To My Former Students At the Shri Sathya Sai Baba College, Whitefield

With great happiness, I taught you English for two years in 1978-79.  

Terrible allegations are being made about the conduct of Sathya Sai Baba, founder of that same College, and, around the world, brought to the attention of police, foreign ministries, the media, and beyond.

Whether it be charged to my own naivity and lack of experience as a teacher or whatever personal failing of mine, I was blind to any moral risk that you or your classmates may have been in.  This brings in me a sorrow which, unless God's grace and mercy intervene, shall never leave me.

I now think that many of you  - because of the terrible consequences that you believed would face you if you spoke out  - were silent .  Did you then feel that whole families, friends, even communities, would have disbelieved and scorned you?  What would have been the cost if one were to call out over the shameful walls of division erected by any hypocritical sexual predator?  Would your educational, career and marriage prospects have survived?  Did some of you think that God would manifest in the guise of a paedophile?  Did many of you secretly despise what was, it seems, happening to your beautiful, tender innocence?  I now see fast increasing and direct evidence suggesting that many Indian and overseas victims found it most abhorent.

I was not able to fight for that innocence then.  However, I will most assuredly – both openly and privately – fight on behalf of such betrayed innocence now, and on an international scale.

I trust we will again be beside each other to uphold Sathya, Dharma, Shanti and Prema.  

All my respects to you and your families and friends,

Barry Pittard (Australia)

Email:  bpittard@beachaccess.com.au