. These women actually think that they're doing a service to others. They think that this is a blessing. They are themselves victims at a certain point. And then it's a really gray area of when they go from being a victim to a perpetrator. And I think some, some women are really clear victims. And then some women really do go on to be perpetrators in their own right. And I think they are running the operation, they're quite aware of what's happening, but again, they're still justifying it to themselves under this spiritual premise. So when you go into the ashram, they take all of the photos and videos of you naked.
- [05:11]
A
What's the justification for that on the day?
- [05:14]
B
They say it's to read your aura.
- [05:16]
A
Okay.
- [05:17]
B
If you have an issue with it, they have all these writings about nudity and the human body and celebrating the human body. And if you have an issue with it, that's your problem and that's your spiritual test to overcome.
- [05:27]
A
And as you said, they make it clear from the beginning they're teaching tantric yoga, which to most of us, we think about tantric sex. We. Even if you know nothing about yoga or sex for that matter, you've heard of the tantra and it's, you know, it's kind of related to Sting and his wife having sex for three days. It's about a spiritualization of sex.
- [05:47]
B
When I went to Romania, I was only doing the yoga, I wasn't doing the tantra classes. And it became very clear to me that most of the people in the school were there for the tantra. And it's marketed to you as not being about sex. And they say everyone thinks tantra is about sex. It's not about sex. It's about love and living from the heart. And that was what made me feel comfortable enough to open my myself up to it a little bit more because it seemed less taboo.
- [06:09]
A
And it's about a higher level of consciousness, isn't it? It's about like, well, you can just come and do yoga if you want, but if you want to get more out of this and, you know, learn more and become more highly evolved, do the tantra side, I would imagine.
- [06:22]
B
Yeah. And once you're on a spiritual path, you. You're taught to, in this situation, in a very dangerous situation, to question yourself rather than questioning the situation. And so any kind of boundary that you put up is your own limitation. And any reservations or doubts that you have are your own demons and your own spiritual tests to overcome. I got there and I walk up the stairs and there's just these two girls cuddling on the couch and just hardcore graphic porn on the big screen tv. I'm not sure whether that was one of the kind of compulsory watching videos or whether that was their choice because they just thought, let's watch it because it will be a nice thing to do to look at this woman's energy and her shamelessness. There was a lot of talk about shamelessness. So it might have been a choice, but it also might have been part of the required watching. So there was a long list of DVDs that we were required to watch as part of our training and a lot of them were porn. Some of them were sort of these weird sexualized tantric movies. One of them was a pretty awful scene of these Portuguese women in an empty swimming pool just all peeing in each other. Yeah, sorry. You know, I won't go into detail, I won't be graphic about it, but it was just really graphic, really awful, uncomfortable watching. And when I told people what I'd watched, I said, oh yeah, I had to watch, you know, the one called Pissing Competition. And they said, ah, yeah, this one is really challenging.
- [07:57]
A
So when did you get to meet the man?
- [08:00]
B
I didn't meet him. I'm so lucky I didn't meet him. I got out. Took about 24 hours of negotiation though, to get out. They wouldn't just release me because I was in a foreign country, I didn't speak the language. I'd been blindfolded on my way to the house, so I didn't know where I was and they had all of my belongings.
- [08:19]
A
Why did you choose to leave? Did you. There was a looming meeting, I'm assuming. Did you realise. Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna have to go through an initiation with this. Who is in actual fact a sort of, what, in his 60s? Romanian dude in his 60s or something? Like he's not the 70s. 70s. Okay, so he's not the kind of man that a beautiful 22 year old girl is normally going to be looking to have sex with, frankly. And so. Okay, so you knew that this training process was building up to that and you decided to bail.
- [08:48]
B
Yeah, well, it was becoming really clear to me that that was very likely going to happen. Even though they said to me, no, he will never make you do anything that you don't want to do, he would never do to you. And what really stuck with me was this woman that I met and I was talking to her and I said, how was it, you know, she'd just come back from seeing him for the second time? And she said, oh yeah, you know, I, I was, the first time I came to see him I was crying, I was sitting in front of him and I said, this is crazy, I don't want to do this. I have a boyfriend, he doesn't know I'm here. And basically he wore her down. And then she came back, so she got invited back and she Said, oh, yeah, same thing again. You know, I was sitting in front of him, I was crying. I was saying, I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this. And he said, why not? We've already done it before. Why wouldn't you do it again? And he wore her down. And then she said. And then, you know, I don't know why I said this to him, but, you know, I told him I didn't want to go back a third time, and he got really mad at me, and I got, you know, like a bad feeling, like he was angry at me for that, and I don't know why I said that. And she was shaming herself, and I just couldn't help but think I would be her. I was like, I would be sitting on the floor crying. I would be saying, I didn't want to do this. And as much as these women are telling me he would never make me do something I didn't want to do, that's exactly what he did to her. And I was just terrified of this. You know, I felt like my brain had been split in two, and I was really scared of what brainwashed Ashley would do.
- [10:11]
A
How bad did it get when girls did say no? From what you've seen, the research that you've done, the women that you've met,
- [10:18]
B
there is a lot of rage. He yells, he rants, he bellows. I've heard of sort of physical intimidation, restraint of sorts, and, yeah, violence in that respect. He really yells and yells and yells and screams, and then will go out and publicly do it in front of everyone else as well.
- [10:40]
A
There's a great moment in the documentary, and you talk about realizing, having a moment where you thought, I want to do something about this. But how? And where, if you have been trafficked internationally, who do you call?
- [10:54]
B
That's a good question. You know, I didn't know who to call and. And I tried multiple avenues before I finally felt like we were heard and we got linked in with the relevant authorities that actually could help us. Like, the first thing I did was, was lodge a complaint with Crime Stoppers International, because he was. Or maybe it was through Interpol, you know, because he was wanted at the time. And the other thing I did was contact the Royal Charity Commission in the uk, because they're a registered charity and they get all sorts of benefits for that as well as credibility, you know. Oh, they're registered charity. Well, you know, they must be. All right. There was this man in France who's in the docu series he, for whatever reason, was, Was invested in this case already and he suspected that he might be in hiding in France because that's where he'd previously been hiding. But he'd never had any tangible evidence or any testimony since his previous escape into hiding. That. That's where he was then he was able to. He's connected to the French police or he had a contact within the French police. And then he started to collect testimonies and forwarded them onto the police, which linked us in with Khaimard, which is the coolest thing that actually exists in France. It's. It's a. It's a police unit that specifically specializes in cult organizations and cult abuse. So abuse by abuse within a cultic organization. They would. They took our testimonies and it was several months after the testimonies that the arrests were made. And I think that is a reflection of just how big the case was and just how much they wanted to make sure that they got it right because they didn't want to, you know, arrest him without a strong enough case because then he might just get away again. So it took a really long time.
- [12:38]
A
He is still in custody in France. Do you know, has anyone spoken to you about possible outcomes in terms of sentencing and things like that?
- [12:47]
B
My assumption is that he won't be getting out of jail. Well, my hope is that, you know, he will. He will remain in custody until the end of his days, but I can't say for sure what, what will happen. But that's, you know, I like, that's what I believe will happen. I can't see him getting out. I just. And I really hope he doesn't.
- [13:10]
A
If you need support after listening to this podcast, you can call Lifeline on 131114 or contact 1-800-Respect on 1-800-737-732 or 1-800-Respect. Indigenous Australians can contact 13Yarn on 139276 or 13yarn.org au.
- [13:41]
B
The producers of this podcast recognise the traditional owners of the land on which it's recorded. They pay respect to the Aboriginal elders past, present and those emerging.