Shamanic treatment or an opportunity for ritual abuse? A lawsuit filed last week in New Mexico alleges that a “shamanic master” assaulted a woman during an “energy medicine” training session in March.
The allegations, which are currently being investigated, could shed further light on what some say is a darker side of some trends in contemporary spirituality, particularly the ritualistic use of powerful psychedelic drug therapies.
The New Mexico woman, identified in the lawsuit only by the initials MG, says she paid thousands of dollars to the Four Winds Society and the Chi Center to become a certified energy medicine practitioner to live an extraordinary life filled with health, purpose and inner guidance.
According to the complaint, first reported by the Santa Fe New Mexican, the woman scheduled an appointment with an unidentified Peruvian “wisdom keeper” and “shamanic teacher of energy training” to tell him she was sexually abused as a child, and the man said he understood her in Spanish.
But after instructing the woman to lie on a bed in his room at the Chi Center, the shaman used the healing sessions “for his own personal interest and gratification.” At least two other women have had similar experiences with the man, the lawsuit says.
When MG raised her concerns, a senior teacher at the center told her “what was done to her was not standard for a therapy session,” according to the lawsuit. The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office said the woman hadn’t completed a sexual assault nurse exam because she “had left the state and was waiting to call from California to report the incident.”
Sherman had by then left the United States, flying from Houston to Panama, but Santa Fe Sheriff Adan Mendoza said the criminal case was “challenging” because the defendant, Sherman, is from overseas.
Still, the accusations follow a series of allegations against spiritual leaders that some senior shamanistic practitioners may be involved in sexual abuse, a troubling trend previously associated primarily with more mainstream religious practices.
Last year, Georgia shaman Jeffrey Glatstein was accused of sexually assaulting staff and customers, including at least three women who said they were assaulted “under the pretense of his providing comfort and help.” He subsequently sued two former employees under the state’s SLAPP statute, but the case was later dismissed.
Sex scandals in the spiritual and self-help communities are nothing new, says Patrick Paul Garlinger, a former lawyer and author of a 2022 essay called “The Spiritual World Has a Sexual Abuse Problem.”
“It’s a growing trend, in part because more and more people are being given the title of spiritual leader, but it also has a long history in Zen, Tibetan Buddhism and New Age circles, and there are obvious parallels with the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal.”
The popularity of spirituality and victims’ willingness to come forward in the #MeToo era have created an environment in which more and more accusations are filed. “The power differential of the master, who is treated as some kind of enlightened or ascended being, is often used as justification that this is not abuse,” Garlinger says.
Scandals at these organizations date back to at least 1983, when the then-president of the San Francisco Zen Center, Richard Baker, was fired for having extramarital affairs with several students. A decade later, Amrit Desai, spiritual leader of the Kripalu Yoga School, was similarly ousted. More recently, Bikram Choudhury, the founder of the popular hot yoga style, fled the US for Mexico after being accused of sexual assault in 2016.
Sogyal Rinpoche, author of the Tibetan Book of Life and Death, was accused of abusing students in 2016. Three years later, Sakyong Mipan, leader of the Shambhala Buddhist meditation group, was exposed and accused of abusing students, including Zen monk Josh Sasaki, who reportedly preached that the path to inner peace was to touch his penis, because “true love is giving yourself completely to others.”
The increasing use of psychedelic drugs such as ayahuasca, which are said to promote spiritual growth and emotional healing, and the rise of shamanic tourism may also be exacerbating the problem.
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Ayahuasca ceremonies usually take place at night, and involve drinking a viscous brown liquid made from a boiling pot of two Amazonian plants, then vomiting before the drug kicks in. They are often accompanied by intense hallucinations. In these circumstances, consent to any form of sexual contact is not given.
In one example, Taitaor shaman, Edgar Orlando Gaitan, was convicted by a Colombian court of raping a woman and three counts of sexually abusing minors with disabilities, some of which occurred while practicing “traditional indigenous” healing practices.
Scholar Daniella Peluso warns that “abuse of power, intercultural misunderstandings, the proliferation of inexperienced shamans, and large power disparities contribute to the unacceptable reality that ayahuasca ceremonies can become sites where sexual abuse can occur.”
The dark side of the ayahuasca world led to a code of conduct that Peluso co-wrote, whose purpose was to “help individuals within the psychedelic community understand common scenarios that may lead to abuse while taking ayahuasca.”
The authors warned that “cross-cultural misunderstandings and misperceptions between healer and participant can at the very least create confusion and at worst lead to cruel manipulation in the name of spiritual empowerment or through the use of ‘charms’.”
“The growing popularity of ayahuasca has been accompanied by an alarming increase in cases of sexual abuse against women,” they wrote, noting that “the majority of these cases involve the abuse of female participants by male shamans.”
The authors added that this is “particularly harmful and shocking given that many of the women who drink ayahuasca are seeking healing for past sexual trauma.”
Another study published by Psychedelic Invest warned: “Many of the people running these programs are not qualified to help people suffering from the aftereffects of trauma. Some are, but they cross important boundaries because they believe they are qualified.”
But a code of conduct is an insufficient substitute for avenues for complaint and redress: Gerlinger writes that master-disciple relationships are problematic from the start, especially when approaches to sexuality are not made clear.
“There’s a lot of shame and a deep sense of betrayal in this environment that has deep meaning,” he said. “Such abuse is difficult to investigate, and historically there has been a push to silence victims, to reframe their experiences as part of their spiritual development, and to defend teachers and the educational institution.”
