Swami Chetanananda’s Dark Passage With Natacha

This is the story of Natacha.  She was on a spiritual quest and met a guru named Swami Chetanananda.

Chetanananda declares he is an enlightened and loving teacher.

When Natacha met the guru, he lived at The Movement Center in Portland, Oregon.

Natacha came to live there and devoted herself to the path the guru laid for her.

Natacha

She spent more than six years under the guidance of the guru, Chetanananda.

Natacha served as the manager of The Movement Center’s Yoga Studio. In the end, Natacha jumped off a bridge.

According to Swami Chetanananda, Natacha “broke her back in two places, split her sacrum… and lost her L1 vertebrae.”

He calls himself a holy man. He is J. Michael Shoemaker, AKA Swami Chetanananda. The wolf in sheep’s clothing. And ripe to be sheared.

Every day is urgent, for he is bound to prey on another woman today or tomorrow. Before he strangles another woman. Or gives them a concussion.
 
Natacha published her story on social media in December 2021. The Swami came after her. She took it down. Once published, what happened to her entered the public domain.
 
I have written her story based on what she told the world before he intimidated her in taking it down. It is of legal, historical, and real-time importance. It may save lives.
 
I ask no one’s permission to publish this. To not publish is akin to misprision of a felony. Let the master and his rottweiler Sharon Ward come after me. They cannot come after Natacha. This is an unauthorized version. Sue me. I welcome discovery. I am publishing this to prevent abusers from hurting others.

The Movement Center, a residential meditation and community center, was founded in 1971 by Swami Chetanananda.

Natacha, recovering from her injuries.

 Natacha 

Natacha tried to speak up about her abuser at The Movement Center.

“The amount of mental fuckery that I have undergone in the past 6.5 years living with a teacher that abused my trust in him,” she wrote, “beating up on myself for not being ‘perfect,’ for not having an open enough heart. For not being a devoted enough student.”

March 20, 2017 Natacha returned from the hospital to the Ashram. The man pushing the bed is a decades-long devotee of Shoemaker. He is with Shoemaker in Gold Beach, Oregon. His name is Jim Brissette, and he has followed Shoemaker from Ashram to Ashram.

Abuse of Trust and Power

Natacha wrote, “I was not able to recover from the pain of waking up a little over a year ago to the realization that it was all a lie. My teacher had no love for me. He was just mocking me and pulling me back to the Ashram because of his own personal agenda.”

“I am hurt beyond words, time or space,” she wrote.

swami_chetanananda

After Natacha jumped off a bridge and the hospital released her, she returned to the Swami.

He posted her photo on Instagram to create a record of how he tried to help her. He was guiding her back to sanity and health as if she was the misguided one.

To read the public record sans Natacha’s statement, one can only conclude that Natacha was mentally disturbed and he saved her.

He wrote on his Instagram: “Natacha… wearing pants for the first time in 7 months. All surgeries complete. Time to walk again… She is a walking miracle!”

The Swami does miracles. That is the impression one gets. He saved her. The Lord blessed Natacha for bringing her to him.  Her incredible good fortune, her good karma, brought him into her life.

The internet record says this: The Swami saved Natacha.

But is it true?

Natacha wrote – before he intimidated her into taking it down:

The realization that my teacher did not love me and was not trying to help me broke something fundamental in me.

That part of me broke when I realized he was not holding a loving space for me, but pretending. He had anger and resentment towards me, rather than faith. If my life was spiraling before this moment, it started spiraling triple time after this, when he, too, realized I was not making any efforts (because I had reached my breaking point).

How can you lift your heart every day and offer it to the man who abuses you endlessly, mocks you constantly, and destroys your self-esteem and confidence through sex, drugs, and mind-games?

Here is a revelation. Sex and drugs. Are we to understand the Swami had a hand in this?

He fed her drugs and told her to have sex. Not as a lover or friend, but as her guru. As the man who knows what’s best for her. The loving guru gave her drugs. He had sex with her. That is apparent.

He made me believe my lack of effort was because I was not devoted enough. He continued daily to misguide me, mock me, and abuse the trust I placed in him.

Not only did Natacha take her story down from Facebook, but she noted that Swami Chetanananda took his Facebook page down.

She wrote:

For those wondering why Swami Chetanananda is no longer on Facebook, here is your answer. He knew his name was going to come up in non-positive ways. He’s been mocking the #metoo movement for months now, probably knowing that it was soon coming out, knocking on his door.

But the Swami avoided the knock. He did not need to mock #metoo. He needed only to intimidate Natacha into taking her Facebook story down. She did.

She vacillated many times. Even before she posted her story on Facebook – before he scared her into taking it down, she was uncertain.

I kept hesitating to post this on Facebook because part of me still believed my teacher loved me – not as a woman – but in that divine love that we are led to believe our Guru has for us, his/her children. I kept telling myself he was sincere in telling me we could heal, I could heal, that I could trust him… so I would return to the Ashram… and be betrayed and mocked again.

Natacha
swami_chetanananda
Natacha, wearing pants for the first time in 5mo, heading to Gretchen’s yoga class..! A miracle of healing!

She went back and forth about sharing her plight. That reflects the state of self-doubt and insecurity she had.

The trust that a true spiritual aspirant places upon a teacher is sacred. It is my saddest and most painful experience that Swami holds no respect or appreciation for that extremely vulnerable aspect of his students.

I can say so much about the abuse of power around SC. And it is indeed his undeniable power that surrounds him that makes one DOUBT ONESELF. This is the core of the abuse.

They worshiped his divine grace.

Natacha now tells how it started. She was 28 and had spent a year of her life before coming to the Ashram in “intense spiritual practice.”

She had mystical or devotional experiences. She wanted more. She prayed for a teacher to guide her.

She had a goal. To become enlightened, self realized. To achieve the highest state a human may experience. The goal yoga purports to offer to the few who are faithful. Samadhi. Nirvana. The super-conscious state.

She arrived at the Ashram, she saw Swami Chetanananda as a rare and powerful being. He was 65. But he was anything but tired or old. He was filled with energy and love. He was the first man she had seen to achieve this high state.

He could teach her. He was the answer to her prayers. He could guide her to the state he had achieved. She believed this. She was ready and eager.

She understood that the guru requires strict obedience. He had her highest welfare in mind. He could see things she couldn’t. And if an instruction was puzzling, the advice given was to do the practice, follow the instruction then judge the results. She followed every instruction he laid down.

The Swami observed this beautiful young woman doing whatever he told her to do. Eager and intense.

There is an ancient saying. “Gurus can be had by hundreds and thousands, but of chelas, there is  none.”  Natacha was a chela, a sincere disciple.

Within four months of moving into the ashram, Natacha received an invitation from the Swami to attend a dinner at his apartment. He had these dinners. He rarely ate with the ashram members. It was an honor to be invited to his apartment for dinner where a select few would be invited to join.

He told Natacha, “Please don’t mention this to anyone, as I am trying to keep it simple.”

She was nervous about his invitation. In awe of him. Not confident about her worthiness. She wondered who the other guests would be.

She went upstairs to his apartment. She came inside. There was no one else present. The lights were off. There was no food.

She was completely inexperienced.  It had never occurred to her to have a sexual relationship with him. She knew nothing about secret tantric or left-handed yoga practices.
 
She was in his apartment within the Ashram. He took her to his bedroom and took her by surprise. Does she fight as she would any man who without her consent began a sexual assault? Make no mistake about it. This was rape in the ordinary legal definition of the word. 
But he was her guru. She wrote:
In a matter of three seconds, I had to decide if I fully trusted this man as my teacher to guide me to the place where my heart and soul were committed to going. I decided to trust.

He raped her then whispered in her ear, “I love how submissive you are.”

Her admission is stark and candid. She trusted him. He took her to his bed and raped her. Without consent he satisfied his own lusts, without regard to her welfare.

She did not know it but he had been doing this for more than 40 years.

She wrote:

I know this should have been a red flag but I was an eager student and thought this was an instruction from a teacher to his student.

There will be no doubt a mix of reactions from those reading this. Some will react with censure – not of the Swami but of Natacha. 
“Why on earth would she trust that? Why on earth would she go along with this?”
 
Those who knew her at the Ashram, knew she was a shy and soft person. Some might describe her as easy prey for a predator disguised in orange clothing.
She wrote in the Facebook post the Swami intimidated her into taking down:

I was intensely passionate about the spiritual quest. I imagined, and felt deeply, that he recognized the passion and sincerity in my quest, and that this is why he had decided to give me teachings directly.

The Swami was persuasive. If she had doubts at first, he assuaged them. He spoke a lot. He explained how this practice and those to follow would illuminate and bring her closer to the goal. He was doing this for her.

She said:

I now recognize that his endless talking is less about actually illuminating the understanding of his students and their self-knowledge and more about dizzying and distracting them.

He constantly seeks reassurance about his personal insecurities and decades-old wounds that he still holds on a pedestal.

I hope this sounds like a big red alarm to you because it is. To have a deeply insecure, powerful, spiritual teacher is an extreme danger to the vulnerable, eager and receptive student.

What happened in the days, months, and years following was something Natacha would have found inconceivable when she had first come there four months before. Or even the hour earlier.

He began to teach her one on one. He introduced her to his BDSM culture. BDSM stands for bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism.

Natacha explained what happened to her from these sex practices disguised as spiritual teachings.

There is a dominant and a submissive. This dynamic, especially the sexual component, exacerbated a deep shutting down within my system and my ability to trust my intuitions, feelings, and instincts.

It also provided him the platform for endless manipulations and mind games. It was the platform to bring out intense insecurities on my part.

It was a complete misdirection of my awareness and energy away from the inner pursuit of my goal in the belief and trust that he was taking and guiding me towards that goal in the ‘work’ we were doing one-on-one.

Note that Natacha called it “work.” She did not think of it as sexual enjoyment. As pleasure or even love. She thought of it as part of the work she must do to accomplish her goal. To obey her guru who knew best. It was work – and that tells a story in itself. But it had a curious contradiction to it.

Natacha
Natacha August 11, 2017

Natacha explained. She enjoyed it at first. But it worked on her in invidious ways.

For me this was the most sacred series of events, and yes it kept me in a state of joy that ironically was completely disembodied, since sexuality was still very new to me.

I realize now that some key parts of myself shut down and froze. For him I realize it was just another girl who he was being grand enough to offer an “opportunity”.

All the words to characterize the specialness of my work with him were blatant lies and manipulation….

Even from within me, as I tried my best to rise to his requests… this was not truly coming from the most natural place within me… I was forcing myself to be a “good student”… and honestly… It was the loneliest years of my life… and the saddest part is… I have become estranged from my own self from it all.

Natacha
swami_chetanananda
Natacha, wearing pants for the first time in 5mo, heading to Gretchen’s yoga class..! A miracle of healing!

As they did their “work,” the Swami spoke often to her. He told her had prayed for her to come for five long years prior.  He told her was deeply in love with her.

And he played the pity card.

He told her how hurt he had been by life. All his long lonely years of teaching, helping so many, with so little reward. All the cheap and vain talk of worthless disciples. People were always taking from him. He was always giving. Oh, the wail of grief.
How much suffering his life had entailed. Oh, how he yearned to teach one beloved who could understand his innermost experience.
 
He explained to Natacha that this was not their first meeting. They loved each other in other lives and other times. It went back eons. Perhaps to the dawn of time. 
 
But in this life, he had suffered so. No one could conceive of the pain and suffering he had endured. It is not easy to take on the karma of all these motley people. In this worldly clime of America, in this degraded age in the life of the world, he had taken birth to be a savior.
It was his too generous heart, he explained. It was because he took everyone in and turned no one away. And because he never thought of getting anything in return.
It was the Swami’s lament.
“I give everything away for free, and no one appreciates it.”
She alone could appreciate him. She could remediate a little of his suffering. She could listen. She could love. She could minister to his body. So he could go on, brave on, and keep the glorious soul in the body a little longer to be a light in the world.
But how much suffering he had to endure. He spilled it all to her, his whole life, from childhood to the present 65-year-old man. This he told, the glorious one, to his faithful disciple.

He recognized an ancient bond between her and him, more precious than anything in the world and she began to recognize it or thought she did because she trusted him.

At the same time, Natacha was in an awkward position. She had to constantly reassure him emotionally. At the same time she had force herself to do as he commanded.

To “surrender” to his ancient and eternal “love.”

While he practiced BDSM with her as the submissive.

It got more intense. And he added something else.

Swami Chetanananda is a drug addict. He has been an addict for decades. His method is more of the binge user. But he is an addict. Cocaine. Meth. Pain pills. Alcohol.

He commanded Natacha to become an addict like him. It would not be drugs as druggies use them. The yogi can control the harmful effects and reap only the high -without the low.

I have not mentioned the drugs I was exposed to countless times. I was told they were to help me “open”… and which I figured was part of my service to my guru.

Of course, he was not an ordinary man. He had supernatural powers. He could read anyone’s mind. He told Natacha, and she believed it.

The truth is, I was incredibly intimidated by him and scared of him. He would tell me that he knew what I was thinking at all times. I began to feel unsafe even in my mind and block out my inner alarms and intuitions for the sake of “trusting and opening.”

He would text her constantly. He demanded sex at any hour. And not just sex but severe BDSM practices. He sent her out on the street. He commanded her to do vile and unspeakable things.

Unhealthy things. You would think it horror-fiction if you were told the depths of what he told her to do.

This was not monogamy. It was abuse. It was violence. It was meant to destroy her health and mind.

The Swami and Natacha

He was an old demented drug and sex addict, a power-hungry ruthless psychopath, preying on a beautiful young woman. Destroying her health and peace of mind.

The sadist reveled as Natacha went from a shy, lovely, spiritually grand young woman to an ever more degraded unhealthy drug user – like he was.

People observed the radical change. She went from polite, attentive, kind, and attractive to coarse, inarticulate, distracted, and unable to concentrate, as drug users are unfit for the drugs that cloud their minds. He got the highs, and she got the lows.

All the while she believed she was following the path towards liberation.

I followed like a gullible fool, when what was obviously needed was less time with him and more time with myself, my heart, my feelings, my breath, my own awareness and my own practice. This was difficult because he would call on me at all hours of the day, text me at work, text me wherever I would go. He did this I believe because he is either bored with his life or does indeed have a difficult time being in silence by himself with no stimulus.

Yet even in the face of all the red flags, I kept telling myself… “he is just trying to give me spiritual teachings, and I need to open my mind, my heart and trust.”

It is simple to explain what he was doing. Pretending it to be rituals of initiation, of spiritual grace, he slowly disempowers the student.

Natacha became increasingly confused by the Swami’s constant drama, texting and asking her to “prove herself.” Proving herself was more drugs and more extreme BDSM practices.

She ran around wildly like a chicken with her head cut off, attempting to do what he commanded to “prove herself.”

He had initiated her. He said he had taken on her karma. In return, she had committed herself to him. She made a vow. He demanded that it be renewed daily, through drugs and sex and mind games.

He texted to encourage. A flood of texts and messages and compliments.

And messages of mundane drama and distraction. She was profoundly lost and confused.

She always felt inadequate. She was submissive, and he was the great guru ruining her life.

She bent over backwards for years to try to please a teacher who kept making her feel bad about herself.

She was ill and anxious, overstimulated by excessive sex and drugs. She believed Swami Chetanananda recognized the ancient bond between them. To her, it was more precious than anything.

It went beyond family, conventions of society common sense realities. Nothing mattered in the world but to please him, which was getting ever-harder.

He was, of course, lying the whole time. Having his sport. The kind he played for decades. And, of course, not with her alone.

And one day, and that story we will try to tell another day, she went to an overpass of a thruway and jumped off.

 

About the author

Frank Parlato

44 Comments

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  • How is it that so many people have negative things to say about this guy, and yet there is no acknowledgment on The Swami’s end that any of it may be true? Unscrupulous businessman, who doesn’t take responsibility for his actions. Donald Trump can never be wrong no matter what. Swami is the exact same. And, his followers are just like Trump supporters in that regard. How would Rudi have responded to the Swami’s devious ways? Huh? Hey buddy boy–your Facebook posts are all about YOU, and represent a PR effort.

    You disrespected all of your loving students and broke the code of mutual respect. You deserve every last ounce of what is coming your way presently.

  • We are all murmuring and whispering- making secret calls and panicking – not knowing if we can really trust each other or if it’s going to be reported to swami and sharon or jim.

    We need to stop the whispers and take a stand. Natasha is not the only one. Even if you participated in the abuse at some point and now see clearly, come forward. There are victims at every level.

    Swami is masterful at coercion.

    Take your power back by coming forward. Your names will be confidential and you will be protected.

    Law enforcement wants to get him- but they can’t take action without all of us. We can confirm the abusive tactics, the drugs, the manipulation and threats.

    Liz is dead. Others are permanently injured. The psychological trauma is paralyzing which is what swami is counting on.

    Please take your power back. It’s a struggle but we are stronger together.

  • Natasha- You were not a gullible fool. You were trusting and innocent.

    We’re not used to a world where evil lurks and charismatic, convincing psychopaths take advantage of us.

    Don’t blame yourself. You are out. Block them all and stay out.

    Go to FR or the police and press charges. Then you’ll truly be free and will stop him from harming more vulnerable young women just like you.

  • What does a person do after their degrading inhumane actions cause this woman so much mental trauma she tried to kill herself? He repents and stops of course… oh no! It didn’t seem to even phase him! It continued with new women: more coke, meth, gang bangs, choking, sadistic sex. More people had to get hurt (Eva, Lilliana, Megan, Jen but she’s too whacked to know it etc etc), and still he’s trolling around trying to pull new and more people in. He’s still telling people he is the victim of “vicious lies”!! Poor Swami! These BITCHES!

    This man cannot stop himself. He can bullshit people brain dead enough to stay, he can bullshit people dumb enough to buy it, he can pull his bs with people who don’t know the real him yet, but be warned.

    He cannot, he will not stop. He’s a life-log drug addict and sadistic sex monster. He doesn’t love anyone as much as the needs he has to fulfil his addictions. You’ve been warned.

  • Natasha – if you’re out there block all possible communication from shoemaker and his cronies – they will come at you full force to lure you back- even if FR posted this without your knowledge, they know they are vulnerable if you speak.

    Block them in every way possible and please report the abuse and get justice. Your life will get better and better!
    You need Justice and compensation from these animals. You’re on your way!

  • Natacha, you don’t know me, but I’m so sorry for all you’ve been through. You are so pretty and seem so lovely. It breaks my heart knowing you were treated this way, not only by that guy but by your community.

    I’m so glad you’re out!!! And you know what? I hope you don’t read too much of the Frank Report and start losing faith in humanity or something. It might make it seem like these predator types are common but they aren’t! You’re safe now. You did the right thing and got away.

    And you know what else? The world is full of amazing people who want to hear your story and would never, ever hurt you. Not on purpose or even by accident. I hope you know that. There’s a great big world out here and it’s amazing!!!

    • Oh my gosh my2cents! I am so happy that Natasha is getting support like this. Those of us who met her( and harmed her by being a flying a monkey), just wish the best for her. She is really amazing and deserves the best in every way!

  • Were the police called to this incident? Who found Natacha? Was Sharon Ward there? Which hospital was she taken to?

  • Human Trafficking
    The unlawful act of transporting or coercing people in order to benefit from their work or service, typically in the form of forced labor or sexual exploitation.
    It can happen in a home. if people are being coerced by the abuser and/or others within the walls of the home for the purpose of the leader’s exploits, THAT IS TRAFFICKING by law.

    You can get out. You are not alone. https://humantraffickinghotline.org/

  • I was also one of his flying monkeys with Natasha.

    Under his spell, I was cruel and I publicly victim-blamed her, shamed her, and even sent an email that said horrid things designed to trigger her.

    I want to say how much I regret these things and I will forever be sorry. The best thing that I feel I can do is stand up for women always, and to help in this case, and in others like this.

    Cults and high control groups. They are everywhere and have harmed so many people, especially women. While I can’t ever make up for what I did to Natasha, I can do my best from now on.

    Here are some of the contradictions that Chet himself wrote, along with a quote from Jim Jones that is so similar to things that Chet says, it made me feel dizzy.

    “ Instead of experiencing ourselves as the heroes of our own lives, we come to see ourselves as victims of our own lives”
    – Swami Chetanananda

    “The most important lesson I never learned in Siddha Yoga, that was later reiterated to me by Swami Lakshman Joo, was… TRUST NO ONE…… my refusal to learn this lesson cost me a lot.”
    – Swami Chetanananda

    “Existing in such a condition of imbalance and strain, we can’t help but repeat what I call the mantra of ignorance-“What’s going to happen to me.”’
    – Swami Chetanananda

    “My head spins in my heart breaks over the most recent and most vicious lies being spread about me, and my completely innocent loved ones across the Internet. These vicious lies are being spread by people with extensive mental health and criminal justice histories.
    When these people were homeless, I took them in, housed and fed them. I have done one illegal thing in my life… and not for a long time.

    Each year I spend half of my income on other people’s healthcare… I have spent my life serving and helping people. What is happening now is deeply sick and wrong… Please don’t let it affect you.”
    -Swami Chetanananda

    “My whole life I have suffered from poverty and have faced many disappointments and pain, like a man is used to. That’s why I want to make other people happy and want them to feel at home. I’d like to choose my own kind of death, for a change. I’m tired of being tormented to Hell.”
    -Jim Jones

    I got out. you can get out. You are not alone. https://rapha.org/hotline, https://www.rainn.org/resources

  • Seriously, what is it with these guys. Is there a textbook they all read?

    So fucken predictable, the lot of them.

    How to be a narcopath 101: Fuck everything with a pulse under 40. Re-enact your hard-core porn fantasies with the most vulnerable.

    Blow out whatever fragment of sensibilities you may have left with cocaine and meth, so you cease to be a human being.

    Blow donations on expensive alcohol, fast cars (he drove a Porsche for years), and expensive houses (his was Malibu). When you can’t get enough of Everything, buy some hookers to really let your hair down.

    Sex clubs, glory holes, modern slavery. You all fall into the same pit. Every time. Every single one of you. None of you are special. You are all so sadly and pathetically the same.

  • Like a lamb to the slaughter.

    I’m torn up reading this. My heart is broken. I hope Natacha is now safe and protected and surrounded by love. That is what she believed she had at the Movement Center, only to learn she was out on a limb alone and being thrown into the abyss.
    All who knew are complicit.

    Please stop this man. Please break up this cult.

  • Those that continue to follow him, follow his social media, support him, what are y’all telling yourselves? How do you deal with the cognitive dissonance? Are you all so compartmentalized that you take what you want from him and pretend all is dandy?

    You are all so blatantly fractured and emotionally disassociated from your own hearts. There is no other way to explain it. Which begs the question, what exactly are you doing pretending you’re living some spiritually evolved life?

  • How this sarlacc creature or any of his flesh-eating spiders have the gall to show their faces after what they have done to women, in particular this woman who’s story is so blatantly abusive, is unfathomable. The only miracle surrounding this cannibalistic freak show is his ability to camouflage a 40-year drug addiction and sadistic sexual appetite that decimates any woman who has the misfortune of stumbling on his path.

    Natacha, I look at your story and I want you to know you are not alone, I was right where you were, but somehow dodged the depths of that bullet by the most microscopic of hairs. I hope you can make a police report and perhaps with enough of us, this house of horrors can finally be shut down for good. I know he strings you out for years, and his energetic prison extends well beyond his physical presence and doesn’t let go. Even now I feel him, working, tinkering. We can’t let him control us anymore. Sending you love, Natacha.

  • For those still confused, it’s important to note the difference between “Intention” and “Outcome”. Shoemaker has claimed for decades that he is trying to help all these women (intention), yet the Outcome of his “efforts” are consistently catastrophic with all these women.

    If he has no capacity for personal reflection or self-honesty, as demonstrated over the past 5 decades, then he has no business promoting himself as a guide of consciousness of any kind. This tragedy was completely avoidable had his true motive been to help or care about these women, to support their evolution, understanding, or development. His methods have been proven again and again to lead to “unfortunate” outcomes.

    I don’t know anything about a left hand path – but if it’s a genuine path of goodness and love, it should not consistently lead to he destruction and harm of women.

    • The left hand path is the dark occult of Hinduism. Roughly 70% of his followers over the last 50 years had no idea of the dark rituals they were unknowingly supporting and participating in BESIDES openly worshipping such blatant evil flesh incarnate. SURPRISE!

      Lucifer was really charming, lovely, brilliant and amazing too folks… a third of the celestial kingdom followed him here too. 👹 https://cvltnation.com/power-sex-bdsm-left-hand-path/

      • Thank you, JC. We truly had no idea. So many articles and comments claiming we knew and were complicit. We DID NOT know. My heart breaks for the victims.

          • Stop him? With what evidence? Insinuation? Your story? Natasha’s story? Dan’s story?

            Yes, I want to see him in a different orange outfit, but I have nothing to share but conjecture.

            When there’s a court date, and if tapped, I will fly into town and answer all questions honestly. Until then, I appreciate those with first-hand experience coming forward. I have nothing but rumor and insinuation from my Boston days and annual retreat visits.

      • JC where do you get your statistics? How are you an authority on this? Have you interviewed all of shoemakers followers over the last 50 years?

        • Has he always been a rapist? Sure.

          His sexual depravity has become ever darker over the years just as his spiritual practices have.

          Rudi wasn’t about performing rituals in cemeteries. He cautioned against dark magic. These things have been slowly introduced like sneaking vegetables into a meatloaf and the people who questioned it, LEFT.

          People just figured if their beloved Swamiji brought it to them, it had to be a gift.

          He has lost a GIANT amount of his following over the years. There was a healthy exodus of all the younger devotees after what happened to Natasha.

          There are definitely many people at fault for turning a blind eye to his years of abuse of women. That’s awful. Did they know about the drugs and sexual sadism? Meth?

          No, I don’t think many of them had any idea. You realize that Dark Triad personalities to this magnitude and even the lesser personality disordered have secret worlds.

          It’s like the charismatic preacher that everyone thinks is so amazing, does so much for the town, so generous. At home he’s a sadistic monster, helping himself to all the daughters. Trapped in hell.

          Who is going to believe them? That’s part of the thrill for the abuser too. He can do whatever he wants. It’s just how this shit works.

          Also, people are singing in Sanskrit dependent on the English translations provided FOR THEM to even know what they are saying. As educated as that bunch is none of them including him are fluent. That’s why he brings in Oxford professors.

          Shit, it’s not just HERE the masses are unconsciously giving worship to dark things. It’s everywhere. Cloaked as art, entertainment, politics, and spirituality. Are all his followers these “evil” people? No, they really are not.

          They are people who fell into worshipping false idols. People that gave their power away. Humans have been programmed to do that forever for control purposes. You will know the ones who knew what they were doing by the ones that stay after all this rubble clears. Am I angry with a lot of these people because they “should have known”, yes I am.

          But you know what? Anger is ugly yet necessary armor that prevents one from being killed by the inconsolable hurt that it protects. This man has used our own love as a weapon to kill us. You will never get it if you have never been there and experienced what we fell in love with. You never met our family, for some of us the only ones we have ever known. He collects fine art and he collects fine people. Rape is NOT the only way to skin a soul.

          You think more than 30% of those people were running around that place in nipple clamps, collecting their own or others’ menses for rituals, with a crack pipe hanging out of their mouths?

          No. It’s actually more along the lines of 85-90% of the people didn’t know. I said roughly because thanks to him I can’t trust shit anymore and nothing would surprise me at this point. You ever lost your entire family in a freak accident? Yeah, there are some real “See ya next Tuesday’s” in this shit show.

          There are also MORE people so beautiful that I will always wake up in the middle of the night weeping for the loss of. Yeah we want to take him down, those of us have a fucking soul left also want to guard against suicides and complete mental breaks of people we love. This is triggering people that actually had no choice in any of this, they were born to it. If you don’t have compassion for that you are as much an a-hole as he.

          There are many people just NOW digesting this. It’s a fucking DEATH of SO many things. Rape is not confined to the physical body. Ok?

          • Dark Triad is exactly what he is. Physically and metaphysically. As big as the visible side was, it’s the tip of the iceberg to his shadow.

            I hope you can find some comfort at least knowing you have each other on the outside. Many of his victims were forced to leave in silence and exiled alone. We lost everything. It’s been a very hard journey to this day when the light is finally coming back.

    • And yeah this was a terrible approach in the hands of a sadistic, spoiled, sex/ drug addict. No true master of his own carnal desires has any business trying to master anyone else’s. What a mess.

      Oh he became a drug addict and sexual abuser to “help people” with their karma? Do you know how absolutely insane that sounds?

      THIS was ALWAYS going to end up as nothing but bad news. He’s a weak, self-indulgent, closet insecure man child that made bad pacts to use all the shit that suited his debauchery about Tantra with NONE of the reverence to self or others ANY healing benefit would require.

      People wouldn’t be driving themselves and jumping off ducking bridges. Fucking obviously.

      Frank is a finger wag and time out compared to the spiritual reckoning coming for this man and he knows it. Those who choose to accompany him and his karma upon his next and every incarnation after as an anal fissure, all the best to you.

      Pssst, stay away from the inner circle. This time you will really want to. (:

      As an esteemed and also perfect match in impressive yet wholly unearned titles for business and entertainment only purposes dude once said.

      “Bitches ain’t shit, but hoes and tricks.”

      -Dr. Dre

      Also….

      https://youtu.be/5cvEVivHVsU

  • And wow. This piece hurts on a multitude of levels and takes me to the person that is always the hardest to forgive. Me I believed the slander, that you were a nut, unstable, you “hurt” our teacher, that you were “borderline” because I wanted to believe in him. All of us who did helped him. This is classic narcissism. When the target of the abuse stands up for herself let the smear campaign begin. We all became his flying monkeys. I’m sorry from the deepest and most humble part of my being for paying any additional energy to your torture Natasha. You didn’t deserve him nor the programmed lot of us. I wish you peace, joy, healing, health, wealth and every happiness you always deserved.

    I wouldn’t wish what you experienced on the Devil. Reading it this way and knowing your truth, the only way to atone is to learn and become a better woman to women because of you.

    That’s all any of us can do.

    Lord make me an instrument of your peace,
    Where there is hatred, let me sow love
    Where there is injury, pardon
    Where there is doubt, faith
    Where their is despair, hope

    And where there is darkness, light
    And where there is sadness, joy

    O Divine Master
    Grant that I might not so much seek
    To be consoled, as to console
    To be understood, as to understand
    To be loved, as to LOVE.

    For it is in giving that we receive
    It is in pardoning that we are pardoned
    And it is in dying that we are given eternal life. -Prayer Of Saint Francis

    • That is not “all you can do”. Go to law enforcement and make a statement. Saying you’re sorry is not enough. The damage you have done in his behalf is far beyond “I’m sorry”.
      What… you can make a public apology then it’s back to your regularly scheduled program? Stand up for the right thing. Stand up for victims. Stand up for ending this ongoing nightmare.

      Stop this man from continuing his path of chaos and destruction of innocent lives.

      • Why is there so little about the Eva woman aside from her getting hurt and her Mom saving her? So many accounts of Natasha but so little about that other woman?

        How long did she live there?

        Was it months, was it years? It doesn’t say.

        How long was she one of his sex slaves?

        Is she not allowed to say ANYTHING about her time there because she opted for the cash settlement and signed an NDA?

        Did her Mother not know that would greatly hinder any possibility of her going after Shoemaker after accepting that?

        Is that account really all her Mother knows about her daughter’s time there? Just around the rescue mission?

        What were the sequence of events? Did she leave with her Mother after the injury or later? There are so many unanswered questions on that one, hoping for some follow-up.

        I would have to assume with as little as the Mom appears to know it must have only been a few short months her daughter lived there? How is Eva now? Is she recovering? Functional? Is she OK with her Mother telling her story? It’s all so mysterious.

  • Why is this Swami still in business? He should be in the same prison cell with Keith Raniere.
    I’m so tired of women being treated so poorly.

    • What are the next steps for all of these people used and abused by shoemaker? How can they gather together? Is there one law enforcement person/agency they can each go to so United they can take him down?

  • This was painful to read. I can’t imagine how this woman or any of the other women in any of these cults survive this sadism, manipulation, cruelty.

    My two daughters wouldn’t be here today if their grandparents didn’t survive concentration camps of WWII.

    Thus, there is hope and one has to believe in oneself and our children more than anyone else. Faith in the Divine spark and universal connection of love and creativity is always a comforting wonderment.

    May all these followers leave and find their own steadfast happiness. I think a big part of success in life is showing up consistently going after what you want. The key being what you want and not what someone else tells you or defines for you. Should anyone of the followers be reading this, please know that you are of value.

    Don’t let people rent your mind, body and energy out for free. Just let go of this current lifestyle and go discover more. You’ve already been beaten, abused, sexually assaulted, used in every way, so you have already lived the worse that can happen besides being murdered. You are not broken.

    Please don’t give this man or his inner-circle this power. They can’t survive without you and you are already the strong survivor. Stop enduring and start serving yourself with grace and good care. Now is a great time to begin!

  • I’m very pleased with the writing of this. This kind of abuse is so complex, and insidious.

    It’s psychological murder. It’s invisible. People don’t see it because you’ve been slowly dismantled to look nuts, unstable.

    Even if it’s you that ends up pulling the trigger or jumping off the bridge you just really have a killer so refined, so brilliant that they have just mastered how to murder people with their own hand.

    So many “suicides” are exactly this. I cry reading about this beauty.

    The before and after pictures are just crushing. You can see the haunt in her eyes. The torture.

    You can see the before where she was just this pure, sweet light vessel. It also bothers me that she looks very much like a child. I’m sure at that time in her life people’s mouths would drop when she told them her age.

    Just an extra ick factor a 65-year-old man was all over that. You did right by her in this piece. She deserves to be seen for the giant life she is rather than just the sordid fragments this sick man tried to reduce her too.

    Thank you, Frank. Insert giant hug here. https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/Psychological-Murder

    • Natacha i hope you read that article on Psychological Murder. Its textbook what he did to you. its frightening.
      Wishing you goodness and kind people in your world. Sincerely

  • Hey, Ginzo!

    You still haven’t replied to my emails and you haven’t posted up my previous comments DAYS LATER!

    What the hell is taking you so long?!

  • Natacha– you are so brave. Do not let Swami and Sharon Ward stop you. Go to FR or to the police. You will be protected and so will your family. There are MANY of us who have suffered, and we need to unite and take action now. There are prosecutors who will hear us and protect us, but we need to ALL come together. Please help Natasha. You will finally break free of his psychological control and internal conflict. Thank you– let all of us support you.

    • He sounds like the kind of a-hat who’s texting her now to convince her that FR, & others do not have her best interest. This dude’s a total douche.

      • I would bet my house he’s back in touch with her right now. And he is so good at manipulation. Masterful.

About the Author

Frank Parlato is an investigative journalist.

His work has been cited in hundreds of news outlets, like The New York Times, The Daily Mail, VICE News, CBS News, Fox News, New York Post, New York Daily News, Oxygen, Rolling Stone, People Magazine, The Sun, The Times of London, CBS Inside Edition, among many others in all five continents.

His work to expose and take down NXIVM is featured in books like “Captive” by Catherine Oxenberg, “Scarred” by Sarah Edmonson, “The Program” by Toni Natalie, and “NXIVM. La Secta Que Sedujo al Poder en México” by Juan Alberto Vasquez.

Parlato has been prominently featured on HBO’s docuseries “The Vow” and was the lead investigator and coordinating producer for Investigation Discovery’s “The Lost Women of NXIVM.” Parlato was also credited in the Starz docuseries "Seduced" for saving 'slave' women from being branded and escaping the sex-slave cult known as DOS.

Additionally, Parlato’s coverage of the group OneTaste, starting in 2018, helped spark an FBI investigation, which led to indictments of two of its leaders in 2023.

Parlato appeared on the Nancy Grace Show, Beyond the Headlines with Gretchen Carlson, Dr. Oz, American Greed, Dateline NBC, and NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt, where Parlato conducted the first-ever interview with Keith Raniere after his arrest. This was ironic, as many credit Parlato as one of the primary architects of his arrest and the cratering of the cult he founded.

Parlato is a consulting producer and appears in TNT's The Heiress and the Sex Cult, which premiered on May 22, 2022. Most recently, he consulted and appeared on Tubi's "Branded and Brainwashed: Inside NXIVM," which aired January, 2023.

IMDb — Frank Parlato

Contact Frank with tips or for help.
Phone / Text: (305) 783-7083
Email: frankparlato@gmail.com

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