The Hislop letters – part one [Timothy Conway on Gerald Moreno]

This is the first in a series of blogs in which the infamous letters by the former leader of the U.S. Sathya Sai Organization, Dr. John Hislop will be examined. Three letters were written by Hislop in early 1981 as a result of a letter he and other Sai leaders received from an American family whose son was in Sai Baba’s College in the late 1970s. He and his friends were, according to the boy and his parents believed him, molested by Sai Baba. This story came out in 1980, and was discussed in the Sai Organization, but Hislop tried to cover up the matter, asking that all the letters he sent be destroyed by the recipients! One set of the letters was handed on to Timothy Conway when he took over as Director of the San Francisco Sathya Sai Centre, and he has made a scan of them available. Timothy Conway has written:-

“Gerald “Joe” Moreno is one very outspoken person who has tried to challenge the legitimacy of the Hislop letters, adamantly and repeatedly charging that they are “forgeries.” Joe is clearly a passionate and, yes, quite controversial figure, banned from any further meddling with the Wikipedia entry on Sathya Sai Baba because of his repeated violations of their rules of fairness and objectivity.

Curiously, in the FAQ section of his other, extremely critical, nit-picking website, saisathyasai.com, Joe reports that he is a former longtime devotee of Sathya Sai Baba, that he left the SSB movement, and that he is no longer a devotee due to his agnosticism on the idea of “God” and “karma.”

Despite being an ex-devotee, Joe has strangely, inexplicably written a huge (I mean HUGE) amount of Internet material vehemently defending and privileging his erstwhile guru Sathya Sai from critics’ questions and charges by launching a series of rebuttals and also verbal attacks on these questioners and critics. Some of the rebuttals are worthwhile and “successful” on certain points. Some are deliberately misleading. His terribly uncivil and unfair character attacks on certain persons are not at all worthwhile.

The letters will be dealt with one by one here in the coming week.

See also My Concerns about Sathya Sai Baba by Timothy Conway

It is of note that gerald Moreno has, as is his usual method with all Sai Baba critics, gone to extreme lengths to libel and smear Timothy Conway on numerous websites and blogs. Witness some of his entries on Google:-

scan of excerpt from Google search on Timothy Conway

See also Evidence of an Internet Activist in Action
Gerald Joe Moreno by Alan Kazlev – also a target for Moreno

 

Information on the Public Petition for Official Investigations of Sathya Sai Baba and His Worldwide Organization
See also Devotee attacks on the Sai petition and petitioners