Butler's Web, Part 3: Grooming the Second Generation

Featured Story, Part Three of a Three-part Series

by Christine Gralow, Meanwhile in Hawaii, December 31, 2017 (excerpt)

​Kailua, HI - When current Hawai'i State Senator Mike Gabbard was 29, he sent a letter from American Samoa to a temple in Bombay. It was January 1977, and Gabbard was then Assistant Dean of Instruction at American Samoa Community College. He sought spiritual guidance from A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) - better known as the Hare Krishna movement.

In the letter, Gabbard described how he was first exposed to ISKCON in 1973, through a chance meeting with a man named Vijay, who stopped in Samoa while on a mission to spread Krishna Consciousness in Fiji. Gabbard wrote that Vijay stayed at the Gabbard family’s home in Samoa for a week, introducing the family to ISKCON tenets. Soon after, Gabbard began regularly chanting the Hare Krishna mantra, selling Spiritual Sky incense, and distributing ISKCON’s Back to Godhead magazine at Mike’s Sport Shop, his family business in Samoa. Gabbard also described for Prabhupada his travels to ISKCON temples in California, Colorado, Hawai'i, and New Zealand.

“The four years since my meeting with Vijay has been a roller-coaster ride,” Gabbard wrote in the letter. “By roller-coaster ride: I mean that I can understand why Lord Caitanya and you stress association with devotees.”

The genuine soul-searching Gabbard expressed in this letter marked an early stage of his family’s journey into the dizzying world of Kris (aka Chris) Butler’s Science of Identity Foundation (SIF), a secretive sect headquartered here in Kailua, on O'ahu’s Windward Coast. As covered earlier in this series, the SIF network is a complex web of political grooming, shady international financial connections, and alleged cultism. Three long-time, high-ranking Butler followers who have served as SIF financiers – Allan Tibby, Joseph Bismark, and Patrick Bowler - have faced international criminal allegations of money laundering, syndicated estafa (racketeering), and drug smuggling, respectively. In 1977, Honolulu Advertiser investigative reporter Walter Wright uncovered Butler’s underhanded involvement in a Hawai'i political party called Independents for Godly Government, which Butler's followers financially floated with mysterious funds. 

U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a second generation Butler disciple, speaks at a town hall event in Waianae, O'ahu, in Feb. 2017, as John Bishop, a Butler disciple since the '70s, photographs Gabbard's constituents. (Photo by Christine Gralow)

The Move to Hawai'i and Early School Days

Prabhupada mailed a reply to Mike Gabbard from West Bengal, India, dated February 18, 1977. 

“Your idea for starting a Krsna Conscious center in American Samoa is very good,” Prabhupada wrote to Gabbard in a letter filed at the Bhaktivedanta Archives in Sandy Ridge, NC, “but first you must be well conversant with our philosophy.”  

Later that year, Prabhupada died in India at age 81. He had wildly succeeded in spreading his Krishna Consciousness movement in the West, even reaching pop culture through George Harrison and The Beatles. His movement had spread especially quickly here in Hawai'i, among the counterculture hippie crowd.  

After Prabhupada’s death, Butler declared himself one of Prabhupada’s pure devotees and true disciples, despite having had a brief and rocky relationship with the Indian spiritual leader. (As detailed in part two of this series, Prabhupada actually denounced Butler several times and accused him of criminal activity.)

Butler, who has gone by many names, began going by “Srila Prabhupada” soon after the ISKCON founder’s death.

In 1983, the Gabbard family moved from American Samoa to Hawai'i, where they became deeply involved with Butler and SIF. Within SIF, Mike Gabbard became known as Krishna Katha das (also spelled Krsna Katha das) and his wife, Carol, became known as Devahuti dasi. Their daughter, current U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, was just two when the family relocated to Hawai'i.

By this time, many of Butler’s earliest and most devoted followers had young children. Butler strongly advised against sending the children to public schools or even allowing them to associate with non-SIF children. As a professional educator, Mike Gabbard was charged with running a private SIF school on O'ahu for the children of Butler’s disciples, the Ponomauloa School. Gabbard's deep spiritual devotion to Butler also soon led to his position as Butler’s secretary of personal affairs. Carol Gabbard soon became SIF’s treasurer.

In 1984, when SIF’s private schools were just starting up, Butler delivered a lecture on education to his disciples in Honolulu. A transcription of this lecture was widely circulated within SIF and leaked to Meanwhile in Hawai'i -along with dozens of other internal SIF documents - by a former Butler disciple who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. Three men who grew up within SIF say they recall repeatedly listening to a recording of this lecture as children at SIF schools. One former Butler disciple also confirmed her presence at the lecture and identified others named in the lecture transcription.

In the rambling lecture on education, Butler discussed his broken childhood dream of becoming a Major League Baseball player. He claimed his family was driven out of Louisiana and tracked by the CIA when he was a "baby," due to the family’s communist and civil rights stances. (As covered in part two of this series, his father, the late Dr. Willis Butler, was, in fact, a far-left political activist with communist sympathies.) Butler also railed against public school teachers in the lecture and discussed his father’s disappointment in him when he failed classes as an adolescent.  

“The teachers aren’t interested in teaching,” Butler said in the 1984 lecture. “They’re simply going for their paycheck, which of course you can know by the fact that they go on strike if they don’t get enough money, right? F**k the kids, we want our money, more money, we only make $22,000 a year. You know how hard it is to live with $22,000 a year when you’ve got three cars and four houses?”

Butler advised against allowing children to watch television, and he lectured against teaching evolution and history.

“Screw the history book,” he said.

Butler also discussed his interest in politics, addressed “Krsna Katha das” (aka Mike Gabbard) directly during the lecture, and encouraged the children of his disciples to go into politics.

“What you’ve got to do is get one of these kids to run for office,” Butler said. “Find out why you have to be a certain age to run for office … or a school board.”

Dark Days - Inside the Baguio Boarding School

In the late ‘80s, in addition to Mike Gabbard's school on O'ahu, SIF began running a remote boarding school for the children of Butler's disciples in Baguio City, Philippines. The school was modeled loosely after traditional Indian gurukuls, where children studied directly with a guru away from home. Unlike traditional gurukuls, however, Butler – the guru – did not reside at the Baguio school or have any direct interaction with the children. In place of direct spiritual and educational guidance from their guru, the students listened to Butler’s recorded lectures and bowed to pictures of Butler. Children of Butler’s followers from the U.S., Australia, the Philippines, and New Zealand were sent to the school.

Butler was “never there,” said Ian Koviak, who attended the Baguio boarding school for over four years, from ages 12 to 16. 

“My mother joined SIF in late 1989 in New York City,” Koviak explained in an email to Meanwhile in Hawai'i. “It was not long before we moved to LA, Malibu, where Butler was at the time, and not too much longer after that I went to the Philippines school.”

Koviak, now 38, said he listened repeatedly to Butler's lectures while at the Baguio school, including the 1984 education lecture.

“Some lectures bashed scientists like Carl Sagan and other modern thinkers,” Koviak wrote. “Then there were the private tapes that were only for his disciples and close followers. Those went into graphic detail about homosexuality and male on male intercourse.”

Koviak said the students also watched a video produced by Mike Gabbard’s Stop Promoting Homosexuality organization, which included footage of men having sex in public. Koviak said he began seriously reflecting on this school experience and reconnecting with old classmates in 2011, when he started a blog about the school. 

 “I started the blog because I was feeling odd about what we went through,” Koviak wrote, “I wanted to see if this was the feeling others shared.”  

​Koviak and four other former students of the SIF boarding school all say they were regularly hungry and sleep deprived while at the school. They also all say they spent at least four hours a day chanting, often in a dark room. They say Butler disciples Ramon “Toby” Tamayo and Allan Tibby (aka Acharya das) led the school. The men emailed school pictures and old school newsletters to Meanwhile in Hawai'i. In one of the newsletters, Patrick Bowler – a long-time Butler disciple and SIF financier who was arrested in 1997 for running a major international hashish smuggling ring – is listed as a cash contributor to the school.

While the former students all say their school days involved some traditional classes taught by outside teachers - such as math and grammar – they say the main focus of the school was the SIF philosophy and worship of Butler. Per Butler’s 1984 lecture, they did not take history classes, learn about evolution, or watch television. The men all painted a strikingly dark picture of their experiences at the school, and they all say they have struggled psychologically as adults. Four of the men used the term “indoctrination” when describing the school experience.

Only Koviak and Rama Ranson - who has become a vocal anti-Butler critic online - wished to be publicly named. The three other men requested anonymity, because they wish to remain in contact with relatives who still worship Butler, and they fear retaliation. Meanwhile in Hawai'i confirmed these three men’s identities, their parents’ status as Butler disciples, and their attendance at the SIF Baguio school.

Ranson, also now 38, said his parents sent him and his younger brother to the boarding school in 1993, when he was 14 and his brother was 12. Ranson said he felt “a deep impulse to get out of that school immediately.”

After two weeks at the school, Ranson said he exaggerated an illness to "escape," and he was eventually allowed to return home to his father. He said his younger brother, Sudama, stayed at the school, was raised by non-relative SIF members for the remainder of his childhood, and currently closely serves Butler in Kailua. Ranson now runs the website Rama Ranson vs. the Cult.  

A third man, who attended the Baguio school for four years from ages 11 to 15, said, “We were taught to follow the teachings and words of Butler as if they were the holy divine word itself."

“At first it was kinda’ cool to go to a new place," the man continued. "But soon I did not like it. We were always hungry. I almost committed suicide when I was there. I really wanted to go home but was told that my parents did not want me to go back home.”

The students were taught that, “Fag**ts are taking over and doing disgusting things,” the man said. He also told Meanwhile in Hawai'i that he reported sexual abuse at the school and was accused by school leaders of lying.

A fourth man who attended the school for a year in the early '90s said, “We were taught Butler and [his wife] Wai Lana were the only true messengers of god, and serving them would be the ultimate mission in life.”

“They strip you of your individual identity,” the fourth man said while recalling his memories of the SIF boarding school. “They humiliate you, try to figure out your strengths and weaknesses. You weren’t allowed to talk to any outsiders. You were not allowed to contact your family.”

“Everything we did there was in preparation for whatever they wanted us to do next."

A fifth man who attended the school said he suffered from depression and addiction after realizing as an adult that his guru, Butler, did not love him. 

Three of the men also attended Mike and Carol Gabbard’s SIF school on O'ahu, the Ponomauloa School. They said the O'ahu school was “more mellow” than the Baguio school. Children lived at home with their parents while attending the Gabbards' school, the men said, but they were still taught to worship Butler, and they were repeatedly exposed to sexually graphic, anti-homosexual material.

One former student said the Gabbards were at times good teachers, but all school lessons essentially tied back to Butler’s philosophies.

“I know nothing of U.S. history or world history,” one of the former students wrote in an email to Meanwhile in Hawai'i. “I am just now reading poems and books, like Catcher in the Rye, one would normally read in school.”

The men say they believe SIF’s schools in the Philippines are now run more responsibly, but one man said there is still a “full on indoctrination school” in Bukidnon, Philippines, called Madana Mohana Academy. The school’s website advertises its service to underprivileged children from preschool through 12th grade. The school claims to be "non-sectarian." The website includes a quote by Jagad Guru (aka Butler) and refers to him as “a renowned philosopher and educator.” Children can be seen bowing in front of a large, framed picture of Butler in a video shared publicly on the Madana Mohana Academy’s Facebook page.

Mike Gabbard did not respond to inquiries from ​Meanwhile in Hawai'i. Neither did the Science of Identity Foundation.

Tulsi Then and Now

The men who attended the boys’ boarding school all say there was also a SIF girls’ boarding school in the Philippines at the time. They all believe current U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) attended the SIF girls’ school as a teenager in the '90s. Two of the men say they also grew up around Rep. Gabbard on O'ahu. Male and female students were strictly separated at the Philippines boarding schools, per Butler’s instructions, the men say.

Rep. Gabbard has been strikingly evasive with journalists and constituents regarding her continued close discipleship with Butler and her teenage years in the Philippines. Though it seems she has removed mention of the experience from her official biography, several references to her “two years spent at an all-girls missionary academy in the Philippines” can still be found online.

A Nov. 2017 article on Rep. Gabbard in The New Yorker magazine also mentions that, “as a girl, she spent two years in the Philippines, at informal schools run by followers of Butler.” (It is also clear from the The New Yorker article that Rep. Gabbard was less than forthcoming with the reporter regarding her relationship with Butler and SIF.)  

Other than these two mysterious years in the Philippines, Rep. Gabbard was home-schooled as a child by her parents. Her ex-husband, Eduardo Tamayo, is the nephew of Ramon “Toby” Tamayo, who ran the Baguio boys’ school. Her current husband, Abraham Williams, is also a second generation Butler disciple, as are at least three of her current, key Congressional staffers. At least two of her current staffers are first generation Butler disciples.

Rep. Gabbard did not reply to multiple inquiries from Meanwhile in Hawai'i.

Mike, Carol, and Tulsi Gabbard all began their political careers at roughly the same time, in the early 2000s, ostensibly following Butler’s advice to go into politics – “or a school board.” They all demonstrated strong anti-gay and pro-environmental agendas at the time, reflecting Butler and SIF's views.

read … Grooming the Second Generation

Butler's Web, Part One

Butler's Web, Part Two