B. Radha-Govinda – USA:  Laxmimoni since the early beginnings in ISKCON has always been a very ambitious, hard, and cruel-hearted woman. Many devotees know this, and there are so many stories of proof, not only in regards to how she was abusive of children under her supervision.

Devotees are either afraid to speak up, are so fed up of so many abuses and deviations within ISKCON that they just don’t want to have to be bothered thinking of (and speaking out with) these things – especially because they feel they’re not going to get anywhere anyway in trying to address something), or are still traumatized by what they’ve gone through and don’t want to have to reminded of it, (so they say nothing in these regards), along with the other reasons devotees decide to not address something that has happened to them or to their child or to other devotees they know.

We see how Bhavananda, despite what he’s done, which is somewhat known, has been given a prominent position in Mayapur; his sitting on the asana giving class calling devotees “fallen,” despite his past, having previously molested children, along with his famous “taxi ride.”

Laxmimoni to this day revels in her “glories” from her ISKCON past, and though I feel has become slightly more human (in seeing her own body getting affected with the “not so nice” effects of old age), she is still very stone-hearted.

Regarding the places where Laxmimoni served, and devotees who know, LM is very well-known for her stone heart and cruelty. It’s not for me to speak regarding the stories of others (who under her hand experienced the abuses she met out to them), but I’ve known LM since the early 1970s, know of her cruelty to others, and experienced things myself when she was in charge of the women in the West 55th St temple in Manhattan.

(Personally, I feel very sorry for her; that someone could be possessed of that much of a hard heart, and worse, chanting for so many years, yet her heart still being so hard (and she being so cruel).

Laxmimoni – maybe due to her own fears? that she should never experience any problem with her body – would only have appreciation for devotees whose bodies were in good physical condition, and were able “to do so much service.” It was only these devotees who she considered “worthy.”

When Laxmimoni knew me from Buffalo (my being the “one (wo)man temple” – since the other devotees would go out to collect, so I was doing all the temple cooking, Deity worship, and cleaning services – I was on her “list” of “wonderful” devotees. After I had gotten shot in the temple, although I was still rendering all of my services, when LM came through again, realizing my body got messed up, she had a very different attitude. (And knowing she related to other devotees in such a way, when their bodies “weren’t ‘perfect,’” my understanding is that this attitude comes from her own fear in relation to herself; that nothing like this should ever happen to her body.)

I can give a lot of personal examples of her hard-heartedness, (besides the others I know in regards to other devotees to whom LM did things to), but for now, here’s one:

I had just gone through a major operation while in the W. 55th temple, and resumed my services at the temple. After serving the Deities, and then putting Śrīla Prabhupāda to rest, I told LM I had a fever, explaining that I was sure this was resultant from something going on regarding the operation, possibly infection and felt I should go to the hospital ER.

LM chastised me, telling me I “You’re in maya. You’re not that body,” as well as the other things said in regards to my being such a nonsense to be in maya to be thinking I should go to the hospital in regards to this fever, etc. So of course I followed her, (my authority’s) instruction, and did nothing, spending the whole night chanting (and then with added crying from the pain as the body’s symptoms got worse). Burning up with fever, I was chanting, lying on the bare floor (in winter – where there was no heat in the temple as Adi Keshava had ordered it be turned off, though he and all the other’s in positions of authority (including Laxmimoni) had space heaters for themselves. (LM had two – the large kind that give off a lot of heat.) I was lying on the bare floor of my room with my sari covering the lower portion of my body, nothing on top, so I could get the cold from the tile floor to lower the heat of my upper body.

At 2:30 AM, one of the other matajis – she and I would be the earliest awake, chanting our rounds as both of us had service prior to Mangal Arotik – heard me chanting in my room, though she knew I would always be chanting in a different area. (I didn’t even realize that I was chanting that loud that someone else would be hearing me, my having been chanting throughout the whole night.) Gangagati prabhu opened the door and saw me rolling on the floor, chanting japa and crying, obviously in extreme pain. She told me, “We have to go to the hospital.” In my delirium (from high fever), I told her, “We can’t go. You have to grind the chandan and I have to make up the Mangal Arotik plates.” Gangagati inisted that we were going, and she took me to the hospital ER. I was admitted right then and there with a 106° fever (Fahrenheit) due to infection. Most likely had Gangagati prabhu not taken me to this hospital I would have left the body. Even though Laxmimoni knew I had gone through a major (thoracotomy) operation – cut from under the left breast to the left side of the spine – I was chastised by her for my asking permission to go to the ER to have the fever and feelings of sickness from possibility of infection (of a major operation) checked into.

(It should be noted that there was no heat or hot water in the temple for “regular devotees” during the winter months; that these factors very possibly contributed to the infection setting in, though all the “in-charges” had space heaters for themselves (Laxmimoni had two), and were having their bath water heated up by other devotees. Some may even know the story of how she whimsically decided to “switch Rādhārāṇī’s” regarding three sets of Deities – Detroit, Toronto, and there was the third, which now I’m not remembering for sure, though I believe it was Dallas.

When I see that this woman (as well as Sesa) are the GBC people for “education,” it makes me livid. But then again, it would only be “normal,” for the GBC to do such things, because considering how CORRUPT the whole GBC is as a general body, and so many of the various individuals who I know who are on it are so DISPICABLE/CORRUPT, etc., is there any surprise that they would make the decision they do, and choose the people they do for this position and that?

Your servant,

B. Radha-Govinda
Hare Krsna