Inappropriate touching – Universal Medicine’s secret culture of abuse

Art by V R Morrison

Last week, while Universal Medicine’s best and brightest were busy launching yet another desperate attempt to intimidate and defame me – this time labelling me and others mentally ill and cyberbullies – an anonymous reader left a disturbing comment on the Accountability blog:

I just wanted to share one of my experiences with these so called “healing techniques”. I have attended a few of these UM workshops and participated in the “excercises” and would like to say, as a man, I was very uncomfortable with it all. During the mentioned “femaleness” technique I had another man, one of Serge’s sons in fact, putting his hands directly on my genitals.

Now whether or not Serge is a pedophile, I do not wish to go there and open up more debate with his “followers”, teaching a technique that encourages people to be putting their hands close and in many cases directly on other people’s genitals/breasts is just plain irresponsible. Especially when there is no checks on the people attending the workshops. People are just blindly trusting these people to put their hands them and have respect and integrity (quite amusingly a word that the UMers like to use frequently, that one may have been “basterdised” by you Sergey boy).

It is ridiculous to this that there are parents who are comfortable letting their kids go to these events. And what’s worse is there are children as young as 11 & 12 participating. I have a serious question now for any UM member willing to answer. Do you honestly think that it is ok to let complete strangers, potentially pedophiles, put their hands on your 12 year old son or daughter? And what’s more in an environment that is presented to the children as safe would they fully understand what has happened to them if they were in fact touched? Would they speak out or just assume this is normal?

It scares me that there are people who are so blind to what’s going on around them that they can’t even see what’s in front of them. Parents letting their kids run around with minimal supervision in a room full of strangers and whether you want to believe it or not, undiagnosed mentally ill people.
I just wanted to put this forward as I think this is a very important issue that has only been touched on.

What’s the HCCC done to protect the public?

I don’t doubt anonymous was inappropriately touched. Another of our readers had his genitals, buttocks and anal region touched, without his consent, by two of Serge’s most feverish apologists at a workshop attended by hundreds. His penis was touched by a woman during practice of the ‘Deeper Femaleness‘ technique, which Serge Benhayon describes as a healing for ‘rape recovery’. His anal area was touched by a male who claimed to have pulled an ‘energetic snake’ from his rectum and proceeded to ask him if he looked at porn. He described the experience in a complaint to the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission, who sought a response from Serge Benhayon.

Benhayon flipped them his meaningless Esoteric Practitioners Association Pty Ltd Code of Conduct – the one we’ve already shown he and his upper rung profiteers liberally breach, and told them those delivering the courses do not accept inappropriate touching. However, he also said if a student ignored the warning in the Code, it was outside of his control. The HCCC decided Benhayon’s pretence at self regulation was sufficient to assure them he poses no public health risk and that no further investigation was warranted. In other words, it’s not misconduct because SERGE SAYS SO.

When the complainant reminded the HCCC of the Workshop manual images I’d sent them months before, clearly showing Benhayon teaching inappropriate touching, Commissioner Kieran Pehm, responded:

For the commission to explore this line of inquiry further I believe we would require additional evidence that there are individual patients who consider consent was obtained inappropriately. In such cases the Commission would need to establish on a case by case basis what information the practitioner had provided to the patient regarding the treatment and the rationale for this. If you have additional information as to the name/s of patients who have concerns regarding the the consenting process, or who have been subjected to inappropriate touching, I would encourage you to provide this information to the Commission.

Do we all feel safer after that response?

The fact that there is no context in which it’s appropriate for an unqualified person to touch genitals and pretend it’s healing appears to be of little consequence to the Commission. There is no appropriate basis for a patient to consent to that nonsense and the images themselves ought to be evidence enough.

Benhayon’s sleazy workshops should have been shut down a year ago, as well as his practice. And if anyone else has been touched inappropriately since the HCCC has had the images, the HCCC should be held liable.

Good questions

UM followers enamoured of the Benhayons not only believe it’s appropriate to put their hands on erogenous areas and call it healing, they promote the business, actively recruit more victims and take children to the events where it occurs. Our commenter raises the same serious concerns that have seen me labelled a troll, a psychopath and a cyber-bully, and compelled the cult to try and shut down my sites and attack my livelihood.

Because we’re motivated to protect the vulnerable.

Our commenter is right. Teaching inappropriate touching is irresponsible. I’ll go further to say that it constitutes indecent assault. Even when done ‘accidentally’, it falls under the definition of predatory grooming, as included in the post on Serge Benhayon’s inappropriate behaviours with children. His confirmation that the Benhayon sons participate is more concerning in light of Tibouchina’s account of Benhayon sharing physical affection with a young, unaccompanied teenage girl, as well as children and teens congregating at the UM clinic for group meetings with the Benhayon adult children.

I received several “healing” treatment sessions at the UM clinic, and each time I was in the waiting room I noticed several young girls (in their early teens) coming and going. At the workshop I later attended I recognized a young woman who turned out to be Natalie Benhayon. I had seen her at the clinic, so in hindsight I assumed she was facilitating activities with the younger girls I had seen.

Student notes tell us Natalie has run youth groups where children as young as 12 are pressured into group disclosures of sexual activity and drug, alcohol and porn use.

At one point I saw Michael Benhayon standing behind a girl who was sitting down in a chair. He was gently stroking her cheek with the back of his fingers. At first glance I thought it might have been his wife but I realized it was actually one of the young teenage girls I’d also seen at the clinic. 

…in an environment that is presented to the children as safe would they fully understand what has happened to them if they were in fact touched? Would they speak out or just assume this is normal?

Witnessing how the cult has harassed and intimidated me for speaking out, what hope is there for children or other vulnerable individuals who have been victimised?

Who is protecting them apart from us alleged ‘trolls’?

Even if they were conditioned to think molestation is normal, when it hits home what has happened – and it will – and that a group of pretentious busy bodies wholeheartedly enabled it, how will they feel? How will they feel to know the people who professed ‘love of humanity’ were bullying and defaming the people trying to protect them.

So when Universal Medicine portrays me, Lance and Robert as cyber-bullies, it’s a smokescreen for their indefensible activities. The cult is currently equating us with the Twitter trolls who told Charlotte Dawson to kill herself. It’s offensive to the memory of Ms Dawson and in disgraceful disregard for the people who have been affected by UM’s abuses and have required ongoing care. UM’s apologists are busy falsely defaming us by amplifying their rhetoric linking cyber-bullying with suicide. Do we need to point out the correlations between suicide and sexual abuse; suicide and cults; suicide and financial loss; suicide and family breakdown?

I don’t know whether Serge Benhayon is a paedophile either, but when there is a clear pattern of mass grooming behaviour that would not be tolerated in anyone else, why put children at risk?

Instead of trying to silence us, why not answer the questions? Why not talk with the media, as I have? Why all the secrets?

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Posts on UniMed’s risks to children on the FACTS blog and Universal Medicine Accountability

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