Behind the Bivolaru Case. 1. Some Incorrect Reports About MISA’s Past History

by Massimo Introvigne

After the arrest of the Romanian yoga teacher in France, the same fake news about his and MISA’s past were reproduced from one media to another.

On November 28, 2023, Gregorian Bivolaru, the founder of the Romanian esoteric movement MISA (Movement for Spiritual Integration into the Absolute), was arrested in France together with several followers (most of whom were later released), and the group’s ashrams in France were raided together with private homes of devotees. The police claimed it had liberated several women who had been kept prisoners and sexually abused by Bivolaru.

I am the author of the only scholarly book about MISA, which has been favorably reviewed in scholarly journals as an approach to the subject “in rigorous sociological terms,” and of the entry on MISA in the main academic encyclopedia of religious movements. Obviously, I was interested in the sensational developments in France. There is not many information on the charges against Bivolaru in the French case. I am aware that other scholars are investigating the matter, and Bitter Winter website hopes to be able to report on their research in due course. In general, I would only repeat here my general position on leaders of new (and old) religions accused of sexual abuse and their victims. If they are guilty, religious leaders should be punished according to the law and cannot invoke religious liberty as an excuse for their crimes. This applies to Bivolaru as it applies to Catholic priests accused of pedophilia. The real victims deserve our solidarity.

However, together with a good number of all too real victims of sexual abuse by religious leaders, there are some who deny being victims (while the prosecutors think otherwise) and others who classify what were originally consensual relationships as abuse only several years after the experiences, after having being socialized into an anti-cult subculture that has told them they had been “brainwashed.” Since I (and the vast majority of scholars of new religious movements) believe “brainwashing” is a pseudo-scientific theory used to discriminate against groups stigmatized as “cults,” I do not consider those in the second and third categories as “victims” of the new religions, although they may be “victims” of the prosecutors or the anti-cultists.

I will not comment here on the charges against Bivolaru in France, since I do not know them in detail and the media are not the most reliable source in these cases, but will explore two aspects of the case that I found both interesting and disturbing. The first is how media throughout the world copied from each other and spread information about the past of Bivolaru and MISA that can only be called fake news. The second is the role of a little-known anti-cult group called GéPS.

We read in dozens, then hundreds, or perhaps thousands of media throughout the world that (a) Bivolaru was arrested and declared psychically insane in Romania; (b) he was sentenced for “pedophilia”; and (c) he was convicted for human trafficking and abusing dozens of women. The first statement is true but presented in a misleading way. Bivolaru was arrested and sentenced twice and declared psychically insane after the second arrest of 1989, in Communist Romania, after the Ceausescu regime had banned the teaching of yoga in 1982. He was sent to the notorious psychiatric hospital of Poiana Mare, which hosted several pro-democracy dissidents. In 2011, the Court of Bucharest declared the political character of both convictions.

The second and third statements are false. After the end of Communism in Romania, Bivolaru was found guilty only once, for an alleged sexual relationship with 17-year-old M.D. I do not use “alleged” out of a pro-Bivolaru bias, but because the Supreme Court of Sweden, when it granted to him political asylum in the country in 2005, concluded that he had never had sex with M.D. and accusations were fabricated for political reasons. M.D. was 17 at the time of the alleged relationship and the age of consent in Romania was 15. Bivolaru was thus not sentenced for statutory rape, but for abuse of a teacher-student relationship, as the Romanian Supreme Court in 2013 regarded being a yoga teacher as equivalent to being a schoolteacher (notwithstanding the fact that M.D. testified she had never attended yoga classes directly taught by Bivolaru). “Pedophilia” is legally defined as the sexual abuse of a pre-pubescent girl or boy, and certainly a relation with a 17-year-old girl, even if it really occurred, was not “pedophilia.” Nor was it “sexual abuse of a minor,” as M.D. at the time of the alleged relationship was a good two years older than the age of consent in Romania.

In all the other cases of alleged sexual abuse and human trafficking in Romania, Bivolaru was found not guilty on January 17, 2020, by the Tribunal of Cluj in first degree, and on February 6, 2023 by the Court of Appeal of Cluj in a final decision. A Romanian judge commented that Bivolaru was the victim of an abusive procedure aimed at destroying MISA. Both the European Court of Human Rights (with a final decision) and Romanian courts (with decisions currently under appeal by the government) ordered the local authorities to indemnify Bivolaru for arbitrary arrest and abusive prosecution in these cases. When he was arrested in France, Bivolaru was wanted by the authorities of Finland who had placed him in the Interpol list for alleged abuse of Finnish women in France (here “alleged” is needed on the basis of the presumption of innocence). Obviously, being accused is not the same of having been sentenced. The late well-known Swedish sociologist Liselotte Frisk investigated the accusations in Finland and found them very much dubious.

It seems that this incorrect information comes from the press releases of the prosecutors, behind whom are the French anti-cult governmental agency MIVILUDES and an anti-cult organization called GéPS, which was little-known before the Bivolaru case. What were well-known were accusations that women were “brainwashed” in other countries and taken to France to have sexual relationships with Bivolaru. This is the core of the Finnish case, and of exposes written by a handful of ex-members turned enemies of MISA (discussed in my own book). These “apostate” ex-members, who have been active in anti-MISA campaigns for years, are the “victims” who grant interviews under pseudonyms to French and international media. So far, none of their stories has been confirmed by the verdict of a court of law, although in the Finnish case prosecutors have found them believable and issued a warrant of arrest against Bivolaru. These ex-members should not be confused with the women “liberated” on November 28. As far as I know, none of the latter has accused the founder of MISA of anything nor has given interviews to the media, and Bivolaru’s lawyers have stated that these “victims” do not consider themselves as “victims.”

But what about GéPS? We will explore its interesting story in the next articles of this series.

Read the next part of the article

yogaesoteric
January 9, 2024

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