$9.5 Million Bankruptcy Settlement for Hundreds of ISKCON Boarding-School Students Abused as Children

Beginning in 1972, ISKCON (the International Society for Krishna Consciousness) operated a network of residential gurukula schools across the United States and India. Children as young as three years old were placed in these facilities. Survivors later described years of sexual abuse, physical torture, denial of medical care, and systematic emotional terror. By the time litigation began in 2000, internal ISKCON investigations had identified roughly 200 alleged abusers active across the schools during the 1970s and 1980s.

On June 12, 2000, Dallas attorney Windle Turley filed a $400 million federal complaint in the Northern District of Texas on behalf of an initial group of plaintiffs who were former students. Turley had previously helped secure a $119.6 million verdict against the Catholic Diocese of Dallas in the Rudy Kos priest-abuse case and brought the same institutional-accountability theory to the ISKCON litigation. The complaint named ISKCON, fifteen affiliated corporations, seventeen governing board commissioners, and the estate of the movement's late founder as defendants, arguing the organization operated as a single enterprise that knowingly employed sex offenders in its schools.

Federal Judge Sam Lindsay dismissed the initial complaint on the ground that the alleged injuries were personal rather than economic, which meant the RICO claims Turley had used could not proceed. Turley refiled in Texas state court as a personal injury action. The litigation continued to expand: by the time the case approached resolution, the plaintiff class had grown from the original group of roughly 90 plaintiffs to several hundred former students.

Facing the mounting litigation, roughly a dozen ISKCON congregations filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization petitions in February 2002 across California, Texas, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Washington. The abuse claims were consolidated into the California bankruptcy proceedings. ISKCON did not contest the underlying allegations. The organization acknowledged the abuse, issued a public apology through its spokesman, and had already established a Child Protection Office.

On May 23 or 24, 2005, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in California approved a settlement of $9.5 million to be distributed among the claimants, a class that news reports variously numbered from about 450 to more than 500 former students. Individual payments ranged from $2,500 to $50,000 depending on the nature and severity of the abuse each victim suffered. Disbursements began in September 2005 and were completed by 2011.