had spent two years researching it. She heard "numerous former students say they left the [Himalayan] Institute because they were sexually exploited by Swami Rama or knew someone who was". She wrote that their statements, two of which were on file with the Cult Awareness Network in New York, fitted a pattern of what she called "sex in the forbidden zone", with a guru, "coupled with institutional mechanisms of defense and denial". In 1997, a woman won a lawsuit, first filed in 1994, regarding multiple sexual assault by Swami Rama while she was attending the Himalayan Institute in 1993; she was awarded $1.9 million in damages. This was one of the first convictions of a yoga guru for unlawful sexual activity with a devotee. References Primary Secondary Sources , available at Archive.org External links Swami Rama Articles Indian yoga gurus Hindu revivalists Psychokineticists 1925 births 1996 deaths Modern yoga pioneers Modern yoga gurus