Showing posts with label sexual trauma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sexual trauma. Show all posts

Sunday, May 22, 2016

Donna Zerner: The Shadow Behind The Light (on her experience with Marc Gafni)


Urban Tellers®, May 14, 2016
Donna Zerner on the Portland Story Theater stage at Alberta Abbey for live storytelling
Hosted by Lynne Duddy and Lawrence Howard

Statement from Donna Zerner on performing this piece:
It took me ten years to feel safe enough to speak publicly about my experience with Marc Gafni.  I’m still pretty sure he’ll try to attack and discredit me in any way he can, but at this point the urge to tell the truth is far more compelling than continuing to silence myself out of fear of his retribution.

I’m not on Facebook (last holdout on the planet!), but I’ve been following public FB comments about the story, and am gratified that it seems to be striking a chord for many.

It felt both terrifying and liberating to tell my story.  Of course, in 15 minutes I was only able to reveal the tiniest fraction of my experiences, so it was frustrating what was left out... I could have easily spoken for hours and still barely scratched the surface.

My intention was always that the story be healing for myself and for anyone who’s been affected by a similar dynamic. It definitely has been healing for me so far, though the process of creating it was extremely challenging, a constant surrender to the Feminine. With previous stories I’ve told, I pretty much typed them out at my computer and memorized them, but this one refused to be created that way; it would only come through my emotions and my body (requiring an often excruciating reliving of experiences). I never wrote a word, and I didn’t memorize it either. I also had no idea how it would end until the final words stumbled out of my mouth that night. The process was all about surrender; it ultimately felt like a shamanic initiation.

I used a pseudonym for MG because the intention of the story wasn’t to expose or blame him, but to explore my culpability, to own my own journey. If I had named him it would have changed the tone and felt too much like an attack job. Of course there were clues sprinkled throughout as to his real identity (i.e., when I said “O.M.G.,” what I was really saying was: “Oh, MG”!).

The video doesn’t capture how heavy and intense the energy got in the room— by about two-thirds through it felt like the entire audience was holding their breath with concern and outrage, which is why I felt compelled at one point to puncture the heaviness (too intense for a bunch of Portlanders out for a Saturday night's entertainment!).

My hope at this point is that the story encourages more women (and men) in similar situations to recognize their own worth, honor their intuition, and speak their authentic truth from the heart.

Please know that I hold with me a multitude of other MG-affected women (over a span of 36 years, up to the present day), most of whom are not ready to speak up but whose suffering at MG's hands was often quite profound, and continues to this day. And of course, the damage he has caused and continues to create expands to areas far beyond his exploitation of women.

I pray for truth and healing for all affected, including for MG.

Sunday, January 17, 2016

Why So Few of Marc Gafni's Survivors Have Come Forward

As of today, only two survivors of Marc Gafni's (also known as Mordechai Gafni, Mordechai Winiarz, or Mordechai Winyarz) abuses have come forward with their names and their stories. They are the two who were youngest (that we know about) and who were raped (Judy Mitzner Rogers and now Sara Kabakov). Gafni's 3rd ex-wife came forward with her story, both in a deposition by email many years ago, and recently in a first-person account in the Times of Israel, of  life being married to Gafni, but she has chosen not to have her name attached to those stories.

[See also, Marc Gafni: Beneath and Behind the Denials]

A Little Background

Gafni has denied that he raped Sara, claiming the "relationship" was about love in the recent NYT story about him.
Mr. Gafni was quoted saying they had been in love. He added, “She was 14 going on 35, and I never forced her.” In a recent interview, the woman, who asked not to be identified, said that she stood by her account from 2004 and that the encounters were not consensual.
Gafni's story does not mesh at all with the way Sara experienced his molestation (which was statutory rape, but the statute of limitations has expired):
I remember clearly that when he tried to touch me, I pushed him away, repeatedly. I remember saying “No!” over and over again. No one had talked to me about sexual abuse, but I remember knowing intuitively, with every cell of my body, that this was wrong.

This pattern repeated itself, from the fall of 1980 through the spring of 1981. I became a girl disconnected from the world around her, inhabiting instead one full of contradiction and betrayal. I was trapped in a horrible situation with no way out that I could see. If I told, I would be blamed and shamed for what had happened.

Each morning after being molested, I would wake up and walk into the living room, and see him wildly shuckling, rocking back and forth while beating his chest. He said he was doing teshuvah, repenting for what he had done the night before, and he told me that I should join him in doing teshuvah, too. I didn’t pray or do teshuvah, but just stared at him in disbelief. He really believed that I was a partner in sin. And then it would happen again: After every fervent bout of repentance, he would wake me up in the middle of the night the following week.
Does the young girl in the picture below look like she's "14 going on 35"?


Sara did not come forward with her story, in her own name, until her essay, January 12th, 2016, at The Forward (linked to above). She had told it, publicly, once before--anonymously--to Gary Rosenblatt for his 2004 expose on Gafni's abuse history.

In the months following the end of Gafni's abuse, she tried to tell someone what had happened to her twice. Both times she was ignored or dismissed. When she was 18, she had the courage to finally tell her parents, but their response was, "How could you let him do that to you?" And we wonder why girls and women do not tell their stories.
Over the years, when I told people about the abuse I endured at Gafni’s hands, many asked, “Why didn’t you tell anyone?” That’s a good question. But a better question is what happened when I did tell. It was almost as if I had told no one. People in the Jewish community who had the power and stature to make the abuse stop did not step up.
* * * *

rogersjudy70

On the other hand, Judy Mitzner told her story and had a friend, Susan, to support her (both Judy and Susan were threatened by Gafni to stay silent).
I didn’t wait until years later to reveal what happened, as many do. I spoke out in 1986 right after it happened, and so few would even listen let alone accept it as truth.  I continued to tell my story, continued to cry out for help on so many levels and so little was done.  I was shuffled around and told to keep quiet even by those who knew the truth.  No one wanted to believe that this could happen in the Rabbinate. 
A few days after Gafni first raped her, she finally had a chance to tell her friend Susan what had happened.
It was then that Susan told me that she had already heard from Mordechai. He had called her prior to Shabbat “warning” her about my “delusional” stories, my emotional instability and attempting to compel her into allegiance. Susan diligently listened to the facts, my fears, and unequivocally assured me of her loyalty and confidence in my credibility. She told me that he had made inappropriate advances to her in the past. Susan was there for me through what would be the remaining eighteen months of hell. We were kids trying to figure out how to handle this trauma with no help or support from our parents or the community. I don’t remember much after that conversation.

I do remember telling my parents with Susan by my side what had occurred. I remember how they blamed me since it was I who left the house to begin with. I remember the next year and a half of harassment and mental games.
Judy suffered 18 months of harassment by Gafni before he moved on. Around the end of that time, he moved (was sent?) to Boca Raton, FL, where he is alleged to have continued to sexually manipulate young, female members of his Temple, before then moving (escaping?) to Israel.

* * * *

It's interesting that, so far, only survivors from Gafni's abuses as a rabbi have come forward. In addition to them, a group of former students and more than 100 rabbis (many of whom defended him until 2006 and the Israel abuses) have signed onto a petition seeking to stop Gafni from committing further abuses, naming John Mackey of Whole Foods, Esalen (where Gafni had been scheduled for a workshop in February, now canceled by Gafni), Ken Wilber, and others as supporters who need to withdraw their support. [Please sign the petition if you have not already.]

The sources of the stories, aside from the original New York Times piece, and a follow-up piece a week later by the New York Daily News, have mostly been Jewish as well (The Forward, The Times of Israel, Tablet Magazine, and a few others).

Why So Few Survivors Come Forward

It is believed that only 15.8 to 35 percent of all sexual assaults are reported to the police (U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2013; Wolitzky-Taylor et al, 2010) [1, 2]. And if the survivor knows the perpetrator, the real number is much lower:
  • When an offender is an intimate partner or former intimate partner, only 25 percent of sexual assaults are reported to the police.
  • When an offender is a friend or acquaintance, only 18 to 40 percent of sexual assaults are reported.
  • When an offender is a stranger, between 46 and 66 percent of sexual assaults are reported. (U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2003) [3]
So, overall, reporting is pretty minimal--but it is even lower when the survivor knows the perpetrator.

Those who do not report sex offenses offer one or more of the following reasons:
  • Fear of reprisal
  • Personal matter
  • Reported to a different official
  • Not important enough to respondent
  • Belief that the police would not do anything to help
  • Belief that the police could not do anything to help
  • Did not want to get offender in trouble with law
  • Did not want family to know
  • Did not want others to know
  • Not enough proof
  • Fear of the justice system
  • Did not know how
  • Feel the crime was not “serious enough”
  • Fear of lack of evidence
  • Unsure about perpetrator’s intent (D. Kilpatrick et al., 2007; U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2013; Wolitzky-Taylor et al, 2010) [4, 1, 2]
In my experience, it's common for women (and men) not to report out of fear of reprisal, or because they just want to forget that it ever happened and move on, or because they took [many] showers after it happened so there is no forensic exam evidence, or because they are afraid they will be made to appear responsible for getting molested or raped (of which the police are often guilty), especially by defense attorneys.

If the survivor knows the perpetrator, there is even more fear, and more self-recrimination, and more doubt that it was not consensual ("maybe I led him on," or "maybe I misunderstood' or "I could have gotten away somehow" or "why did I freeze").

As a result of the low reporting rates, only 9 percent of rapists are prosecuted. Of those, only 5 percent result in a felony conviction. And only 2-3 percent of rapists are sent to prison for even one day.
  • 97-98 percent of rapists get away with it, and walk away, free to assault again.

Sociopaths Are Predators Who Often Do Not Rape

When the offender is a psychopath or a sociopath, all of the usual rules are confused and confusing.

As I mentioned in a previous post, psychopath and sociopath are often used interchangeably. I tend to use the term sociopath for those whose childhood likely created their pathology, while most researchers believe psychopaths are born with deficits in neural networks or some other physical pathology in the brain. Robert Hare (creator of the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, the most widely accepted scale) is the expert on this topic.

It's important to note that all psycho- or sociopaths are antisocial personality disordered (APD) and narcissistic, but not all of those with APD or narcissism are psycho- or sociopaths.

Marc Gafni is a sociopath.

Aside from the first two women mentioned at the top (Sara and Judy), Gafni has never been accused of rape, and possibly has not committed an outright rape (by legal definitions). However, he has manipulated women into willingly having sex with him through seduction and, some survivors claim, mind control.

Terry Patten (a former "friend" of Gafni's) comments on the "mind control" aspect of Gafni in his recent blog post.
The egregious violations I saw firsthand were not primarily sexual. What in my experience has been most outrageously diabolical is his unique way of getting inside people’s heads and subtly casting a spell on them, and then using that influence to influence or manipulate others. To be used in this way is a form of abuse. To add sexuality to it, is even more hurtful.
[Emphasis added.]

This skill is common to socio- and psychopaths. It's called cognitive empathy, and it's inherent in the "Dark Triad."

According to Daniel Goleman:
But there can be a dark side to this sort of empathy – in fact, those who fall within the “Dark Triad” – narcissists, Machiavellians, and sociopaths (see Chapter 8 in Social Intelligence) – can be talented in this regard, while having no sympathy whatever for their victims.
Jackson MacKenzie is the author of Psychopath Free: Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Other Toxic People (2015), and also has a blog called Psychopath Free. In a post on sexual manipulation, she talks about how seduction by a psycho- or sociopath can feel authentic and intimate, until it doesn't.

Here is an excerpt from that article:
Sex with the psychopath seemed perfect at first. They knew exactly where to touch you, what to say, and when to do the right things. You were perfectly compatible in the bedroom, right?

Well, sort of.

Like everything else, the psychopath also mirrored your deepest sexual desires. That’s why it felt so incredibly passionate and flawless when you were together—and that’s why it feels like rape during the identity erosion....

You find yourself in a desperate situation, needing their sexual approval and flattery to feel attractive. They use this to control their targets. They pull away in order to make you seem desperate, needy, and slutty. In the idealize phase, they couldn’t get enough of you. But once they have you hooked, they begin to play mind games. 
What is described here is the idealize phase and the identity erosion phase, two of three stages of socio- and psychopathic seduction. Shahida Arabi (author of The Smart Girl’s Guide to Self-Care) uses slightly different terminology:
  • Idealization Phase
  • Devaluation Phase
  • Discard Phase
Arabi is speaking about narcissists here, a type of personality disorder that is inherent in those with sociopathic or psychopathic pathology.
The idealization phase (which often happens most strongly during the early stages of dating or a relationship) consists of putting you on a pedestal, making you the center of his/her world, being in contact with you frequently, and showering you with flattery and praise. You are convinced that the narcissist can’t live without you and that you’ve met your soulmate. Be wary of: constant texting, shallow flattery and wanting to be around you at all times. This is a technique known as “lovebombing” and it is how most victims get sucked in

The devaluation phase is subsequent to this idealization phase, and this is when you’re left wondering why you were so abruptly thrust off the pedestal. The narcissist will suddenly start to blow hot and cold, criticizing you, covertly and overtly putting you down, comparing you to others, emotionally withdrawing from you and giving you the silent treatment when you’ve failed to meet their “standards.”

The narcissist makes you seem like the needy one as you react to his or her withdrawal and withholding patterns even though the expectations of frequent contact were established early on in the relationship by the narcissist himself.
Part of this process for the predator is that he will try to make you think that if you could stop being so “needy,” “clingy,” or “jealous,” then he will become the loving partner he was in the beginning of the relationship [except, that was all a show].

This is a form of gaslighting he uses against his victims. It's how sociopaths control their victim's "legitimate emotional reactions to their stonewalling, emotional withdrawal, and inconsistency."
During the discard phase, the narcissist abandons his or her victim in the most horrific, demeaning way possible to convince the victim that he or she is worthless. This could range from: leaving the victim for another lover, humiliating the victim in public, being physically aggressive, and a whole range of other demeaning behaviors to communicate to the victim that he or she is no longer important.
Gafni has done this repeatedly over the years. Each of the women who claim he victimized them have experienced this process (including, in part, Judy and Sara, who were raped).

Idealization Phase: Gafni woos them, seduces them, tells them how special or unique they are, then begins a sexual relationship with them. He asks them to respect the "sacredness" of the container in which they come together (read: stay silent). Over time he demands more and more of their time and energy, cutting them off from supports who might question his motives.

Judy Mitzner was quoted in the New York Daily News:
It started with compliments and extra attention, eventually leading to the night when the rabbi appeared in her basement bedroom.
In an earlier statement, from 2004, given to Gary Rosenblatt, editor of Jewish Journal, Judy offered more detail:
Mordechai Winiarz paid attention to me. He told me how intelligent and special I was. I spent many Shabbat lunches with him and his wife feeling like I had finally found a family. I began keeping kosher and abiding by the laws of modesty. Mordechai had awarded me JPSYer of the Year.
In a 2006 article in Forward, it was reported that an Orthodox couple in Boca Raton was interviewed for a Ma’ariv profile on Gafni. The couple claimed that Gafni "sexually preyed on their 23-year-old daughter" while acting as visiting rabbi in Kfar Saba (a city in the Sharon region, of the Center District of Israel). Gafni is alleged to have told her that he wanted to leave his wife and marry her.
“We taped him saying to our daughter, ‘I love you very much. I dream of the day we will be together,’” the couple told Ma’ariv. “When the story became known, Gafni left Kfar Saba.” The couple’s daughter told Ma’ariv that she subsequently found out that Gafni was having similar relationships with other young women.
This is how the sociopath seduces and charms--and Gafni was doing this as a young man. Reports I have heard from survivors over the last decade confirm similar experiences.

Devaluation Phase: Gafni begins to lose interest, insults them if they don't perfectly parrot his "teachings," covertly at first, then overtly, and in front of others. He will lose sexual interest, and at this point the woman will discover (if she has not already), the depth of his porn addiction. The sex will become demeaning, calling the woman a whore and similarly offensive things.

Gafni did this with his 3rd ex-wife, according to a deposition she gave by email in 2006.
While we were being intimate, he would demand that I repeat, "I am a whore." I reluctantly went along with this at first. Eventually I refused to say it. ... Additionally, he viewed pornography on a regular basis; including paying money to have memberships to certain sites. Eventually his computer and email were so full of pornography that he paid tens of hundreds of dollars to get it cleaned, for fear that someone may see it and that he would lose his job.
The sociopath begins to compare her to other women or other "lovers," become emotionally distant, or close her out with silence if she fails to meet his needs or standards. He will make her feel she is needy and irrational. As Arabi points out:
Since the “hot” aspect of this phase relies on intermittent reinforcement in which the narcissist gives you inconsistent spurts of the idealization phase throughout, you become convinced that perhaps you are at fault and you can “control” the narcissist’s reactions.
Arabi goes on to outline the border zone when the victim begins to understand fully who the sociopath is, and likely feels trapped--she realizes now that she has become the victim.
You are mislead into thinking that if you just learn not to be so “needy,” “clingy,” or “jealous,” the narcissist will reward you with the loving behavior he or she demonstrated in the beginning. The narcissist may use these and other similar words to gaslight victims when they react normally to being provoked.
Discard Phase: At this point, he is done and ready to move on (if the woman has not already escaped or started speaking with the "other women" he has been sleeping with). Or he will stop hiding his other sexual relationships and even flaunt them. Often, according to Arabi, the goal for him is to humiliate the woman and make her feel worthless.

Here is how his 3rd ex-wife described her experience of being discarded:
January 2002: Dear God, I’m confused. He has this “teaching partner”. He spends all of his time with her. I don’t like the energy between them. I have pleaded with him to stop working with her. He refuses. Claims I am being jealous, needy. I asked if they are having an affair. He went off into a loud round of denial. Says I am insecure, delusional. Please God, help me stop being so jealous, so sad, so needy.
She was correct--he was sleeping with his teaching partner, as well as students. Then there is this, an example of how the energy suck of narcissists (as mentioned, all sociopaths and psychopaths are narcissists) causes physical illness as well as psychological confusion:
Oxford, May 2003: Please God, help me. I am sick…often. I am having these migraine headaches. My skull is exploding. I can’t breathe. My chest is sealed shut. I am a shell. When I go outside people come up to me rambling about how my husband is sleeping with this woman who comes to his classes. He promises me it’s all lies. All I know is that I am hurting, God. Physically, emotionally, mentally. I am not well. Please God let these headaches end.
Sometimes, the discard phase includes a "smear campaign" in which the sociopath portrays the woman as unstable, needy, or otherwise dysfunctional. Among his support network, this often works, according to Arabi, because his network is other narcissists/sociopaths, people pleasers, empaths, and those who are easily swayed (this is so true of Gafni). Further,
This smear campaign accomplishes three things: 1) it depicts you as the abuser or unstable person and deflects your accusations of abuse, 2) it provokes you, thus proving your instability to others when trying to argue his or her depiction of you, and 3) serves as a hoovering technique in which the narcissist seeks to pull you back into the trauma of the relationship as you struggle to reconcile the rumors about you with who you actually are by speaking out against the accusations.
Gafni has a history of getting others around him, his supporters, to help him defame his accusers, as well as his victims. This is from Russ Cushin, in the Jewish Week, who orchestrated a letter of support (with other former students of Gafni's) for the petition initiated by rabbi David Ingber to stop Gafni from abusing again.
A computer technician, Cashin said that during the time he was in the maggid program he was asked by Gafni to search the Internet for information on two of Gafni’s most outspoken critics. “He wanted to rebuild his reputation and wanted me to dig up material on them to taint their reputation.”
In the prior quote from Arabi, she mentioned hoovering. Hoovering is a term used to describe the way narcissists (and sociopaths) try to suck prior victims back into the trauma bond, and thereby replenish what calls their "narcissistic supply." The sociopath will attempt this with feigned offers of an apology or "clearing the air," which Gafni has done with several survivors of his abuse.

From GoodTherapy.org:
When a survivor has gone no-contact—in other words, the survivor has chosen to disengage completely from the abusive person—often the person with narcissism will attempt to see if the door is still open for more narcissistic supply. He or she may “hoover” prior survivors by emailing, texting, phoning, or showing up at a survivor’s workplace or residence under the pretext of apologizing for transgressions, delivering flowers, hitting the reset button, or feigning illness or a need for assistance (money, return of belongings, etc.).
In the 2004 Jewish Journal article cited above, Gafni said he has tried to contact Sara and "heal" the situation:
When told of the woman's comments, Gafni said he would like the situation to be "healed," adding that his attempt to do so several years ago went unheeded.
Here is a more detailed account of how that transpired (quoted from Jewish Survivors of Sexual Violence Speak Out):
Back in 2001, survivor number one received a telephone call from Winiarz/Gafni supporter Naomi Mark, ACSW. Naomi's goal was for a survivor of childhood sexual abuse to meet with her offender. Naomi told this survivor that Marc Winiarz/Gafni wanted to make amends. She told the survivor that Mordechai Winiarz/Gafni had wrote a letter stating: “he thought the survivor was hurting because he ended their relationship instead of marrying her”. He wanted to apologize for "breaking her heart.”

The survivor told Ms. Mark that she would not meet with the man who raped her. The survivor disclosed that she let Naomi Mark know that “the relationship” Winiarz/Gafni was referring to should be called RAPE. A far cry from what Winiarz/Gafni called a “heartache, or a fallen romance.”
Sara was wise not to meet with him. As was Judy, who has refused Gafni's efforts to clear the air (if they were ever really made). The Times of Israel reported:
[Gafni] claimed he has repeatedly tried to contact Mitzner “to create resolution.”
“She has always refused,” Gafni said. “I want reach out right now, as I have many times over the years through third parties, and invite Judy into a mediated conversation where we could transform this from hatred to goodness and truth and beauty.”
Judy's version is a LOT different.
As for his claims that he has repeatedly tried to contact me to “create a resolution” – this is as well entirely false.  I have never heard from him nor would I want to.  He victimized me, and no mediated conversation “could transform this from hatred to goodness and truth and beauty”.
Why would any survivor of an abuser who continues to deny his actions want to sit down with him and "create a resolution"? The ONLY valid resolution is for Gafni to take responsibility for what he has done to so many women.

DARVO: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender

Not only does the sociopath demean and humiliate the victim, but if she takes her experience public he will malign and discredit the woman and her experience. This has been Marc Gafni's pattern since his very first abuses as a young rabbi.

For example, this is from the 2004 Jewish Journal article on Gafni:
Gafni said that Judy was a troubled, unstable teenager who fabricated the story after he rebuffed her advances.
And this from the recent NYT article:
[Gafni] said that old claims against him were all exaggerated, the result of professional resentment, and that he had been the victim of pseudofeminist witch hunts.
Gafni makes himself the victim of Judy in this quote from The Times of Israel:
“For 31 years she has been encouraged to be a victim. Judy is not acting alone. She is a part of well-organized and funded social group. She received strong social approval and reward for being a hero breaking the silence, which is ironic because she has not stopped talking about this and attacking me for decades in so many different ways, causing me and my children and friends a massive amount of substantive damage and pain,” said Gafni.
There is no "well-organized and funded social group." Judy has been alone in a desert of denials and dismissals. Only other survivors have offered moral support. She says it even more clearly:
I would like to make something PERFECTLY clear I have always acted alone. I have never been part of a “well-organized and funded social group”. Please, if that is the case why am I the one struggling to make ends meet while he sits “looking out of his home office on Monterey Bay”?
In the New York Daily News article, Gafni is quoted again making himself the victim:
“This is sexual McCarthyism,” insisted Gafni, who provided polygraph tests to support his position. “What they’re doing is social media rape.”
And
“What they’re doing is a terrible thing,” Gafni said. “It’s an affront to all true victims. They claim victimhood in a way that’s not right, that’s false.”
This reversal, making him the victim, is a common tactic by perpetrators, part of what Jennifer Freyd at the University of Oregon calls DARVO: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.
DARVO refers to a reaction perpetrators of wrong doing, particularly sexual offenders, may display in response to being held accountable for their behavior. DARVO stands for "Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender." The perpetrator or offender may Deny the behavior, Attack the individual doing the confronting, and Reverse the roles of Victim and Offender such that the perpetrator assumes the victim role and turns the true victim -- or the whistle blower -- into an alleged offender. This occurs, for instance, when an actually guilty perpetrator assumes the role of "falsely accused" and attacks the accuser's credibility or even blames the accuser of being the perpetrator of a false accusation.
A more nuanced and detailed version of this model appears in Freyd's Blind to Betrayal: Why We Fool Ourselves We Aren't Being Fooled (2013).

Gafni is very proficient with the attack aspect of DARVO. Here are the comments of Susan, the first person Judy told about what Gafni did to her. Susan was a 22-year-old adviser in JPSY-- she believed what Judy told her. From Rosenblatt's 2004 article:
She said that when she took Judy's side, Gafni made harassing phone calls and threats against her.

"He told me I would regret it," Susan said, adding that the rabbi made inappropriate advances to her, as well.
When Judy came forward, his attacks on her were more withering and long-lasting:
Judy said he abused her sexually on two occasions. Even more upsetting, she said, was that afterward, the rabbi tried to convince her the encounter did not happen, and then harassed her for many months. He threatened to keep her out of Jewish schools (she was seeking to transfer from public school to a yeshiva), called her home at all hours of the night and then hung up, mailed pictures to her home of naked men and had her followed.
Trying to convince her that what she experienced never happened is gaslighting. From Wikipedia:
Gaslighting is a form of mental abuse in which information is twisted or spun, selectively omitted to favor the abuser, or false information is presented with the intent of making victims doubt their own memory, perception, and sanity.
Gafni always reverses the victim-offender dynamic. He accused Judy of being "highly initiatory" in the NYT follow-up story in Tablet. He went further in the article in the New York Daily News:
Gafni charged that Mitzner spun her story from “20 minutes of fooling around” — and claims he spurned her invitation to sleep together.

“A one-time mistake,” he claimed. “There’s a difference between a mistake and predatory (behavior).”
So being a 26-year-old rabbi who fondles a 16-year-old who is crying and begging him to stop is "one-time mistake," a "mistake" that actually happened twice, with him crawling naked into her bed, and with him penetrating her with his fingers? 

He reversed the offender-victim dynamic with his 3rd ex-wife, as well, as she detailed in the 2006 email deposition:
If I didn't agree with him on something then he would burst into a rage and tell me how stupid I was. But more than that, he would tell me how unloving, insensitive and selfish I was. Convincing me that I was the evil, selfish, unloving one was one of his most powerful tools of manipulation.
Conclusions

For those people who have wondered why more of Gafni's victims have not come forward, this post should have explained it for you. If not, then I failed to fully convey how difficult Gafni can make life for those who do come forward.

Gafni's retaliations can be difficult. I have been told by more than survivor that Gafni keeps files on anyone he suspects he might have to discredit, collecting anything he can to make the person look "unstable" or unreliable.

He also engages in DARVO with every accuser. He denies that it happened, or that he did anything wrong. He attacks the accuser and tries to discredit her (or him), or he has his supporters attack so that he can appear to take the "high ground." And if those two efforts fail, he reverses the offender (him) and the victim, and he often does it very publicly, such as in interviews.

Then there are the statistics, cited above, showing that women who know their perpetrators are much less likely to report than if they do not know the perpetrator.

Considering all of this, it's amazing that any of the survivors have come forward.

REFERENCES

All sources for quotes are linked.

These statistical references are the exception:

1. U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, M. Planty and L. Langton, “Female Victims of Sexual Violence, 1994-2010,” 2013

2. Wolitzky-Taylor et al, “Is Reporting of Rape on the Rise? A Comparison of Women with Reported Versus Unreported Rape Experiences in the National Women’s Study-Replication,” 2010

3. U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, T. Hart and C. Rennison, “Reporting Crime to the Police, 1992-2000,” 2003

4. D. Kilpatrick et al., “Drug-facilitated, Incapacitated, and Forcible Rape: A National Study,” 2007;

Saturday, January 09, 2016

Marc Gafni - Beneath and Behind the Denials

[NOTE: I have been actively involved in the newest Marc Gafni situation for the last two weeks, posting a lot of material on Twitter and Facebook. This post has been in process since Christmas day. I had originally written 34 pages of text, outlining each and every manipulation, episode of lying, and sexual abuse allegation. That is too much. This is likely only part one of several articles in the coming weeks.]

[See also: Why So Few of Marc Gafni's Survivors Have Come Forward]

On December 25, 2015, The New York Times posted an article (in print, Dec. 26) called A Spiritual Leader Gains Stature, Trailed by a Troubled Past, by Mark Oppenheimer (with additional reporting from Jerusalem by Irit Pasner Garshowitz).

One of the many things missing in the NYT article, and most of the ones that have followed, is a recognition that Gafni's pathology is not only emotional and sexual manipulation and other forms of abuse, it is also a sociopathic personality that almost hides the malignant narcissist within.  

Marc Gafni (Screenshot from YouTube)

The NYT article exposed some of the controversies surrounding Gafni (which has led to the current outrage in the Jewish community and in the integral community, but in each instance allowed him to refute the allegations with no further exploration of the facts or statements by the victims. What could have been an important document revealing Gafni's 35-year pattern of abuses--interpersonal, sexual, and control--became little more than a PR piece for him and his "think tank."

I expressed those feelings to Mr. Oppenheimer in a Twitter post, and he did not refute it -- he re-Tweeted it.
and Retweeted you
20h: I read the Marc Gafni article w/ hope, then sadness - you allowed this sociopathic sexual predator to make the article a PR piece
I know Oppenheimer spoke to a lot of Gafni's victims, as well as the expert on cults and mind control, Steven Hassan - I know this because they told me. Based on Oppenheimer's response to my Tweet, I can only hope he too wanted a more accurate article (he has since published two additional installments at Tablet - see below).

One of the many unfortunate things in that article was Ken Wilber's defense of Gafni. Wilber allowed Gafni to convince of his innocence and since founded a think tank with him. Not surprisingly, most people in the integral community stopped paying attention to those Wilber endorses, with other egregious examples including Andrew Cohen, Dennis Merzel (Genpo Roshi), and even the notorious sexual predator Adi Da.
Ken Wilber, considered the modern founder of integral theory, started the think tank with Mr. Gafni. Mr. Wilber said that before forming a partnership with Mr. Gafni, he personally researched the rumors about him and commissioned an employee to investigate. In the end, Mr. Wilber concluded that Mr. Gafni was, at worst, “insensitive as a boyfriend.”

“Marc has a lot of Shakti,” Mr. Wilber said, using a Sanskrit word for energy. “I don’t think he understood the impact it had on people.”
"Insensitive as a boyfriend"? Is that what we call emotional, psychological, and sexual manipulation these days?

As will be noted below, the employee mentioned by Wilber was Clint Fuhs, a supporter of Gafni's return in 2008. By the way, the referenced documents are a fraud. For more on Gafni and Wilber, see Geoffrey D. Falk's Stripping the Gurus: Sex, Violence, Abuse and Enlightenment.

[It is worth noting that, at the time (late spring/early summer 2008), both Gafni and one of Wilber's senior students, Clint Fuhs, as well as Jeff Bell, contacted me by email and telephone, wanting me to remove my posts about Gafni from this blog (I had defined him as an Abusive Guru). I complied initially but re-posted them a few days later, after digging into the actual facts - and listening to my own gut-sense about Gafni. Jeff Bell co-wrote, with Greta de Jong, the glowing Catalyst article on Gafni, depicting him as a modern-day spiritual hero, mentioned below {Gafni is alleged to have seduced de Jong to get the article published}. In reality, Gafni wrote much of the article, or at least dictated the perspectives.]

Throughout all of this, and even before the NYT article ran, Judy Mitzner Rogers has been talking about Gafni's rape of her as a 16-year-old girl - at her blog, The Ass of  Death. For now, she is the brave face standing up for all survivors.

I urge anyone who has not already signed the petition encouraging Gafni's supporters to withdraw that support (including John Mackey of Whole Foods, Ken Wilber of integral fame, and the board of the Center for Integral Wisdom), created by rabbi David Ingber, to go and sign it now.

At the bottom of the page there is an updated list of the articles having shown up on-line since Christmas Day, with more appearing each day.

* * * *

During the years I have been reporting on Gafni and trying to raise awareness of his pathological behaviors, I have spoken with several of his survivors, and I have read written accounts from others. I have held space for the women as they told their stories, filled with pain, and often shame.

Also during those years I went back to school to get my second master's degree, an MS in counseling psychology. Since 2011 I have worked with adult survivors of sexual trauma.
  • I know the experience of survivors because I sit with them every day.
  • I know the patterns of the perpetrator because I hear about them every day.
I have never assessed Gafni in person, which is the only way to know who he feels himself to be at his core. However, the stories of his victims, ranging over more than 35 years, are so consistent, with so few of them knowing about the others when they made their statements, that they present a very vivid behavioral portrait of how Gafni conducts himself with students, employees, financial backers, and co-workers, which also is extremely consistent over those many years.

What follows is not meant to be an "official" diagnosis. Based solely on behaviors described by others (often survivors, but also supporters), this is a behavioral model of who Gafni appears to be from the outside.

It is vitally important to keep in mind as you read through this that in recent years Gafni has managed to control his story and frame these controversies as being about sex with students, which--when he’s not denying it altogether--allows him to create all kinds of complex philosophical rationalizations as to why it’s okay that he does this and that his relationships are "highly evolved," or "post-conventional."

It is also important to understand that Gafni works hard to make these issues about pseudo-consensual sex because the reality is much darker. His survivors ARE sexually manipulated, and there are consistent reports of debasing sexuality (woman as whore), but the sexual relationships are simply the seduction that brings women into his circle of influence.

Once he seduces someone, then he begins the process of mind control, shaping their thoughts and experiences so that they come to see things his way. Using Steven Hassan's BITE model of mind control as a frame, Gafni seeks to Behavior Control, Information ControlThought ControlEmotional Control. It's worth looking at the details for each type of control. (See Freedom of Mind: Helping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People, Cults and Beliefs, 2012, and Combatting Cult Mind Control: The #1 Best-selling Guide to Protection, Rescue, and Recovery from Destructive Cults: 25th Anniversary Edition, 2015).

Gafni gives the appearance, to those not in the inner circle (which includes Mariana Caplan, Sally Kempton, Lori Galperin, and whoever he is sleeping with now--noticeably all women), of being caring and accepting. However, if you become part of the inner circle, then you see many of the types of control Steve Hassan outlines. 

* * * *

What we are seeing in his current defense strategies, which are the same strategies he has used over the last few decades, can be described as Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender (DARVO). This is the perpetrator model developed by Jennifer J. Freyd at the University of Oregon. Freyd notes in Violations of Power, Adaptive Blindness and Betrayal Trauma Theory (Feminism & Psychology; 1997, Feb: 7(1): 22-32).
My proposal, currently very speculative, is that a frequent reaction of an abuser to being held accountable is the `DARVO' response. `DARVO' stands for 'Deny, Attack and Reverse Victim and Offender'. It is important to distinguish types of denial, for an innocent person will probably deny a false accusation. Thus denial is not evidence of guilt. However, I propose that a certain kind of indignant self-righteous, and overly stated, denial may in fact relate to guilt. I hypothesize that if an accusation is true, and the accused person is abusive, the denial is more indignant, self-righteous and manipulative, as compared with denial in other cases. Similarly, I have observed that actual abusers threaten, bully and make a nightmare for anyone who holds them accountable or asks them to change their abusive behavior. This attack, intended to chill and terrify, typically includes threats of law suits, overt and covert attacks on the whistle-blower's credibility, and so on. The attack will often take the form of focusing on ridiculing the person who attempts to hold the offender account­able. The attack will also likely focus on ad hominem or ad feminam instead of intellectual/evidential issues. Finally, I propose that the offender rapidly creates the impression that the abuser is the wronged one, while the victim or concerned observer is the offender. Figure and ground are completely reversed. The more the offender is held accountable, the more wronged the offender claims to be. The offender accuses those who hold him accountable of perpetrating acts of defama­tion, false accusations, smearing, etc. The offender is on the offense and the person attempting to hold the offender accountable is put on the defense. (Freyd 1997, 29)
Freyd has an empirical paper in press: Harsey, S. & Freyd, J.J. (in press). “It Never Happened, You're a Liar, and I'm the Victim”: An Exploration of DARVO. I look forward to reading this paper. [I also highly recommend her book, Blind to Betrayal: Why We Fool Ourselves We Aren't Being Fooled (2013), which offers a more in-depth understanding of DARVO.]

In the paper quoted above, she goes on to detail how the perpetrator uses our general ignorance to claim innocence.
The offender takes advantage of the confusion we have in our culture over the relationship between public provability and reality (and a legal system that has a certain history in this regard) in redefining this reality. Future research may test the hypothesis that the offender may well come to believe in his innocence via this logic: if no one can be sure he is guilty then logically he is not guilty no matter what really occurred. The reality is that defined by public proof, not by personal lived experience. As a consequence of this strategy, along with the biases in our legal system and culture, claims of being victim to false accusations may be more speakable than claims of being victim to sexual and domestic offenses. (Freyd 1997, 30)
Gafni does take "advantage of the confusion we have in our culture over the relationship between public provability and reality," and always tries to frame his sexual misconduct as a he-said/she-said misunderstanding. Short of legal action (the two cases that obviously rise to this level are WAY beyond the statute of limitations), there is no way to "prove" in public that the survivors are telling the truth. 

As one might expect, Gafni continues to claim his innocence, however, it is alleged that he continues to have sex with students, as well as with other people where there isn’t such an obvious power differential, including board members, employees, editors, co-teachers, financial backers, and so on--and they practically all end up traumatized in some way. He gets away with it, so it must not have happened. So he can continue doing whatever he wants.

The women who currently surround and stand up for Gafni will, one day (a couple of years from now), be the survivors who lodge new complaints, if they are not intimidated into silence. And they will be denied, attacked, and made out by Gafni to be the perpetrators, while he is simply the humble victim.

Concerning Gafni's identification as the victim, Terry Patten offers a very revealing story in his blog post of January 5th, offering his take on the current efforts to expose Gafni's behavior:
When he was publicly accused in Israel in 2006, I presumed there were two sides to the story, and extended my hand in friendship. I tried to put an arm on his shoulder and accompany him through the process of exploring how he had somehow participated in creating hurt for others, and how now that was perhaps unjustly coming back around to hurt him. I wanted to compassionately help him learn whatever he needed to learn and do his own deep work. He could reckon with his shadow, learn how to love better and be redeemed. I liked him. I could feel his pain. I could see that there was much animus directed toward him, and I thought he deserved care. I didn’t want him to be alone. 

But he wasn’t up for that kind of friendship, or that kind of work. He never showed any curiosity about those questions, or his psychological dynamics and shadows, or any sincere interest in gleaning the moral lessons of his life. Those were the conversations I tried to have, again and again, for years, but they were never forthcoming. He redirected every discussion back to the injustice of the accusations against him. The story was always about his victimization, and he was always only defensive. He was not receptive but active, recruiting me to see it all his way.
[Emphasis added.]

When Gafni re-emerged in 2008, his attitude was exactly the same. He orchestrated an interview and feature article in Catalyst Magazine in July 2008 (which he allegedly helped write, and allegedly also slept with the editor to get it published), which depicted him as "the hero of a spiritual epic."

The following quote contains one of Gafni's favorite phrases, attributed to Allen Dershowitz, who most certainly was talking about Gafni's situation when coined that phrase, but it fits with Gafni's NEED to make the expression of his sociopathy exclusively about sexual mores.
a gifted teacher with an anti-establishment bent and a bohemian lifestyle can find his private life subjected to what legal scholar Allen Dershowitz called “sexual McCarthyism.”
In this recent NYT article, Gafni used the same basic strategy, to blame 35 years worth of accusations on "pseudofeminist witch hunts" and "sexual McCarthyism."
He said that old claims against him were all exaggerated, the result of professional resentment, and that he had been the victim of pseudofeminist witch hunts. (He handed this columnist a copy of “Sexual McCarthyism,” by Alan M. Dershowitz.)
New year, but the same old lame defenses that fool no one.

* * * *

Over these years, I have frequently referred to Gafni as a sociopath. I make this assessment based on behaviors and patterns of behavior over the 35 years in which he has been active as a rabbi or a teacher/guru. Having heard and read the accounts of survivors, I feel confident in the consistency of his patterns.

In the U.S., the term "sociopath" is considered short-hand for Antisocial Personality Disorder, the only accepted DSM diagnosis for people who seem to lack a conscience and any remorse. Here the DSM-IV-TR criteria for an APD diagnosis (must have 3 or more of these symptoms):

A) A pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others, occurring since age 15 years, as indicated by three or more of the following:
 
  1. failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest;
  2. deception, as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure;
  3. impulsivity or failure to plan ahead;
  4. irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults;
  5. reckless disregard for safety of self or others;
  6. consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations;
  7. lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.
B) The individual is at least age 18 years.
C) There is evidence of conduct disorder with onset before age 15 years.
D) The occurrence of antisocial behavior is not exclusively during the course of schizophrenia or a manic episode.
APD is part of the Cluster B (dramatic/erratic) personality disorders, which also includes the Borderline, Histrionic, and Narcissistic personality disorders. Occasionally, two of these can overlap in their symptomatology, and it appears Gafni has some of the APD characteristics as well as some of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) characteristics.

Looking at the list above, Gafni fits several criteria: (1) he rejected accepted social norms as a rabbi and as a spiritual teacher - one of which is "do not sleep with students," (2) Gafni has repeatedly lied about his abuses of women, students, and employees, and he has written defenses of his behaviors and put other peoples names on them, as he has done with Ken Wilber, (4) former employees/students and survivors of his abuse have spoken about his rage issues when he is frustrated or threatened, (5) his sexual abuses of students and co-workers does not take into account the damage his actions will have for any organization he works for or in, and (7) Gafni has never taken responsibility or shown remorse for the damage he has caused so many people over the last 35 years.

It is essential that we understand that personality disorders are "egosyntonic," meaning that their experience is aligned with their sense of self. Basically, the person with a personality disorder feels nothing is wrong with them, but everyone else is seriously crazy. Most mental illnesses are "egodystonic," meaning that their experience is not aligned with their sense of self.

Outside the DSM there is an accepted definition of psychopath, which is often used interchangeably with sociopath in common usage, and even in clinical work. Dr. Robert Hare, Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia, has developed the Hare Psychopathy Checklist - Revised, now in a 2nd Edition. Here are the characteristics of a psychopath according to the checklist:
The Hare Psychopathy Checklist – Revised 
  1. GLIB and SUPERFICIAL CHARM — The tendency to be smooth, engaging, charming, slick, and verbally facile. Psychopathic charm is not in the least shy, self-conscious, or afraid to say anything.  A psychopath never gets tongue-tied. They have freed themselves from the social conventions about taking turns in talking, for example.
  2. GRANDIOSE SELF-WORTH — A grossly inflated view of one’s abilities and self-worth, self-assured, opinionated, cocky, a braggart. Psychopaths are arrogant people who believe they are superior human beings.
  3. NEED FOR STIMULATION or PRONENESS TO BOREDOM — An excessive need for novel, thrilling, and exciting stimulation; taking chances and doing things that are risky. Psychopaths often have low self-discipline in carrying tasks through to completion because they get bored easily. They fail to work at the same job for any length of time, for example, or to finish tasks that they consider dull or routine.
  4. PATHOLOGICAL LYING — Can be moderate or high; in moderate form, they will be shrewd, crafty, cunning, sly, and clever; in extreme form, they will be deceptive, deceitful, underhanded, unscrupulous, manipulative, and dishonest.
  5. CONNING AND MANIPULATIVENESS — The use of deceit and deception to cheat, con, or defraud others for personal gain; distinguished from Item #4 in the degree to which exploitation and callous ruthlessness is present, as reflected in a lack of concern for the feelings and suffering of one’s victims.
  6. LACK OF REMORSE OR GUILT — A lack of feelings or concern for the losses, pain, and suffering of victims; a tendency to be unconcerned, dispassionate, cold-hearted, and non-empathic. This item is usually demonstrated by a disdain for one’s victims.
  7. SHALLOW AFFECT — Emotional poverty or a limited range or depth of feelings; interpersonal coldness in spite of signs of open gregariousness.
  8. CALLOUSNESS and LACK OF EMPATHY — A lack of feelings toward people in general; cold, contemptuous, inconsiderate, and tactless.
  9. PARASITIC LIFESTYLE — An intentional, manipulative, selfish, and exploitative financial dependence on others as reflected in a lack of motivation, low self-discipline, and inability to begin or complete responsibilities.
  10. POOR BEHAVIORAL CONTROLS — Expressions of irritability, annoyance, impatience, threats, aggression, and verbal abuse; inadequate control of anger and temper; acting hastily.
  11. PROMISCUOUS SEXUAL BEHAVIOR — A variety of brief, superficial relations, numerous affairs, and an indiscriminate selection of sexual partners; the maintenance of several relationships at the same time; a history of attempts to sexually coerce others into sexual activity or taking great pride at discussing sexual exploits or conquests.
  12. EARLY BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS — A variety of behaviors prior to age 13, including lying, theft, cheating, vandalism, bullying, sexual activity, fire-setting, glue-sniffing, alcohol use, and running away from home.
  13. LACK OF REALISTIC, LONG-TERM GOALS — An inability or persistent failure to develop and execute long-term plans and goals; a nomadic existence, aimless, lacking direction in life.
  14. IMPULSIVITY — The occurrence of behaviors that are unpremeditated and lack reflection or planning; inability to resist temptation, frustrations, and urges; a lack of deliberation without considering the consequences; foolhardy, rash, unpredictable, erratic, and reckless.
  15. IRRESPONSIBILITY — Repeated failure to fulfill or honor obligations and commitments; such as not paying bills, defaulting on loans, performing sloppy work, being absent or late to work, failing to honor contractual agreements.
  16. FAILURE TO ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR OWN ACTIONS — A failure to accept responsibility for one’s actions reflected in low conscientiousness, an absence of dutifulness, antagonistic manipulation, denial of responsibility, and an effort to manipulate others through this denial.
  17. MANY SHORT-TERM MARITAL RELATIONSHIPS — A lack of commitment to a long-term relationship reflected in inconsistent, undependable, and unreliable commitments in life, including marital.
  18. JUVENILE DELINQUENCY — Behavior problems between the ages of 13-18; mostly behaviors that are crimes or clearly involve aspects of antagonism, exploitation, aggression, manipulation, or a callous, ruthless tough-mindedness.
  19. REVOCATION OF CONDITION RELEASE — A revocation of probation or other conditional releases due to technical violations, such as carelessness, low deliberation, or failing to appear.
  20. CRIMINAL VERSATILITY — A diversity of types of criminal offenses, regardless if the person has been arrested or convicted for them; taking great pride at getting away with crimes.The word psychopath can be replaced with the word sociopath throughout this page. The meaning is very similar, if not the same.
Item 1 on this list is very telling - and for those who don't understand how women who might enter into a consensual sexual relationship with Gafni then can later feel victimized, it's all right there: "The tendency to be smooth, engaging, charming, slick, and verbally facile. Psychopathic charm is not in the least shy, self-conscious, or afraid to say anything.  A psychopath never gets tongue-tied." Sociopaths (or psychopaths - more on the difference below) can be VERY charming and seductive, and if you'll notice in some of the online statements, even those who have distanced themselves from Gafni marvel at his charisma. It is the charisma that lures women, and it also lures in supporters (financial) and defenders (students).

Once they are seduced, especially the women, Gafni's mask will begin to slip. These women discover the porn addiction, the rage, the manipulation of others, the lack of remorse, the debasing sexuality, and the inability to tell the truth. Understandably, they are frightened of him, and when they escape, they remain trapped in silence out of fear or reprisal - because if they do speak out, he will call them liars, or say they are mentally unstable, and on an on.

If necessary, he will forge documents that exonerate him, such as the letter supposedly written by Ken Wilber and Sally Kempton. It's clear to most that Wilber had nothing to do with it - it's not his languaging, it's Gafni's. Likewise with the "official" Integral Institute Report on Marc Gafni, which is clearly a forgery, likely written by Gafni and/or Kempton, and Clint Fuhs (the employee Wilber commissioned to investigate, as noted without attribution in the NYT article). People who have read the document and are familiar with Gafni's writing are convinced he wrote it (and this includes his former supporter, Joe Perez).

Speaking of Sally Kempton (one of Gafni's most enduring supporters), she is the co-narccisist to Gafni's narcissistic sociopath. Kempton held the same role for Swami Muktananda in the 1970s and 80s. When the horny swami was exposed for sleeping with his female students, she continued to defend him, even after he had died. Here are two passages from "O Guru, Guru, Guru," which originally appeared in The New Yorker, November 14, 1994 (it's pay-walled). The first is a statement by her former editor at the Village Voice, and the second is Kempton/Durgananda's denials of the sexual abuse allegations. Note: Durgananda was Kempton's name in the SYDA organization.
Ross Wetzsteon, a former editor of hers at the Voice, told me that he believes that her immersion in Siddha Yoga diminished her. "Sally was a wonderfully gifted writer, and when she got involved with that place she lost all her wit, all her irony, and all her perceptiveness," he said. "It was as if her brain had gone completely soft. There was a vacancy. She seemed hollow. People use the word 'brainwashed'-I know that doesn't really apply, but it was as if her center had disappeared, not got stronger."
* * * *
Durgananda called the accusations "laughable" and "ridiculous." Had they been true, she said, Muktananda would not have been able to go on giving shaktipat and the organization would not have continued to be as healthy as it was. Recently, however, I spoke with two longtime SYDA meditation teachers with well established academic and professional careers as psychotherapists, who say that Durgananda sounded a different note with them. They told me that last winter they had investigated some of the allegations, had sadly concluded that they were true, and, in May of this year, confronted Durgananda and another swami, demanding to know why the truth had been kept from them for so many years. The confrontation occurred away from the ashram, and this time, according to the therapists, Durgananda did not say that the allegations were false. Durgananda told the therapists that she knew a number of the women quite well and was convinced that whatever had happened had been beneficial to them, but that the swamis had never talked about it, because they thought it would be more appropriate to be "discreet." The therapists have now left SYDA. When I phoned Durgananda and told her what they had said to me, she said, "My memory is that I did deny it to them," and she added that, whether the allegations were "true or not, it doesn't really change our understanding of Baba."
Kempton has been enabling Gafni's sociopathic behaviors for a decade or more.

On the hopeful side, Kempton had the good sense to tell the NYT that young female students should stay away from Gafni.
One Gafni supporter, Sally Kempton, who is a teacher and writer of meditation and Eastern philosophy and a member of his think tank, said he was “a wonderful teacher for mature students” and not someone “young, susceptible women should take as their teacher.”
 It's heartening to see that maybe she is getting a clue.

* * * *

A few people (I am one) make a distinction between a psychopath and sociopath. In this distinction, psychopaths are born (strong genetic influence) but sociopaths are made (stong environmental influence).

I suspect that Gafni was "made."

Marc Gafni (originally Mordechai Winiarz, but also Mordechai Winyarz and Mordechai Gafni) was born in 1960 to an Orthodox family of Holocaust survivors who lived an ultra-Orthodox lifestyle.

In one of the highly suspicious psychological assessments (these are more letters of recommendation--there is not any psychological assessment in them) that Gafni offered as evidence of his fitness to return to teaching after the 2006 incident in Israel, the following information was reported by Kevin Udis, Ph.D. and Thomas Meehan, L.C.S.W., B.C.D.:
Marc’s review of his family, which includes two brothers and divorced parents, is laden with early tragedy and horrific abuse in his parents’ early life related to the Holocaust and numerous examples of a fractured family life, of sadistic abuse and emotional neglect. ... There are some obvious repetitions in Marc’s adult life that reflect the lack of closeness and intimacy in his life as a child and young man and a propensity to find and engage conflict. Sadly, this frequently results in a familiar experience of loneliness and a lack of security and protection.
In a long email statement given to Luke Ford by the original 13-year-old survivor, she mentioned Gafni telling her that his mother had stuck his head in an oven.

I remember on one of the nights that he came into my room, woke me up and was trying to molest me, he told me that he and his brother were abused by their mother, who was a holocaust survivor. He told me that she stuck their heads in the kitchen oven. There was a very clear message that because of what had happened to him, he couldn't help but doing what he was doing to me, and he pleaded with me to understand that, have compassion with him, and comply.

If these reports are true, much of Gafni's dysfunction can be attributed to his own developmental trauma--a form of transgenerational trauma alarmingly common in families of Holocaust survivors, especially in the 2nd generation (see these recent articles: The Guardian, Scientific American, BMC Psychiatry).


Years later, in an interview with Luke Ford, Gafni denied the story completely.

In this case, the survivor has no reason to make up a detail like that, one that might make Gafni a more sympathetic character. And there is ample evidence that Gafni portrays himself, frequently, as a victim, whether it's of his past, his desires, or the beauty of the female he is grooming/seducing.

Maybe I am making him more sympathetic by including this information. I will take that risk.

By understanding some of Gafni's history (and this is just my speculation based on the pseudo-psych evaluations and comments from survivors of his abuse), he was likely terribly abused as a child, reportedly left home as a young teen to attend a Jewish high school, and probably has never adequately dealt with his childhood pain. This explains a lot of his behavior, but it does NOT justify it.

I'm guessing that the above wounding is what I saw in his body when I saw him at the 2010 Integral Theory Conference. He has the physical presence of a person carrying a lot of toxic shame.

Toxic shame (or internal shame) is quite different from external shame. The latter is "based on an unpleasant but just about tolerable feeling that other people look down on you and make bad judgements about you." Toxic shame, however, is "about feeling undesirable and unlovable," feeling  not good enough, or simply worthless (quotes are from Paul Gilbert, Professor of Psychology at the University of Derby, in The Guardian, Feb. 16, 2003).

In extreme cases (a lot of the clients I work with), toxic shame results from sexual or physical abuse and/or emotional neglect of young children. When the child is three or younger, the brain is being shaped and wired based on experience and can alter neural development (once believed to be irreparable).  Even older children can be affected by abuse and neglect, but because the first three years of life are when the brain's right hemisphere is developing based on interactions with care-givers, the relational, intersubjective, and affect regulating skills are deficient or non-existent.

More likely, however, childhood experiences of repeated and traumatic shame, including stern care-taking and little or no showing of affection, or when when responses by parents are harsh and critical more often than affectionate or loving, leads to shame becoming a primary affective experience for the child. The outcome of this is "shame-proneness," a tendency to experience shame and of making sense of negative experiences as proof of personal worthlessness.

Many researchers believe that toxic shame is the root of borderline personality disorder (BPD) and narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). Randi Kreger, author of Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder, writes on her Psychology Today blog:
One of the prime ways people with BPD or NPD is to dump their shame on others through blame, criticism, name-calling, and projection. This confuses them, wears away their self-esteem, and causes them to doubt themselves.
And:
Shame may also be behind the BPD/NPD need for control, because people with power feel less vulnerable to being shamed.
And this:
BPs and NPs can't afford to open themselves up (if indeed, they could) because rejection would be unthinkably wounding. It may surprise you to know that people who become involved with borderlines and narcissists also experience shame. Both people may need to work on their own shame before these shame-based relationships can become healthy. 
Gafni's sociopathy is an acting out of his childhood wounding and toxic shame, which likely manifests as a need to be loved and adored (and a profound inability to tolerate rejection), to feel in control (where he had no control over the abuse as a child), to hide his lack of self-esteem (probably manifesting in narcissistic tendencies toward inflation/deflation of self-concept), and to have power over his fate (low internal locus of control, seeming to always be at the mercy of others, especially in terms of justice - the "fall" in Israel is only partly his fault, for trusting too much, it was more the women's shadow material). These are common patterns for abuse survivors.

Again, this does not justify or excuse his behavior, it only serves to explain some of it.

* * * *

Here is a listing of all known (at this time) articles about Marc Gafni that have appeared since the December 25th New York Times article.

December 27th:
December 29th:
  • Soon followed a second article from Oppenheimer at Tablet Magazine, part 2 of the NYT article.
  • Also on the 29th, the Jewish Telegraph posted 4 quotes by ex-Orthodox rabbi Marc Gafni not in The NY Times article.
  • Matthew Gindin posted Some Thoughts On Marc Gafni at his blog, Seeking Her Voice.
  • Joe Perez "leaked" the supposedly "official" Integral Institute Report on Marc Gafni: Summary and Conclusions (circa 2008) , then deleted it. It became fully available online on Dec. 30th. To its discredit, there are several issues with this document, not least of which is the inclusion of material post-2008, with an addendum noting that it had been updated in 2011 and 2014. An "official" document of this nature is not updated, unless of of course it's NOT official. There is also the issue that those who know Gafni and his writing see his language and perspectives all over the text, again confirming it as unofficial, and in fact, pro-Gafni propaganda. What this DOES show is the lengths to which Gafni will go to cover his ass - forgery, lies, manipulation. 
December 30th:
Also on December 30th:
NOTE: In all fairness, Robb Smith and Corey DeVos made Integral Life a Gafni-free place in 2011, a decision that had been in the works for a year or more, but coincided with Gafni's affairs that cost him his book contract with Sounds True, as well as damaging two wonderful women I had the privilege of speaking with and getting to know.

December 31st: 
January 1st:
January 2nd:
January 3rd:
January 4th:
January 5th:
January 6th:
January 7th:
January 8th: 
January 9th:
  • The post you are reading appeared. As of 1.20.2016, it has more than 1,800 views.
    January 10th:

    January 12th:
    January 13th:

    January 14th:
    January 17th: 
    January 18th:
    January 19th:
    January 20th:


    As readers of this blog are well-aware, I have been tracking and reporting on Gafni and his predatory behaviors since May of 2006, when three women (Gafni was 46, they were in their 20s) in his Israeli Jewish community came forward about him having affairs with each of them and swearing them to secrecy. [Other reports placed the number at five women, three of whom filed complaints with the police, as well as others from the community and from Jerusalem who came forward when the story broke.]

    Here are some old posts from this blog: