by SEAN KIMMONS
An influential Hindu guru, who vanished and is still missing, received 280 years in prison Tuesday after being found guilty last week by a Hays County jury on 20 counts of sexual indecency with a child.
Prakashanand Saraswati, 82, received 14 years in prison per count and fines of $10,000 per count for a total of $200,000. It’s still unknown if the jail time will run concurrently, court officials say.
Two felony arrest warrants were issued Monday for Saraswati, who was convicted of all charges by the jury of eight men and four women, which took only two hours to deliver the guilty verdict Friday evening and even less time to sentence him Tuesday afternoon.
As of Tuesday, Hays County Sheriff’s Office deputies were actively searching for Prakashandand, believed to be with his personal assistant, Vishwambhari Devi, who drove the guru to court last week.
Known as Shree Swamiji by his devotees, Prakashanand was arrested in April 2008 and charged with touching the breasts of two then-minor girls between 1993 and 1996 while they lived at a Driftwood area ashram. Prakashanand runs the ashram and is the spiritual head of the JKP-Barsana Dham temple on site.
Each indecency count, a second-degree felony, carried a punishment between two and 20 years in prison. Prosecution and defense attorneys pushed through the punishment hearing despite the defendant’s absence.
On Tuesday, with Prakashanand absent, assistant district attorney Cathy Compton asked the jury for the maximum sentence – 20 years for each of the convictions. His defense attorney asked for probation because his frail health would amount to a death sentence.
No idea where he is
Infomercial mogul Peter Spiegel, the treasury secretary for Barsana Dham, testified on Tuesday that he did not know where Swamiji or Devi had gone.
“I have no idea where he is,” said Spiegel, who added that he saw the guru on Sunday night and there was no indication that he would not show up for court the next day.
Spiegel has already lost the $1 million cash bond he posted last week to keep the guru out of jail until after his sentencing. Spiegel also secured a $10 million personal bond in 2008 to allow Swamiji to travel to India while awaiting trial. In October, Swamiji, a naturalized U.S. citizen, surrendered his passport under orders from 22nd District Judge Charles Ramsay, officials say.
When Swamiji failed to appear, Ramsay revoked the cash bond and issued warrants for his arrest. Prosecutors hinted that Spiegel, who has amassed a fortune in part by selling ionic air purifiers, health supplements and other products via television and telemarketing, could be responsible for the entire amount.
“I really don’t know technically and legally of my situation now,” Spiegel testified.
It’s unknown if the guru has fled to India. Spiegel told the court that Swamiji does not have an Indian passport. Additionally, India does not allow dual citizenship.
Closing arguments
In Friday’s closing arguments, assistant criminal district attorney Amy Lockhart told the jury that Swamiji had used his power as a religious leader to grope these girls for his own gratification.
“We want to show you that he had the power, love and trust and he abused it,” she said.
Lockhart explained that the girls saw Swamiji as a god and could not question his acts.
The first accuser, now 30, said that the alleged abuse began when she was 12 years old.
“She thought it was impossible to outcry against a god,” Lockhart said. “She was told that it was a test and if she failed she would go to hell.”
Similar abuse initially occurred to the second accuser, aged 27, when she was also 12 years old, said Lockhart, who claimed that Swamiji exploited the girl’s trust by kissing her with his tongue and fondling her breasts numerous times.
“She believed that he must have had a divine reason for this,” she told the jury.
As an attempt to debunk the defenses witnesses who testified that the girls were habitual liars and Swamiji was never alone with them, Lockhart hinted that the witnesses were also being used by a so-called saint.
“These people are still devoted to him,” she said. “Barsana Dham is the perfect breeding ground to exploit love and trust.”
Reasonable doubt?
Defense attorney Jeff Kearney said the charges against his client couldn’t be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
“I really don’t think you can do that in this case,” Kearney, of Fort Worth, told the jury. “That decision has to be on law and evidence, not a gut feeling.”
He argued that the prosecution wanted the jury to convict his client on the stories of three untruthful women, with no other evidence to support their claims. The third woman, aged 31, testified that the guru also groped her; however, she is not one of the named accusers because the statute of limitations ended before she could press charges.
Kearney then said that the accusers’ stories were too consistent and fabricated. When the defense tried to question the accusers, he said, they would become uncooperative and get “instant amnesia.” He recounted the first accuser skirting past defense questions more than 110 times, while the second accuser did it more than 50 times.
“Are they trying to sell you something?” he told the jury of the prosecution’s case.
He also questioned the testimony accusing Swamiji of molesting them hundreds of times. Two of the accusers are sisters and all three were best friends who lived together in a small community but had never discussed the abuse, he said.
“There are unanswered questions,” he said of the case. “It’s a made-up story.”
Defense attorney Angelyn Gates, another lawyer on the guru’s far-flung defense team – Prakashanand had at least a dozen lawyers working on his behalf – then argued that the accusers had a motive for coming forward, and it wasn’t to save children from abuse.
“They did not come forward to save the children, but came forward when there weren’t any children left [at Barsana Dham],”she said.
Gates painted a picture of a family feud among the two accusing sisters and their family, which still lives on the ashram. In addition, all three accusers were already ashram outcasts when they decided to file police reports in 2007 while they were all living in Seattle, Wash.
Gates added that Swamiji had taken a vow of celibacy and devoted his entire life to his spirituality.
“All you have is three girls who were shunned away,” she told the jury.
‘Use your gut’
Compton concluded closing arguments by asking the jury to ignore what she termed the defense’s misdirection tactics. Kearney objected multiple times during Compton’s arguments, requesting a mistrial at least five times.
Compton claimed that Swamiji does not live a simple life at the ashram, as defense witnesses had testified earlier.
“He sits on a throne. He has a servant,” she said. “He’s hanging out with millionaires and going to Las Vegas.”
Compton also added that most sexual abuse cases have only one victim – this case has three.
“Use your gut,” she told the jury. “You know the truth.”
Throughout the trial, an elderly Swamiji listened to testimony in a reclining brown chair to rest his bad back. He recently had back surgery, which stalled the trial last year until a doctor could medically clear him for court.
Plainclothes security from the Hays County Sheriff’s Office also sat behind the prosecutor’s desk as security was heightened for the high-profile trial.
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