STANDING naked before a small, dishevelled 67-year-old man, in his dirty dressing gown, Miranda felt scared and vulnerable, knowing what was about to happen.
But brain-washed, she felt compelled to let Gregorian Bivolaru, who she had been conditioned to believe was ‘God on Earth’, have sex with her to receive a higher spiritual awakening.
Gregorian Bivolaru used a disgusting sex ‘routine’ to initiate women[/caption]
Nudity and group sex were encouraged at the retreats[/caption]
“I thought, ‘I don’t want to do this.’” says the 30-something-year-old woman from Oxfordshire, who is not being fully identified. “He looked so much older and frailer than I had imagined.
“I was physically repulsed by this person. I was shocked because we had been told so much about how this was a perfect living example of a tantric master.”
What followed in the dirty bed in his squalid two-bedroom apartment on the outskirts of Paris was both sickening and bizarre.
Closing her eyes, Miranda recited the ‘consecration ritual’ she had been taught – “Lord God, I offer up to you, here and now, totally and unconditionally, all the fruits of this action.”
The sexual routine followed rules – 40 minutes of foreplay that only he could perform, then penetrative sex in seven different positions, each supposedly relating to the seven tantric chakra points of energy around the body.
Miranda adds: “I went into autopilot, feeling completely disconnected and repulsed. After three of the positions he said, ‘You have lost your erotic energy. We are going to stop.’”
Miranda’s journey to this degrading point began in the most ordinary way possible when, two years before, as an English teacher living in London, she joined a yoga class.
Her remarkable story is told in the BBC Radio 4 podcast World of Secrets: The Bad Guru.
It follows how Miranda, a respectable, educated woman was lured into a sex cult that would place her at the centre of an international trafficking and sexual exploitation ring, in the bed of the movement’s so-called guru, becoming a topless masseur and being put to work as a sex cam girl.
Miranda was finding her job as a teacher in London stressful when, in an effort to find some spiritual and mental wellbeing she joined the Tara Yoga Centre near Old Street in 2017.
A seemingly innocent yoga class proved a gateway to the sect[/caption]
The centre promoted the teachings of Romanian-born Bivolaru, and was part of the the Movement for Spiritual Integration into the Absolute (MISA) it had various branches in the UK and 28 other countries.
She says: “It felt a really safe and welcoming space. People in the reception were smiley and friendly.”
As well as basic classes, it offers tantric yoga – a spiritual aspect encompassing love and relationships.
For weeks, Miranda attended a one-hour tantric class, which she says made her feel “good” and “amazing”.
In the spring of 2018, she was invited to attend a weekend retreat in a beautiful country house in Somerset, organised by the Centre.
She explains: “The course was called ‘The Polarity Retreat’. Polarity is one of their tantric theories that there is a very binary concept that men and women have very different needs, qualities and energies and that by separating them, as much as possible, you increase the magnetism between them.”
At the house, the men and women were split into separate groups – a tactic to ” increase the magnetism between them.”
After some meditative yoga with the women’s group, Miranda was surprised when things took an overtly sexual turn – learning about make-up, clothes and how to look sexy.
“We were encouraged to dance very sexually to a song,” she says.
Later, they were told to surprise the men by doing the sexy dance for them they had learned.
She says: “Some of the teachers wore just their underwear or took their underwear off when they were in there. I wore a short skirt and a top.
“I danced close to my tantric teacher from London and I remember him looking directly at my crotch.
“I was shocked because it was very much in conflict with everything we had been taught about spiritual sexuality where teachers, in particular, were on a higher level and understood women and worshipped them and didn’t sexualise them.”
Group sex
Although she felt uncomfortable with the sexual part of the course, Miranda felt the retreat gave her “new levels of confidence because I got used to being outside my comfort zone.”
In the summer of 2018, she was excited to be invited to a yoga festival in a coastal resort in Romania for two weeks.
By now, she was getting used to the movement’s unorthodox ways and accepted supplying a half-naked photograph of herself prior to the event.
This was so that the great and mystical Gregorian Bivolaru – who wouldn’t be attending the event in person but was there in spirit – could “read her aura.”
At the reception, Miranda was asked to leave her passport and mobile phone which would be returned on departure.
She adds: “The women then pulled out a bible, placed my hand on it and gave me a sheet of paper to read out words vowing that I wouldn’t tell anyone about what happened inside the villa and that if I did I would face the spiritual and health consequences of my demonic action.”
What was going to happen in this villa to warrant this demonic vow?
There were around 150 women staying there and thousands of others attending. In the centre of the complex was a huge marquee pumping out dance music and inside, people sat on wooden benches, silently meditating.
“The music involved certain sexual noises and moans and it was set to a compilation of soft porn videos as part of a programme of sexual boundary stretching”, she says.
The evenings were given up to the bizarre Miss Shakti competition. Shakti is a tantric word for femininity.
I went into autopilot, feeling completely disconnected and repulsed
Miranda
Miranda says it was “a kind of hyper-sexualised Miss World.” She watched, wide-eyed as things became increasingly sexual with bikini parades, nudity and even simulated sex.
When she was asked if she would like to meet Bivolaru at some time in the future, she jumped at the chance.
As the festival came to a close, guests staying at the women’s villa took part in an organised love-making ritual.
Miranda says: “The windows were closed, curtains drawn. They put down a lot of black tarpaulin with mattresses on top of that.
“Three women stood there naked, painted in gold. They were playing evocative meditative music and then the ritual started.”
Sinister initiation
Miranda started noticing the increasingly sexual nature of the centre’s teachings[/caption]
She met Gregorian Bivolaru and felt compelled to have sex with him[/caption]
Now, seeing her family and friends less frequently, Miranda was still absorbed by the movement back in London.
She even worked alongside her tantric teachers at a topless massage parlour, six minutes away from the Centre.
“I didn’t like using body parts, especially breasts, to massage guests but there was an ecstatic sense of overcoming something that you were nervous about that we were told was good for us on a spiritual level,” she says.
In June 2019, Miranda got word that Bivolaru, was ready to meet her and there would also be something called “an initiation.”
Around the same time she learned he had been sentenced to six years in prison for having sex with an underage girl in Romania.
Agnes Arabela Marques, 33, would later reveal she was one of the underage girls he abused, when she was 15, and she revealed he believed he could achieve a high level of spirituality if he slept with 1,000 virgins.
She said: “Bivolaru claimed that, if I had sex with him as a yoga master, I could achieve superior levels of tantric spirituality.”
Bivolaru was dishevelled and dirty when Miranda met him[/caption]
Agnes claims she was abused by the guru at 15[/caption]
But at the time, Miranda was told by other followers that he was facing political persecution in Romania.
She was unaware that he in hiding and was wanted in Finland on five charges of aggravated trafficking of human beings and four charges of sexual abuse.
Miranda found herself being driven across Europe with three other women, and made to wear dark glasses and a hat over her eyes so she wouldn’t see where she was going.
Help after rape and sexual assault
IF you’ve been sexually assaulted it’s important to remember that it was not your fault. Sexual violence is a crime, no matter who commits it or where it happens. Don’t be afraid to get help.
There are services that can help if you’ve been sexually assaulted, raped or abused.
You don’t have to report the assault to the police if you don’t want to. You may need time to think about what has happened to you.
But you should get medical help for any injuries and because you may be at risk of pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections (STIs). If you want the crime to be investigated, it’s best to have a forensic medical examination as soon as possible.
Try not to wash or change your clothes immediately after a sexual assault. This may destroy forensic evidence that could be important if you decide to report the assault to the police (although you can still go to the police even if you have washed).
Where to get help
Sexual assault referral centres (SARCs) offer medical, practical and emotional support to anyone who has been raped, sexually assaulted or abused. SARCs have specially trained doctors, nurses and support workers to care for you.
Other places you can get help include:
- a doctor or practice nurse at your GP surgery
- a voluntary organisation, such as Rape Crisis, Women’s Aid, Victim Support, The Survivors Trust or Male Survivors Partnership
- the 24-hour freephone National Domestic Abuse Helpline, run by Refuge, on 0808 2000 247
- the rape and sexual abuse support line run by Rape Crisis England and Wales – you can call the helpline on 0808 500 2222 or use the online chat (both are free and are open 24 hours a day, every day of the year)
- a hospital accident and emergency (A&E) department
- a genitourinary medicine (GUM) or sexual health clinic
- a contraceptive clinic
- a young people’s service
- call NHS 111 or get help from 111 online
- the police, or dial 101
- in an emergency, dial 999
They were taken to a three-storey ‘holding house’ where they waited with various other women for the guru to contact them, while being made to watch streamed porn.
After two and a half weeks, she and two other women heard that Bivolaru was ready to meet them.
“We were told to shower and shave all of our body hair, not use any deodorant, perfume or creams, and to pack a toothbrush and a couple of changes of underwear”, she says.
Blindfolded, they were taken to an apartment block where the women slept in the second bedroom until Miranda finally was called into Bivolaru squalid bed, surrounded by fairy lights.
After the sexual initiation, she was taken to another holding house in the city to record a naked testimonial video for others to watch.
Miranda also signed a declaration saying she had never been raped by Bivolaru or any other person or been trafficked or psychologically manipulated.
She was then taken to another house in Prague, for what Bivolaru had called The Garden of Miracles, where huge transformations will take place.
It turned out to be women performing as cam girls – live feeding themselves in lingerie, dancing, stripping and touching themselves provocatively for the camera to paying customers.
Miranda worked on the webcam into the early hours in a basement room of the villa.
She says: “If you were not smiling or active enough, one of the coordinators would come in and tell you off. And there were fines.
“Leaving the fridge open was a ten euro fine, an unwashed plate was 25 euros, leaving a tissue in your pocket when you gave your laundry to them to do was a 150 euro fine and being late to work, even by one minute, was 500 euros.”
Bivolaru on an Interpol wanted poster[/caption]
Despite this, she still felt she was doing the right thing in order to reach heightened spirituality.
After six months there she visited her parents in Oxfordshire. They had been concerned about her but mum Penny says: “she seemed happier.”
Miranda was beginning to have doubts but it wasn’t until she began talking to a man at the Oxford branch of the Tara Yoga Centre that her eyes were fully opened.
“He said, ‘You know it’s a cult, right? You know that you are brainwashed?’ I was extremely angry at first and I didn’t talk to him for a few days but on some levels I was ready to hear it. And over the next few months I thought about it.”
On New Year’s Eve, Miranda was at her parent’s, in her old bedroom watching a TV programme about cults.
She says: “I knew I had to leave and to tell people. To admit to myself and then to my mum that it was a sex cult was extremely painful and embarrassing.”
In November 2023 Bivolaru was arrested by French police and charged with human trafficking, organised kidnapping, rape and organised abuse of weakness by members of a sect.
In a raid, which also saw 40 of his followers arrested and £500,000 seized, police found 58 women living in appalling conditions in various properties, with no hygiene facilities, and many were malnourished.
The investigation continues.
Gregorian Bivolaru had gotten in trouble with the law on multiple occasions[/caption]
A raid found 58 women living in terrible conditions in various properties[/caption]
