BCIFV home > Media Releases > June 19, 2001

For Immediate Release: June 19, 2001
Contact: Penny Bain at (604) 669-7055 or (toll-free within Canada) 1-877-755-7055
pbain@bcifv.org
www.bcifv.org

Opinion:

Children of Hare Krishna provide a lesson for all parents
by Penny Bain and Lynne Melcombe
BC Institute Against Family Violence

Which of us who lived through the seventies doesn't remember the robes, flowers and chanting of the Hare Krishna? At a time when people longed for less war and more peace, less hate and more love, there they were, in shopping malls and airports and on city streets, promising exactly that. And thousands of young people believed them, believed that they could find what they sought by subjugating their own needs - and later, their children's - to the demands of the group.

Yet three decades later, the Hare Krishna are being sued for $600 million by children born and raised by them, children now grown who allege that they suffered physical, sexual and emotional abuse at the hands of the well-known sect. They allege that their suffering occurred both because the movement's leaders directed it and because their own parents went along with it.

Unfortunately, their story is all too familiar; only the characters and setting make it different. The story goes like this: Some adult, or group of adults, decides that some pursuit is so worthwhile in adult life that it can only be beneficial to introduce it to children early in their lives. This way, by the time they reach adulthood it will be second nature to them and they will experience its benefits more deeply than those less fortunate than themselves and will be happier, better people for it.

But somewhere along the way, something goes wrong. It doesn't go wrong suddenly, but in gradual increments, which is why no one notices until things have gotten so far out of hand that serious damage has been done.

A lifestyle or activity that was introduced to children in their own best interest has become abusive. Something that should have been used as a tool to help children attain the goal of becoming rounded, stable, balanced adults has instead become the goal - and the children whose lives it was intended to enhance have become nothing more than tools to be used, damaged and discarded in the attainment of that goal.

The problem is that whenever the best interests of children are made secondary to other goals, and the children themselves are made instruments in achieving those goals, no goals are served.

It would be easy to suggest that the moral of this story should be "Avoid religious fanaticism," but that wouldn't be enough. Because the real moral of this story is not only what happens when children's interests are subjugated to the goals of fanatical religious groups (whether they are new or old) but what happens when the goal of raising children well is subjugated to any other goal.

It seems to be a phenomenon of child-rearing for adults to lose sight of the need to use activities and lifestyles to serve the needs of children rather than the other way around.

It happens in children's sports, when adults become so obsessed with whatever game their children are playing that referees - still kids themselves - who have had enough of being verbally abused by players' parents that they go on strike, as occurred in Nanaimo last year.

It happens in academics, when adults measure learning only by grades, ignoring other markers of development; and teachers become so focused on force-feeding knowledge into children that they duct tape their heads, hands or feet to their desks, as was reported in Port Alberni last year and more recently in northern Saskatchewan.

It happens in the arts when children are required to learn classical ballet instead of hip-hop, violin instead of drums or Bach instead of the Beastie Boys, as happens every day in every community in the country.

The irony is that most pursuits - if introduced in age-appropriate ways, used as tools to assist in child development and replaced with other activities if they prove to be a poor fit for a particular child's interests and aptitudes - can and do help kids grow up to fulfill their potential.

In fact, the Minneapolis-based Search Institute, an organization devoted to research of benefit to children and youth, has compiled a list of 40 "assets" that contribute to successful child development. Included among these are active participation in schooling, sports, the arts, community groups, religious activities and so on.

Yet it's clear that when adults lose perspective and allow anything that should be an asset in a child's life to be accorded such importance that it overshadows all else - such importance that anything that serves the activity, rather than the child, will be tolerated and even embraced - the consequences can be lasting and devastating.

There is a lesson to be learned from the abused children of Hare Krishna, and it goes far beyond the consequences of involving children in upstart religious movements. It is a much broader lesson about the harm that can come to children involved in any lifestyle or activity when the adults responsible for them instigate or comply with conditions that place more value on the activity than the children involved in it.

We would all be well advised to learn that lesson, no matter what activities our children are involved in. It's in their best interests that we do.

Penny Bain is executive director of the BC Institute Against Family Violence. Lynne Melcombe is a communications consultant. For more information, phone 669-7055, toll-free 1 877 755-7055 or visit www.bcifv.org.