Zlin, South Moravia, Jan 26 (CTK) – A Czech regional court sentenced on Friday Jaroslav Dobes, 46, dubbed “Guru Jara,” founder of the Poetrie esoteric school, and his close aide Barbora Plaskova, 34, to 7.5 years in prison each for raping six women during his “seminars.”
Both defendants faced up to 12 years in prison originally.
They are prosecuted as fugitives since they stay in the Philippines now.
Their defence councillors demanded that the clients be acquitted, while the state attorney proposed the highest possible prison sentence.
According to the indictment, the “Guru Jara” was getting women and girls rid of “hitches” within his seminars. He claimed their problems were due to the hitches virtually left inside them by their previous partners.
During sexual intercourse, he said he got them rid of the hitches. The clients had no idea of the technique to be used for “de-hitching.”
Some of the clients of his Poetrie school tried to resist, but most of them were not able to control their body and react after an initial breathing exercise. The school lecturers headed by Plaskova sexually stimulated the women first and then Dobes appeared unexpectedly and had sex with them.
The indictment describes eight cases which occurred between 2004 and 2007.
Some of the victims suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder afterwards. About 350 women underwent Dobes’s method, many of them voluntarily, according to the police files.
The defence counsels say the women knew what they would go through beforehand and consequently, no crime was comitted.
The school was offering seminars in yoga, tantra, astrology and work with energy.
The Regional Court in Zlin imposed ten years behind bars on Dobes, while Plaskova was given 9.5 years for having raped the school students in 2014. However, the High Court annulled the verdict and returned the case to the Zlin court for reappraisal.
Dobes and Plaskova were detained in the Philippines in May 2015 and now they stay in an immigration detention centre there. The Philippine authorities rejected their request for a religious asylum, but Dobes and Plaskova appealed the decision. The final verdict has not been issued yet.
