Jayapataka Swami

What he was told.

• July 1991. After a five-year-old day student was reported molested, a team appointed under a GBC resolution investigated the Mayapur boys’ gurukula and named ten serious perpetrators among the students. The memorandum on the investigation, signed by the principal, Bhakti Vidya Purna Swami, and Naresvara dasa, was copied to the “ISKCON Mayapur GBC zonal secretaries, all GBC members”, and says the report had been sent to the Board of Education “along with the Mayapur GBC zonal representatives”. He was then one of the Mayapur GBC members (see the resignation letter below).
• 11 August 1991. Bhakti Vidya Purna Swami’s handwritten resignation letter is addressed first to “H.H. Jayapataka Swami”, then to Harikesa Swami, Tamal Krishna Goswami, Bhakti Caru Swami, Sivarama Swami and Tosan Krishna dasa. It lists “our failure to properly train and protect the students of the Gurukula from succumbing to material lust and desire” and places “our useless self before yourselves … for whatever needed rectification and engagement is felt appropriate”.
• 7 October 1991. The chairman of ISKCON’s Board of Education, Sri Rama dasa, wrote to him, according to the child-protection office’s 1999 report, which quotes the letter: “We are concerned that there is currently a somewhat lax approach that allows serious offenders to remain undisciplined and their threat to the Society largely unknown.” The letter itself has not been obtained.
• Early 1999. The report of Dhira Govinda dasa, director of ISKCON’s Central Office of Child Protection, written after his visit to the school in February 1999, records that “Jayapataka Swami and Anantarupa Prabhu, both of whom have had some contact with the school and with child protection efforts in Mayapur during the past several years, also stated that their impression is that there were sexual relations involving older boys perpetrating on younger boys in the school”.
• 1999 and 2000. In a Facebook post of 27 December 2022, Dhira Govinda dasa wrote: “early in 1999, and then again early in 2000, in ISKCON Mayapur, I personally spoke with Jayapataka Swami about the history of severe, brutal, egregious child abuse in ISKCON Mayapur. I conveyed to him the findings of the April, 1999 report”. He wrote that he “emphasized about the concealments, cover-ups, deceptions about the cover-ups”, and that they discussed how those responsible “were again and again placed, by persons in positions of top leadership in ISKCON Mayapur, in positions of authority over children”. He wrote that Vedasara dasa “was present with Jayapataka Swami and I for at least one of these meetings”, and that “during those years, I wrote to Jayapataka Swami”. No account by Vedasara dasa of these meetings has been found.

What happened.

• The Board of Education’s chairman told Tamal Krishna Goswami on 7 October 1991 that Bhakti Vidya Purna Swami had “resigned and has been replaced by Dayaram Prabhu”. The 1999 report quotes a resolution of the Sri Mayapur GBC Committee, passed shortly after the investigation, accepting the resignation and making him “a member of the Gurukula Board”. By February 1999 he was again principal: the report describes him “remaining in position and denying the facts”, says “It is important that we don’t continue as if nothing happened, which is largely what has been happening for close to eight years”, and recommends that he “should not hold any official position” in the school. Who restored him, and when, is not documented.
• In April 2000 Bhaktivaibhava Swami, a GBC member defending Bhakti Vidya Purna Swami, wrote that after the 1991 investigation “BVP Swami wanted to resign from responsibilities. The local GBC requested him to continue. He accepted and carried on.” He did not name the GBC members. In the same month the child-protection director quoted Bhakti Vikasa Swami, also objecting to the case against Bhakti Vidya Purna Swami: “Why not punish the local GBC, i.e. Jayapataka Maharaja, in the same way? Is he not equally responsible?” The office’s decision on Bhakti Vidya Purna Swami followed in September 2000; the GBC later described him as “prohibited from managing the school by a prior CPO decision”.
• In 2017 the GBC (Res. 303, “Mayapur Schools”) required “the previous principal” to “complete the full mandate of the previous CPO decision about him”, to relocate “off, and away from any school facility”, and to stay out of administration, and told school officials to correct “the erroneous conception” that the school was “Maharaja’s school”. The resolution blames “Local leaders, and perhaps the GBC itself”; it does not name any GBC member. He was a Mayapur co-director in those years.
• Satadhanya dasa. In 1992 the GBC named him one of the four members of the ISKCON Mayapur GBC Committee (res. 63). The child-protection office’s January 2000 decision on Satadhanya dasa, who had sexually abused boys in Mayapur and Calcutta, records that “In January, 1993, and at other times, the Mayapur GBC Committee expressed the opinion that Satadhanya dasa was punished sufficiently by being dishonored and being forced to give up his position as regional secretary”, and found that “the protection afforded Satadhanya by managers in Mayapur in the face of these complaints went beyond what can be explained by naivete, ignorance, or simple forgiveness”. The decision does not name him or any other committee member. It asked “The Governing Body Commissioners of ISKCON Mayapur” and the Mayapur Administrative Council to sign letters of apology to Satadhanya’s victims; whether they did has not been found.

Evidence in his favour.

• Badrinarayan dasa, a GBC member, wrote in April 2000 that Bhakti Vidya Purna Swami’s beatings of children “went on for years and got so bad that Jayapataka Maharaja finally had to come and take the canes and sticks away”. The date of this is not given.
• In early 1999 he confirmed to the child-protection director the older-on-younger sexual abuse that the principal was then denying (1999 report, above).
• In 1996 the GBC named him to the committee, chaired by Bir Krishna Goswami, to revise ISKCON’s child-protection guidelines (res. 312).
• The January 2000 Satadhanya decision says that “the Mayapur administration, especially during the past three years, has shown commitment to various aspects of child protection”, and that since April 1998 “the Mayapur CPT and management have been very cooperative” with the office.
• ISKCON News reported that he was in hospital with a brain haemorrhage for 60 days in late 2008.
• No source on the later abuse at the Mayapur girls’ school names him.
• No ISKCON body has ruled on his personal responsibility. In April 2000 the child-protection director wrote that the office had “received many pressured requests” to take up the cases of “everyone who was in authority positions at the time of the extensive abuse”, including “several devotees who currently retain ISKCON leadership positions”, but that “the GBC should deal with these situations directly”; no GBC action concerning him has been found.

No public response by him to these matters has been found.

In April 1986 Kirtanananda Swami (Bhaktipada) was one of ISKCON’s initiating gurus and the leader of the New Vrindaban community in West Virginia; the GBC expelled him the following year. Jayapataka Swami, also an initiating guru and a GBC member, wrote to him from Sri Mayapur Chandrodaya Mandir on 23 April 1986 on ISKCON letterhead:

I refused to read the enclosed letter after the first lines. I am hoping you may use the letter if you want to take legal steps.

I pray that this finds you in improved health.

The letter is signed by Jayapataka Swami and carries the reference “JPS/vvdd”.

The enclosure. The letter does not say who wrote the enclosure or what it said. A published history of New Vrindaban says that Bhaktipada’s former housekeeper wrote to the ISKCON gurus in December 1985 and again on 12 January 1986, saying that her “spiritual master” drank alcohol for his pain and engaged in sexual acts; that none of them responded except Jayapataka Swami, who wrote to Bhaktipada suggesting he “take legal steps” against her; and that he also sent Bhaktipada her original two-page letter. The same history says the letters were found in the Swami Bhaktipada Archives about 2006.

No response from Jayapataka Swami about this letter has been found. The editors have not seen the housekeeper’s letters themselves.