Book Description

Daniel Lutz, at 31, has proven himself stronger than he imagined. He tells the story of his transformation from victim to survivor in his book, My Karma, My Fault. Born in Germany in 1979, Daniel moved to Finland as a toddler, where his parents joined the Hare Krishna movement. When he was 5, his family moved to the Hare Krishna community in Almviks Gård, Sweden, where they settled into a converted storage container with no insulation, running water, or toilet, and an entirely foreign lifestyle that got them up every day at 4 a.m. for temple services and gave them new Sanskrit names. Soon after, Daniel, now Devavrata, and his then 7-year-old sister were enrolled in the community's boarding school. That's when Daniel's nightmare began. Without realizing it, his parents had placed him in the care of a sadistic pedophile teacher, and Daniel spent the next 3 years of his life being sexually and physically assaulted. Threatened and silenced, young Daniel's behavior deteriorated, and his family was asked to leave the community. Daniel and his family moved back to the Hare Krishna temple in Finland, where, after brief attendance at a local public school, Daniel was sent alone to the Hare Krishna boarding school in Mayapur, India. There, Daniel was again subjected to sexual and physical abuse, this time at the hands of older students. My Karma, My Fault takes us through the rest of Daniel's anguished childhood and teenage years, probes his innocent faith and the loss of it, and brings us into his adulthood, where he finally finds normalcy and at least a measure of peace. It took Daniel years to get to the point where he could write this book and two years to compose it. It is not the story of a victim but of one who has survived.