------------------------------------------------------------------- F.A.C.T.Net, Inc. (Fight Against Coercive Tactics Network, Incorporated) a non-profit computer bulletin board and electronic library 601 16th St. #C-217 Golden, Colorado 80401 USA BBS 303 530-1942 FAX 303 530-2950 Office 303 473-0111 This document is part of an electronic lending library and preservational electronic archive. F.A.C.T.Net does not sell documents, it only lends them according to the terms of your library cardholder agreement with F.A.C.T.Net, Inc. ===================================================================== The Rama Files Number 4 [Note: This is the fourth in a planned series of fourteen reports on Frederick Lenz, aka Zen Master Rama] The Sexual Exploiter "You have to understand that he always stressed that he was beyond sex," Steve Putnam, former follower Money, power and sex are accepted as the basic driving motivations of many cult leaders. Lenz is no exception. Throughout his career Lenz has been accused of using his position of trust as a spiritual leader to sexually exploit women followers. Lenz' former publicist, Lisa Lewinson, has repeatedly and categorically denied all such claims. Lenz' libel attorney, Jonathan Lubell, has stated that the failure of any of the accusers to file formal charges is proof that they are false. It could as easily be said that Lenz' failure to file civil charges of libel or slander could be taken as a strong indication that the charges might be true. The reality is that most of the women who were sexually exploited, and who have later admitted it, are reluctant to testify publicly, a feeling that is widespread among victims of sexual exploitation. What are these charges? Just when the gangly kid from Stamford with his blooming crop of pimples developed this powerful lech is not known, but he was demonstrating it regularly during his days as a recruiter for Sri Chinmoy. Not long after his arrival in San Diego he developed a special appeal to women in his lecture "Why Don't More Women Attain Enlightenment". His heavy womanizing was known at least by members of his inner circle even then. With his emergence as a self conferred enlightened being and his assumption of the Rama persona his techniques for sexual exploitation became refined. As a spiritual leader he gained trust. To the believers, and there were many, he exuded mystical power as a person who had lived through many past incarnations. His standard line was that, whoever the woman of the moment was, they had been lovers in past lives and that having sex with him again now would speed their spiritual development. The other approach was that he needed to bump them up to his energy level and that sex with him was not really sex. It worked. Over the course of the past six years four women have been willing to publicly describe in substantial detail their bizarre sexual encounters with Lenz. Others have anonymously confirmed and elaborated on the reports of the four. Exit counsellor Joe Szimhart said he has worked with ten to twelve former students of Lenz and has counselled five women who said "that he had affairs or were his mistresses." Szimhart said the women told him that this was sort of an exercise for their enlightenment, to be with him and ...they were pressured into this act because of his stature as an enlightened teacher." [1] In 1982 he demonstrated his technique on Annie Eastwood, a 36 year old dental assistant and graduate student in psychology. Eastwood was newly arrived in Los Angeles, saw one of Lenz ads listing all his previous incarnations and decided to attend as a lark since she was curious about meditation. She had a "blissful" meditation and became a regular attendee. She was impressed by his witty talk, by his resistance to religious ritual, and by his emphasis on women and enlightenment. A month later Lenz approached her during a break and invited her to his home in Malibu for a "special" meditation. She said she was "thrilled" that her enlightened master would trust her with his address. Lenz had warned her not to let anyone else know about the invitation, but she was startled to arrive at the isolated beachfront house and find no other cars in the driveway. "I had a funny feeling, but I said 'Don't be silly, you're going to see your teacher,'" she recalled. Lenz took her inside and "for hours and hours and hours" showed her various rooms of the house and quizzed her about mystic subjects and her worldly attachments. "He was very intimidating, very authoritative", she said. "Was I good enough? Was I ready? I was getting more and more weirded out." "He worked on my head for seven or eight hours, setting himself up as superior, " she says. Lenz had her massage his back and feet, she relates, all the while telling her that it was a "great spiritual opportunity" for her to be there. [2] Finally Lenz offered to show her the bedroom, took her there, and locked the door behind them. Eastwood quickly sized up the situation and said she didn't want to have sex with him. "The hell you don't," Lenz replied. He described a sexual encounter they had had in Egypt in a previous life. Then he sat on the floor watching the ocean for more than an hour. Finally he went into the adjoining bathroom and emerged with a towel wrapped around him and a gun in his hand. The gun, which he set on the floor beside the bed, was for "protection from intruders." "I was out of my body at that point I was so scared," Eastwood said. I was terrified for my life. My guts were saying 'Get out of here' and another part of my mind was saying 'Don't be ridiculous, this is your spiritual teacher.'" Eastwood submitted. [3] Eastwood said she dismissed the humiliating incident because she wanted her search for a spiritual guide to be over. "I was mixed up, confused. I wanted to believe in Rama," she said. "She said she was convinced that Lenz had occult powers," and didn't tell anyone about what happened. Twice more she had sex with Lenz. "I felt so powerless, hated myself, humiliated. I could not get myself out," she said. She filed no charges, although she later characterized the incident as rape. She admits she decided to stay on with Lenz for another year, eventually becoming a trusted part of the inner circle that managed the seminars. Later Eastwood said she spoke out "because I would like the public to know what is coming down the pike, so people have some choices." After leaving the group Eastwood said she talked with three other women who reported sexual encounters with lenz, two involving a handgun. "It took me years to get over it," she said. In a long, rambling and self-righteous "Statement to the Press" issued in early 1988, one of Lenz few media responses, Lenz tried to deal with the public charges Annie Eastwood had made. He points out that she had never filed any charges against him, and claimed that she seemed intent on getting as much media exposure as possible. The statement says that they had a wonderful evening together and that at no time did he brandish a hand gun. Lenz goes on to say that Eastwood described her night with him in glowing terms to her roommate, Karen Lever (another follower) and to several other persons including her friend Ermano Rambaldi (a follower then and still a close follower). "She told them our night together was wonderful and that she was in love with me", Lenz statement says. Further, Lenz' statement claims that Eastwood pursued him: "She called me repeatedly asking if we could get back together. I tried to explain that I felt our relationship had run its course, but that did not seem to satisfy her. In her phone calls during the months that followed, Annie became more and more demanding. She told me that she had had visions of us together and that we were destined to be 'soul' mates'. I spent many hours on the phone trying to reason with her. This only seemed to make matters worse. Finally I stopped returning her calls. In our last conversation I suggested she see a therapist." [4] Lenz' statement claims that Eastwood is only reviving her accusation in "concordance" with a group of persons affiliated with Cult Awareness Network. "Her story is absurd and untrue." The statement runs to twelve single-spaced typewritten pages. The portion referring to Eastwood takes up only one of those pages. By 1987 as Lenz was weeding out some followers and establishing a high powered intermediate group it began to be generally know that he was hitting on some of the newer female followers in the beginner's group. "You have to understand that he always stressed that he way beyond sex," said Steve Putnam, one of his followers at that time. Lenz' information network among his followers must have carried these rumors to him. Shortly thereafter, in one of his lectures, he chided disciples for gossiping "that I was making love to millions of women." In that lecture, which was taped, Lenz said there was a great tradition among Eastern spiritual masters for prolific sexuality. He said that he himself had outgrown monogamous relationships. "The relationships got better and better, and they meant less." In the spring of 1987 Mercedes Hughes was an attractive twenty four year old woman who had just graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara. She had been taken to a Lenz seminar by her boyfriend, and became "absolutely enamored with Lenz philosophy, particularly his feminist beliefs. In May Lenz approached her at one of his seminars and said he thought she had "great spiritual potential." He invited her to visit his penthouse suite at the Westwood Hotel to talk, but told her not to tell anyone. She was flattered. She said she thought "I was going to be his disciple." Hughes absolute faith in Lenz as her spiritual mentor was the leverage he used, against her protestations, to seduce her. She claims he said "that I would progress at a much, much, faster rate than if I didn't sleep with him." She said he told her that he could "empower her with his high vibratory energy" and that "sex with him was not really sex at all." Later she said she considered it a rape. "I was not an easy person to seduce. I was in love with my boyfriend, and it took a long time for him to convince me that this was the best thing for me spiritually." Lenz also convinced her to break up with her boyfriend and further instructed her that her new "job duties" included "making him feel better after seminars, and sex was one of the ways." Tracy, a former follower who wished to remain anonymous, said Lenz gave her the same rationale in 1990 when he invited her to his home and pressured her into having sex with him. [5] Mark Lurtsema, who joined the group in 1984 said he has spoken with five female former followers who had sex with Lenz. "It was the craziest thing. All of the women knew, but none of the men", said Lurtsema, who compared his ex-guru's sexual exploits to "a psychologist having sex with his patients." [6] That was the start of a relationship that nearly drove Hughes insane. Lenz told her to throw out all her old clothes and took her on a shopping spree. They spent more than $17,000 on clothes at exclusive stores in Beverly Hills. Lenz peeled off $100 bills without blinking an eye. They stayed in the nicest hotels and traveled by limousine and chartered jet. Lenz was paying her way to fly back and forth to New York to his new home on Long Island. In June she moved in. The idyll continued. They spent their days kayaking, bicycling and window shopping. They went to the movies at least three times a week, dined in the nicest restaurants and constantly watched rented videos. Meanwhile, according to Steve Putnam, Lenz was telling his advanced students he was toiling for them night and day. Slowly the ugliness crept into their relationship when Lenz began efforts to convince her that she, like his new intermediate students, was possessed by demons. She was given letters to read from disciples in mental hospitals talking about being possessed. One letter from a woman said her husband had just been committed because he believed that entities had taken over. [7] Lenz repeatedly gave her LSD, then made her sit and stare at him for hours while he shouted and raged at her about being possessed be demons and entities and accused her of forsaking him. [8] By the end of the summer Hughes said, "I didn't care whether I lived or not. I cried a lot". In early September after a long telephone call to her parents and to a friend she packed her bags and slipped away while Lenz was in New York giving a lecture on meditation. [9] Eventually Hughes learned that Lenz had been having a simultaneous relationship with her and with two of her best friends who had attended his seminars. To convince each of them of his psychic power and omnipotence he kept in close touch with all three women and traded information with them. Lenz would casually ask one about the other. Hughes once told Lenz that one of her friends, Mary Alice Putnam, had lost a computer file in a blackout. Later that same day he called Putnam, telling her he could "feel" that she was having troubles. Putnam was amazed at his all-seeing ability and believed him when he told her that her boyfriend was "psychically attacking her" and that she should break up with him. [10] The truth about Mercedes Hughes is almost exactly the opposite, according to Lenz' long and turgid "statement to the press." He only gave her money and rented an apartment for her because she was deathly concerned that someone who had attacked another coed a few weeks before might be after her. He only bought her a some clothing and luggage which she "desperately needed" when they travelled together. It was Hughes who sought LSD, and cocaine, and became enraged when she couldn't get some. It was Hughes who was concerned that her parents were trying to psychologically control her. And it was Hughes who became increasing obsessed with demons over the summer. Lenz, he says, was the one who decided it was time for them to part. Francis Kohl, a follower of Lenz for several years, said that some of her younger female roommates would get telephone calls from Lenz at midnight and come back the next day, or several days later. " It was pretty obvious he was sleeping with a lot of the girls," said Kohl. "He said it was 'tantric sex' and that he could transfer a great deal of energy to the women and accelerate their development." One of the young women who received a summons from Lenz was Barbara Sherman. She said it was not her place to question a telephone call from Lenz one night to pack her bag for a three day stay and come to his Long Island home. "I had a ball of fear in my stomach," she said, but he had taught us that 'Anytime you doubted him it was because of entities.'" "I got to his house - he had this huge estate," she said. Lenz locked the gate surrounding the estate, locked the front door, brought her to his bedroom, and "locked that door, warning her not to open it because it would set off the alarm." He was very friendly, Sherman said. He told her she had incredible karma of a type rarely seen on earth. He gave her a diet coke. [11] [12] Then the situation deteriorated into a nightmarish three days. Lenz gave her pills to take, assuring her they were safe, claiming there were over- the-counter Benadryl. She took them because she said Lenz has taught his followers not to trust their own feelings. It was part of his mind control tactic. For the next three days, she said, "He basically had his way with me", which was not at all pleasant. "He did weird sexual things, and I couldn't respond. I was paralyzed in some weird, funky state. I had no control." He repeated this the next night. The pills kept her in a dreamlike state from which she could not escape. "I felt like I was wrapped in cotton candy. I could barely talk....the walls were melting around me." She said that he started yelling at me and badgering me for hours. She heard him as if he were speaking in a tunnel, she said. By the third day she was reduced to hysteria. He yelled at her for crying in front of the "enlightened one." Then, he dismissed her with the wave of a hand. "He shooed me away like he had a gnat in his face." [13] Sherman, like those who had gone public before, came in for her share of criticism. This time Lenz did not speak himself, leaving that to his publicist, Lisa Lewinson. In a press release distributed widely Lewinson, and unidentified Lenz followers, accused Sherman of thinking of herself as a "femme fatale", and, even worse, of not wearing underpants. The last person to go public with a description of Lenz sexual approaches was a young woman from Seattle, Washington, Kristie Patten. Patten had been recruited into the group in San Francisco by Sue Young, a dedicated long-time follower of Lenz. Patten said she was stunned in February of 1992 when she received a telephone call from Lenz inviting her to fly back to his Long Island estate at his expense "to find out if I wanted him as a teacher." Not long after her arrival, Patten said, Lenz began making sexual advances. "I went numb because I was so scared and confused...things got totally out of hand." She said that Lenz claimed that sex with him would aid her spiritually. He said, "I'll take you to places you've never been before, baby. We were naked together and at the point of having sex. I told him I didn't want to. He kept saying 'It's OK, come on.' I was shocked. He was desiring me like any other man would desire a naked woman. It was just lust. There was nothing enlightened about it. I thought I was going to meet someone like Gandhi and was hit with this." [14] [15] "It's pretty comical to think of now, but it was very frightening at the time," Patten said. "He made me feel like I had sexual hangups. He said I was playing games with him." Patten said Lenz left her alone for most of the week, but at the end of the week he became angry. "He said he'd give me another chance if I improved. What was I supposed to do? Work on my sexual hangups." Patten returned to the West Coast with the intention of continuing her affiliation with Lenz but her family became alarmed at her withdrawal from them and obtained some counselling for her, convincing her to withdraw. Like the other women who have gone public concerning Lenz sexual predation she has come in for her share of vilification. In a lengthy signed statement circulated by Lenz' publicist, Lisa Lewinson, Patten's recruiter, Sue Young, pictures her as a flighty young flirt, infatuated with Lenz, eager to sleep with him, and bitterly disappointed and frustrated that she did not have sexual intercourse with Lenz. [16] Young's statement has to be viewed with a certain amount of skepticism since it is dated at just about the time Patten left the group in March. Patten did not go public with her story until late July. Other former followers affirm that Lenz regularly arranged to have some young woman spend time with him at home. The pattern is pretty much as has been described above ... wine, dine, spend lots of money on new clothes for her, sometimes travel, then the abuse begins. One source reports that at one time Lenz had an inner circle of some twenty women, called the "Debs", who regularly, and willingly, spent weekends at his house. Lenz ambivalent attitude toward women is apparent from this history. On the one hand he preaches enlightenment and empowerment of women and, on the other hand, regularly exploits them and abuses them physically, mentally and emotionally, accusing them of plotting to injure him. At the same time he regularly complains that, "My mother was the only one who ever really loved me." It is apparent that Lenz, despite his charismatic power and the influence he has over his followers, feels very unsure of his ability to deal with competent and capable women who might be a challenge to him, or be able to deal with him on an equal footing. He seems to be comfortable only with more submissive women whom he can more easily dominate. Even so, he seems to be unable to form a continuing close relationship with any women. One reason may be hinted at by several women who, understandably, did not want to be otherwise identified, stated that Lenz was not a particularly adept or satisfying performer. Tantric sex, or sex between the teacher and student is not unheard of in the tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. At a symposium with twenty two Western Buddhist Teachers the Dali Lama was asked about teachers having sex with women students, claiming to enlighten them. Surprisingly the Dali Lama said there were a few cases where this might be possible. H illustrated with a story about Drukpa Kunley a famous medieval yogi of Bhutan. The Dali Lama explained that Kunley could do this because he had reached the nondual insight known as "one taste." All experiences were the same to him: He could enjoy excrement and urine just like the finest food and wine. The practice of Tantric sex is permitted only to practitioners who could match Kunley's insight. As for modern teachers who sleep with their students the Dali Lama said, If you put into their mouth some urine, they will not enjoy." [17] Few believe that Lenz could pass this test. _____________________ Footnotes: 1. Santa Fe Reporter 2. LA Weekly 1/28/88 3. San Diego Union 1/10/88 4. Statement to the Press - Dr. Frederick Lenz - no date 5. Newsday 6. SF Chronicle 7/30/92 7. Newsday 8. San Diego Unon 9. SF Chronicle - 1/28/88 10. LA Weekly 1/28/88 11. Hartford Courant 10/18/92 12. Wesleyan Argue 10/30/92 13. Wesleyan Argue 10/30/92 14. SF Chronicle 7/30/92 15. City Paper (Baltimore) 11/13/92 16. Declaration of Sue Young dated March 28, 1992 and circulated by North Star Consulting Services, Inc. 17. "Toward a New Spiritual Ethic" Kate Wheeler. Nexus. March/April 1994 ================================================================= If this is a copyrighted work, you are acknowledging by receipt of this document from FACTNet that on the basis of reasonable investigation, you have not been to obtain a copy elsewhere at a fair price, and that you are and will abide by the following copyright warning. WARNING CONCERNING COPYRIGHT RESTRICTIONS: The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of photo copies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. Under certain conditions specified by law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. 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