2023-10-20 21:22:49
He has been operating with complete impunity for around twenty years on a vast estate in the Vercors. The director of a yoga school in a village in Isère, arrested Wednesday as part of an investigation for “sexual assault and abuse of weakness in a context of sectarian excesses”, was indicted on Friday and placed under judicial supervision, announced the Grenoble public prosecutor’s office.
Jean-Louis Astoul is director of a kundalini yoga school, a branch of this discipline. Returned at the end of his police custody, this 73-year-old man is being prosecuted for “sexual assault” but also for “concealed work” within his center. On the other hand, he was placed “under the status of assisted witness” for the abuse of weakness, specifies the public prosecutor Éric Vaillant in a press release.
Personal guidance sessions
The head of the Kundalini yoga school in Saint-Michel-les-Portes (less than 300 inhabitants), was placed under judicial supervision “in accordance with the requisitions of the public prosecutor’s office with obligations not to come into contact with the victims, to pay a deposit of 9,000 euros and to report regularly to the gendarmerie. His passport was taken away from him,” adds the magistrate.
His indictment follows the complaint of a young woman in August 2022, denouncing three sexual assaults committed between July 2020 and January 2022. Four other victims “of similar acts committed during this period”, some of whom reside in Germany and the United Kingdom, have since been identified by investigators.
“Master Yogi would have taken advantage of personal guidance sessions to sexually touch young women at a time in their lives when they were psychologically vulnerable and in a state of astonishment,” further details prosecutor Vaillant. In addition, the investigations revealed a “use of hidden work through volunteers”, “interns at the center who decided to stay there for a certain time, paying rent and providing household services without remuneration, apart from the room and board (frugal).
24 hour fasts
The Amrit Nam Sarovar establishment, located in the small town of Saint-Michel-les-Portes (less than 300 inhabitants), in the south of Vercors (Isère), presents itself on its website as “a learning community” founded in the early 1980s and installed in 2000 below Mont Aiguille by a yoga teacher named Satyavrati yogi.
An “international” school, it states on its site that it constitutes “a global network”. It offers different products ranging from online courses, via the Zoom platform for just under 50 euros to one-week cures costing between 1,800 euros and 2,400 euros in order to “purify” yourself in the place called Martinet . More than 60,000 euros in cash were also found at the home of the school director during a search.
Many students testified to the magazine Monde. Behind this discipline of kundalini yoga, supposed to improve well-being, they bear witness to a very different reality. Some yoga sessions last “up to five hours at a time” with “very little food, trance states which can lead to discomfort”. 24-hour fasts are also offered.
Worse, the accusations of sexual assault. The victims recount scenes of kisses without consent or even touching. “He suggested that I lie down on a sheepskin in his office, where he joined me before stroking my chest and putting his hand between my legs, before I ran away,” says notably one of the victims at Le Monde.
Six to twelve victims were identified over a period of one year but their number is “potentially greater”, the system operating “since the creation of the center in the early 2000s”. The courses, provided “to several hundred people per year, are billed at around 1,500 euros, not including accommodation (between 25 euros and 130 euros per night)”.
The Miviludes (Interministerial Mission for Vigilance and the Fight against Sectarian Abuses) would have received several reports suggesting sectarian abuse. These were sent to the Grenoble public prosecutor’s office.
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