Krishnas Protest Court Award to Ex-Member

VENICE — With hand-drawn chariots, cymbals and conga drums, about 2,000 members of the Hare Krishna movement staged a colorful march along the waterfront at Venice Beach on Sunday to protest a $9.7-million Orange County Superior Court judgment that, if upheld, they say could force them to sell their Los Angeles temple and five others.

The “Festival of the Chariots,” which continued all afternoon with free food, music and entertainment at the Venice Pavilion, was staged to call attention to a 1983 court award to Robin George, a former Hare Krishna who claimed she was brainwashed by the group. The Krishnas are appealing the judgment.

George’s 1983 suit claimed that the International Society for Krishna Consciousness and several of its leaders brainwashed her into joining the group in 1974, when she was a 15-year-old Cypress runaway, then hid her from her anguished parents for a year.

Jurors later awarded George and her mother, Marcia, $32.5 million in damages after a five-month trial. Orange County Superior Court Judge James A. Jackman then reduced the settlement to $9.7 million.

The trial included testimony that the Krishnas used psychological tactics to coerce George to join the Laguna Beach Krishna temple, where she first became interested in the sect at age 14. The sect is accused of taking her to San Diego, New Orleans and Canada during a one-year period in 1970.

Sunday’s festival also marked the arrival in Los Angeles of 100 Hare Krishnas who have been on a circuitous, 1,000-mile walk from San Francisco to Tijuana.

Authorities said the party was peaceful, and drew about 20,000 people to the pavilion. “There’s free food,” said Los Angeles Police Officer Bill Hallett, “so there’s a lot of people down here taking advantage of that.”