The Freedom to Be Strange

Edythe Kreshower, 47, a twice-divorced housewife in Queens, N. Y., was appalled when her daughter Merylee suddenly decided five years ago to join the Hare Krishna sect. Merylee had been finishing her second year at Queens College and hoped to become a teacher. But she took the Hindu name of Murti Vanya, became a nun in the sect's New York City temple, donned a saffron sari and joined her fellow devotees in chanting in the streets.* Convinced that Merylee, 24, had been brainwashed, her mother hired a private detective, Galen Kelly, to rescue her.

Into a Van. Kelly, who had performed about 70 similar missions in the past, seized Merylee at a shopping center last Aug. 5, forced her into a van and took her to a motel. There he began the increasingly common ritual known as deprogramming, in which the convert to some strange-sounding, all-encompassing religion is subjected to threats and arguments until he gives up his new faith. After five days of this, Merylee pretended to accept Kelly's arguments, was released, got back to the Hare Krishna temple in Manhattan and charged Kelly and her mother with kidnaping.

When the charge went before the grand jury, however, Queens Prosecutor Michael Schwed accused not the deprogrammers but the Hare Krishnas themselves. The grand jury indicted two leaders of the sect, Angus Murphy and Harold Conley, for "unlawful imprisonment" of Merylee, on the theory that she had lost her free will due to Hare Krishna "mind control." For good measure, the two leaders were also accused of brainwashing another convert, Ed Shapiro, 22, and of getting him to try to extort a $20,000 family trust fund from his father. Young Shapiro had once been worked on by Ted Patrick, the originator of deprogramming, but had also escaped by feigning agreement. "The thing that frightens me," Schwed told the New York Times, "is that a group like this [the Hare Krishnas] can use mind control to create an army of zombies or robots who could undermine the Government."

To Defense Attorney Paul Chevigny, it was "a classic freedom of religion issue." Agreed Attorney Jeremiah Gutman of the American Civil Liberties Union: "This case affects the most fundamental kind of First Amendment issues." Added Harvard Theologian Harvey Cox: "Some Oriental religious movements bother us because they pose a threat to the values of career success, individual competition, personal ambition and consumption, on which our economic system depends. We forget that Christianity, taken literally, could cause similar disquietude."

Last week New York State Supreme Court Justice John J. Leahy threw out the indictments and summarily dismissed the case as a "direct and blatant violation" of constitutionally guaranteed religious freedom. Leahy stated that the Hare Krishnas' "indoctrination and constant chanting" may create "an inability to think, to be reasonable or logical," but that does not make it any less a religion. Both of the supposed victims voluntarily submitted to the tightly regulated life in the local temple, he said. The prosecutors admitted that no physical coercion was involved, and they failed to show any "deception" that, under New York law, might have justified the charges. The judge sympathized with the "hurt, fear and loneliness" of parents when children reject their former life, but, he added, the law sees nothing wrong with "unconventional" belief, proselytizing, chanting, or self-denial.

The ruling, the first of its kind, is not binding on other courts, but Justice Leahy issued a "dire" warning to prosecutors across the nation to protect religious freedom. At the courtroom, robed and garlanded Defendant Murphy exulted, "Where there is Krishna there is victory." The victory was not total, however. Legal expenses have crippled Hare Krishna activities in New York, the abductors of Merylee Kreshower have escaped prosecution, and Justice Leahy's words are unlikely to deter deprogrammers elsewhere.

*The Hare Krishnas--also notable for shaving their heads except for one hank of hair by which they can be yanked into heaven--follow a centuries-old tradition of bhakti (devotion) to Krishna, one of the major Hindu gods. The sect was founded in the U.S. in 1966 by an Indian guru, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, and numbers 2,500 core members; missionaries back to India have gained few converts.

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