CultNEWS101 Articles: 7/19/2024

[Patrick Ryan]

New Zealand, Legal Gloriavale, India, Kalia, Kidney Cult, Raelians, Switzerland, Yoga

The Post: Former Gloriavale members prepare to sue Government

Former Gloriavale “slaves” are preparing to sue the Crown for not protecting them at the closed community.

The case has yet to begin but the intended plaintiff wants details about an inter-departmental committee set up nine years ago to look at the remote community on the West Coast.

After a win in the Employment Court where six women raised at Gloriavale were found to have been employees, and not just working as part of their commitment to the Christian community, their lawyer Brian Henry was seeking information he said was needed to file documents to start the next case.

Associate Judge Andrew Skelton reserved his decision at the High Court in Wellington on Tuesday.

Henry said it was thought there would be about 46 former Gloriavale members to make the claim. They needed to identify public servants who were negligent and then they could sue. The aim was to make the Crown liable for the actions of the public servants.

The Crown had evidence that the first intended plaintiff, Anna Courage, and others who would join her were in slavery and that Gloriavale was a slave camp, Henry said."

India TV: Indian-origin cult guru 'Kalia', who called himself 'God on Earth' raped his devotees, UK court fines £8M

"An Indian-origin “guru”, who styles himself as the head priest of a religious society in England, is being sued for millions of pounds in the High Court in London this week over sexual assault allegations

brought by women who were his former “disciples”. Rajinder Kalia, 68, is the defendant in an ongoing trial accused of using his sermons and teachings, as well as the purported performance of “miracles”, to unduly influence followers' actions. The court has imposed a fine of 8 million pounds.

The claimants in the case, all of Indian origin, had won a previous legal fight two years ago after a judge allowed the case to proceed to trial. “There are triable issues to be determined in this case, with many of the factual issues being intertwined and subject to the claimants' cases as to the coercive control that the defendant (Kalia) exercised over them,” Judge Deputy Master Richard Grimshaw concluded in June 2022."

7 News Spotlight: The dark reality of the Kidney Cult

Liam Bartlett investigates Australia's most dangerous doomsday cult and how it is connected to the worst mass suicide since Jonestown. Praying on vulnerable Aussie teenagers, this cult encourages its followers to donate their kidneys for God.

AFP: Top rights court upholds Swiss ban on UFO group's posters

"Raelian movement founder Claude Vorilhon, also known as Rael, answers questions during a press conference in 2004. More than a decade after Swiss police barred a UFO religious group from putting up posters depicting aliens, Europe's top rights court ruled Friday the sect's free speech had not been violated.

More than a decade after Swiss police barred a UFO religious group from putting up posters depicting aliens, Europe's top rights court ruled Friday the sect's free speech had not been violated. Police in the Swiss canton of Neuchatel in 2001 banned the Raelian group, which claims aliens created life on earth, from putting up the posters.

The local ban came after other authorities in Switzerland had allowed the posters. Neuchatel officials said the posters presented a public order threat because Raelians promote human cloning and "geniocracy," a system where leaders are picked according to their intelligence.

Additionally, a Swiss court found the Raelians had "theoretically" advocated paedophilia and incest, the European Court of Human Rights said in a statement Friday. The group had also been the subject of criminal complaints about sexual practices involving children, the court said. Swiss high courts affirmed the ban and Europe's top rights court in January 2011 upheld the decision. The Raelians then appealed the Strasbourg-based court's decision, ultimately winning an appeal for the Grand Chamber to hear the case. The 17-member chamber ruled Friday, nine to eight, that the Raelians' freedom of expression was not violated."

RNS: New York City celebrates the 10th International Day of Yoga

In bustling Times Square, hundreds of yoga practitioners gathered to celebrate International Day of Yoga: an initiative from the UN that marks a decade this year.

“ ... 'It felt like we were turning this place of Times Square, which is usually full of a lot of passion, a lot of that rajas energy, into a big yoga playground,' said Hu, the lead yoga teacher at New York’s Bhakti Center, a spiritual community affiliated with the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.

Her voice booming across three stages in the crowded Times Square plaza, Hu, more commonly known by her initiated name Brinda Kumari Devi Dasi, led nearly 300 city residents to “connect your body, your breath, your mind,” sharing stories of Lord Shiva, “the first creative being who practiced all 8,400,000 yoga poses.”

Originally from Shanghai, Hu, who grew up atheist and moved to New York in 2012, says that before being introduced to Bhakti Yoga, a devotional form of yoga, she had “always been trying to search for the purpose of my life.” Sharing the ancient wisdom of the yogic philosophy, she believes, is the reason she is on this planet. 'It’s not just a physical workout class, but rather it’s a way of helping us to connect with our souls. It teaches (us) how to conduct ourselves in society, how to interrelate with each other, how to deal with our internal world, but also gives us the compass of how to really live our lives.'"

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