The
Secret Swami's Dr. Goebbels
Author: Barry Pittard
Posted:
Sunday, August 22, 2004.
Email: lightning@flexinet.com.au
Reference:
http://media.radiosai.org/Journals/
The author of the Journals on Radio Sai Org. is Dr G.
Venkataraman, Deputy Chairman of Sai Baba’s damage control
mechanism, the Prashanti Council, and heads Radio Sai. He is
the ‘secret swami’s’ Dr Goebbels.
"I was told that in the TV
program shown in Australia recently, many of the people who
made allegations about Swami had their backs turned to the
camera! Imagine that!! These people want to throw mud but do
not have the guts to show their face! Do we dignify such
people by condescending to "reply" to them?"
Then why
does Venkataraman reply with so much attention to us. Elsewhere
he decries hearsay, but indulges in it himself (i.e.
"I was told"). His statement “many of the people” is wrong.
There were not “many”. There were Conny Larsson and Jed
Geyerhahn who faced the cameras and Al and Alaya Rahm,
father and son, who didn’t. At that time, it was not clear
if the documentary would be shown in the USA (as it has been
elsewhere), and Alaya was only 18 years old and at college.
His father wrote to me and others of the family’s natural
concern lest there be cruel
reaction against Alaya. If Venkataraman or his own son had
been sexually molested by his guru, would he want to show
his face? However, when the BBC approached the Rahms this
year, the family had a conference and decided to face the
cameras. (Others have done so, but for dramatic purposes the
BBC decided to focus on one family's story). With gross
insensitivity, Venkataraman conveniently ignores that it is
common practice for the identity of interviewee’s with
traumatic accounts of e.g., sexual violation to be concealed
by studio devices, but that the producers and the legal arm
of the television company take serious steps to ensure that
an interviewee is genuine. Denmark’s national broadcaster,
DR, had copies of affidavits which the Rahms had written to
submit to the FBI.
See
their testimony:
1) Transcript and
video clips from the one-hour, 2003 Danish National TV
documentary 'Seduced by Sai Baba'.
2) Transcript of the one-hour, 2004 BBC television
documentary, ‘The Secret Swami’.
Al Rahm was
one
of five regional officers in ‘Region 10’ of the Sathya Sai
Baba Organization of the United States. At the personal
direction of SSB in 1997, he founded the first Sai School in
the United States. He was one of the highest profile Sai
leaders, travelling to regional conferences throughout the
United States as guest speaker. As a highly popular group,
he, his wife Marisa and son Alaya sang devotional music to
thousands of Sai devotees in the USA.
How
dare Venkataraman slander good and decent people!
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