Khenpo Choga Cult Survivors

07/11/2026

CW: sexual assault

He’s back. And so is the retreat center.
Dzogchen Khenpo Choga Rinpoche left the U.S. around 2020, after a former student reported to the Lane County Sheriff’s Office that he had r***d her. Detectives couldn’t reach him.

This month, the Dzogchen Retreat Center outside Veneta is running its 2026 internship — with Choga teaching. Per their own website: interns had to arrive by July 4, and cannot leave until August 2. The three-month track runs to October 1.

Unpaid live-in labor, an isolated 160 acres, a man students are taught to see as a living Buddha, and a departure date he controls. That is the exact architecture that produced the allegations in the first place.

Leah Sotille’s new investigation at The Western Edge is the fullest account yet — the “empowerments,” the screaming, the beer poured over a student’s head, the board members who worked to keep him out of the country so he couldn’t be served.

🔗 link in comments

What’s the first red flag you talked yourself out of?

06/23/2026

They're back in the US, running a summer program at the same property where it all went down!
To mark the occasion, let's dissect their cringeworthy public statement about the lawsuit. It's a masterclass in manipulation!
Abuse researchers & cult-recovery specialists have broken it down - swipe through to see the playbook they used.
Frameworks named on each slide so you can fact-check for yourself →

05/10/2025

DARVO is the lingua franca of modern autocracy. Not a phrase. Not a metaphor. A diagnosis. A code. A weaponized dialect spoken fluently by tyrants strongmen cult leaders and bootlickers across the globe.

DENY. ATTACK. REVERSE VICTIM and OFFENDER.

It is not strategy it is instinct for the pathologically powerful.

This is how autocrats speak to their people to the press and to the world. It doesn’t matter if you’re listening to Trump in a gold plated tantrum Putin behind a long imperial table Netanyahu dr***d in divine justification or Orban whispering about national purity it’s the same script. The same performance. The same inversion of reality.

DARVO is not just used it is shared. It is taught. It is mimicked. It is the unifying grammar of global authoritarianism. A psychological Esperanto for cowards in positions of dominance. They may speak different tongues but their message is identical: “I am the victim. You are the attacker. Truth is the enemy.”

This is not miscommunication it is engineered confusion.

In past empires Latin bound the elite. In modern commerce English moves markets.
But in this rising pathocracy DARVO is the operational language of power.
It travels faster than legislation more virally than ideology and embeds deeper than propaganda. It is the reflex of regimes who rule not through truth but through distortion whose survival depends on reengineering reality in real time.

Every autocrat now speaks the same emotional algorithm
Feign innocence. Attack accountability. Recast victimhood as proof of persecution.
It’s not communication. It’s control. A script designed to keep populations dazed confused and complicit.

DARVO is the lie dressed as lament. The abuser’s alibi. The dictator’s lullaby.
It turns journalists into enemies protestors into threats and survivors into liars.
It doesn’t just evade truth it mutilates it recycles it weaponizes it.

And here’s the real terror
The people learn it too.
They echo it. They chant it. They believe it.
Until DARVO becomes not just the language of the state but the language of the street the home the self.

That’s when the infection is complete.
When the abuser no longer needs to speak because the victims have learned to speak his language for him.

DARVO is not a tactic
It is the lingua franca of modern autocracy
It is how tyranny sells itself as salvation.

And unless we call it by name decode it and tear it out by the root
we will keep mistaking psychological warfare for political discourse
and keep worshiping wolves dressed in the cries of the lamb.
(From Kirkland Nolan)

07/12/2024

Another brave woman comes forward. Rikkianne and Rachel , thank you, thank you, thank you. By speaking up you are helping survivors not only in this organization but around the world. You’re changing the world for the better. ❤️

A year ago we brought you an exclusive interview with a woman who says she was r***d and impregnated by a Buddhist teacher in a remote retreat center in Vene...

07/10/2024

Hey friends, here’s an incredible resource regarding spiritual leadership and abuse - please take a look if interested!

Frequently Asked Questions Frequently Asked Questions What is Adult Clergy Sexual Abuse (ACSA)? ACSA occurs when a spiritual authority figure including an elder, pastor, boss, counselor, professor or even a lay leader uses their role to exploit and abuse someone who is under their care thro...

06/21/2024

Cult leadership relies heavily on the mechanisms of flattery inflation, which are central to the creation of personality cults. According to a research chapter from the 2020 book Ruler Personality Cults from Empires to Nation-States and Beyond, these mechanisms include:

Loyalty signaling, where followers demonstrate their unwavering support for the leader.

Emotional amplification, where followers’ emotions are heightened to foster a sense of unity and purpose.

Direct production mechanisms, which involves orchestrating events and narratives that glorify the leader.

If you’re curious about how cult leaders seamlessly and effortlessly lure followers in, add these two series to your watch-list.

03/21/2024

https://www.instagram.com/p/C4wpx5uMKjy/?igsh=eXh3a3QwNWphajBt

👀👀👀

02/22/2024

From PAVE: https://www.shatteringthesilence.org/

02/07/2024

https://www.instagram.com/p/C3BFkdhO4oz/?igsh=MTQ4cDJ5MjFvdG80ZA==

02/07/2024

Don’t get caught up in the gaslighting around your emotions. The people causing the distress will always try to make you feel crazy and shameful.