Nilmi Jayawickarama-Bartle Story
Escape from bondage
Escape from bondage
| Heidi M. Pascual* Publisher & Editor * 2006 Journalist of the Year for the State of Wisconsin (U.S.-SBA) |
By Heidi M. Pascual
An Asian beauty: petite, courteous, and ready with a smile for clients at a local bank along Fish
Hatchery Road in Madison. That’s how I would describe Nilmi Jayawickrama-Bartle, supervising teller,
during our initial meeting. I am a regular client of Associated Bank, not only because of its short
distance from my home, but also because of the neighborly feeling I get and the friendliness of its
staff. It took me awhile to get to know her better, and after more than a year, I had the opportunity to
interview her about something in her past that she could never forget. It was an extraordinary
experience that in many ways made her the strong woman that she is today. –Ed.
Nilmi came from Sri Lanka, an island country surrounded by the emerald green waters of the
Indian Ocean. She grew up Buddhist, with very strong disciplinarian parents who told her everything
they wanted her to do. “I did pretty much everything [they said]; I learned dance, cutting my hair,
going to school,” Nilmi recalled with a grin. “I completed a bachelor’s degree in Buddhism and
Buddhist Civilization, though.” With supportive parents and a college degree, Nilmi wanted to do
more, which was to continue her education in Great Britain (like India, Sri Lanka was a former British
colony). It was a dream that stayed in her subconscious as she went about her regular activities in Sri
Lanka.
Spiritual Retreat in India
Nilmi’s mother, while a practicing Buddhist, was also very much tied to Hindu traditions. She was
a big follower of Sai Baba (meaning Holy Father or Saintly Father), a Hindu guru who had proclaimed
himself the reincarnation of the fakir (one who performs feats of endurance or magic), and Saint Sai
An Asian beauty: petite, courteous, and ready with a smile for clients at a local bank along Fish
Hatchery Road in Madison. That’s how I would describe Nilmi Jayawickrama-Bartle, supervising teller,
during our initial meeting. I am a regular client of Associated Bank, not only because of its short
distance from my home, but also because of the neighborly feeling I get and the friendliness of its
staff. It took me awhile to get to know her better, and after more than a year, I had the opportunity to
interview her about something in her past that she could never forget. It was an extraordinary
experience that in many ways made her the strong woman that she is today. –Ed.
Nilmi came from Sri Lanka, an island country surrounded by the emerald green waters of the
Indian Ocean. She grew up Buddhist, with very strong disciplinarian parents who told her everything
they wanted her to do. “I did pretty much everything [they said]; I learned dance, cutting my hair,
going to school,” Nilmi recalled with a grin. “I completed a bachelor’s degree in Buddhism and
Buddhist Civilization, though.” With supportive parents and a college degree, Nilmi wanted to do
more, which was to continue her education in Great Britain (like India, Sri Lanka was a former British
colony). It was a dream that stayed in her subconscious as she went about her regular activities in Sri
Lanka.
Spiritual Retreat in India
Nilmi’s mother, while a practicing Buddhist, was also very much tied to Hindu traditions. She was
a big follower of Sai Baba (meaning Holy Father or Saintly Father), a Hindu guru who had proclaimed
himself the reincarnation of the fakir (one who performs feats of endurance or magic), and Saint Sai
| Nilmi Jayawickrama Bartle now happily lives with her family in Wisconsin. |
Baba of Shirdi (an Indian guru regarded as saint). “My mom believed that Sai Baba was a saint who can tell your future, know your past, and
all that,” Nilmi said. “Then, later she found out there’s another one like him, called Premananda, in South India.” Sometime in the late ‘80s,
Nilmi’s mom made a spiritual journey to South India to listen to Premananda’s teachings at the Ashram. When the guru was shown a family
photo with Nilmi in it, the guru said to Nilmi’s mother, “Next time, bring your daughter here with you.”
Premananda is the monastic name of self-styled godman Prem Kumar, who was born in Sri Lanka of Indian parents, and who later ran an
Ashram in the Tiruchirapalli district of Tamil Nadu, India. Initially, the Ashram was noted for taking in orphans, especially girls from the local
area as well as refugee families from Sri Lanka. (Wikipedia-“Swami Premananda of Trichy”)
“Because you do what your parents tell you to do, I went with my mom during her second spiritual retreat,” Nilmi said. “She wanted me to
meet this spiritual person. I think we went to India because she thought I was stubborn and I was having a bad time, and she wanted to refocus
me on the spiritual side, although I didn’t really believe in it. Before we left Sri Lanka for this spiritual renewal, we had to do everything ‘right,’
like not eating meat and wearing white. But as my mom said, I was stubborn; I ate anything I wanted to eat. I just had no faith.”
The Ashram
The village led by Premananda , called Ashram, was dotted with small cottages rented at eight rupees a day by people from all over the
world. “They came to listen to him speak, and they wanted his blessings,” Nilmi recalled. “There were people who just touched the soil that he
walked on, if they couldn’t get his blessing. Meanwhile, when I was there, I usually didn’t make it on time because I took a nap for example,
and when I walked in, Premananda would call me and ask me to sit right in front. I got all this attention!”
When Nilmi and her mom got a private interview with the guru in his shrine, Premananda confirmed that Nilmi was stubborn and having
a bad time of her life. However, Premananda said he was willing to help her reach her dream. “He said he can send me to UK if I want to go
there to study,” Nilmi recalled the guru told her mom. “ He said, ‘In order for me to send her to UK, she needs to come and stay with me here
for a couple of months, so the people can see her and see that she is part of my Ashram. ‘“
Nilmi and her mother stayed in the Ashram for two weeks, all the while anticipating the realization of Nilmi’s dream to go to UK. “We went
back home and decided we were going to talk to my dad about it,” she said. “There was no problem at all because my dad understood.”
“Once I got back to India, Premananda said, ‘Well, you can act as my receptionist,’” Nilmi said, and she was tasked to make
appointments for the guru. “Because I speak my language (Sinhala), and I started picking up Tamil, and I spoke some English, it was easy for
me to do the job because anyone who came to the Ashram could somehow communicate with me.”
Nilmi observed that the Ashram also had an orphanage with about 200 youths, mostly girls of various ages. “Most of them were the same
as my age, 19, some were younger or older,” she said, adding that not all youth in the Ashram didn’t have parents. “In India, if parents couldn’t
take care of their children, they go to the Ashram and drop them off with him.”
A revelation
As Nilmi staffed the front desk, she became a go-to person for many girls in the orphanage. “Some girls came from Sri Lanka, so we
basically spoke Sinhala, our language. Some girls spoke Tamil and a little English, so we communicated really well, too. We became good
friends,” Nilmi said. “Slowly, we got to trust each other.”
What her new friends told her shocked Nilmi. “These girls told me that the guru wasn’t all what he was saying,” she said with a deep sigh.
“They said, ‘He’s raping us.’”
Gradually, Nilmi observed that the guru was also interested in her. “He always called me daughter,” she recalled. “’You’re just like my own
daughter; I would never do no harm.’ He was trying to brainwash me slowly but then, I was always very conscious when with him. When he said
one thing to me, I ended up telling him 10 things. I was mouthy. And he would say, ‘I don’t understand why you’re like this!’”
Premananda also tried to convince Nilmi that long ago, he was a saint with an assistant who was reincarnated in Nilmi. “He would tell
that story, but I’m like, ‘Wow, I really don’t care. I just want to go where I want to go,’” she told herself then. “’Well, we can build you a little
house if you want to stay here,’ the guru was convincing me, but I said, ‘No, that’s not my plan; I want to go to UK. He said, ‘Well, you can’t do
that (right away). I need to talk to these people and they need to see you as part of this Ashram before I let you go.’”
The situation slowly turned for the worst for Nilmi when she kept on reminding the guru that she wanted to get out and go to UK. “At one
point, he said, ‘I want you to listen to me good. I’m like an express train, and if anybody stands in the way of the express train, what would
happen?’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’ He said, ‘Well, they will be ran over, so the express train will still keep going while those standing in the way will
be gone,’” Nilmi distinctly recalled. “In another way he was telling me not to do anything stupid. Well that’s fine, who will be dumb enough to
stand in the way of an express train? There are other ways to stop it.”
But Premananda was a man with a mission. He sent messages to Nilmi’s parents through people coming from Sri Lanka, telling them that
“she’s very stubborn, has a boyfriend (which Nilmi flatly denied), and goes out without my permission.” This made Nilmi’s dad furious and he
sent her a letter saying, “Don’t you dare come home, because I believe in him (Premananda).”
Nilmi thought she was stuck in a life she didn’t want until she decided to help stop the express train.
The Whistleblower
“There were people all over the world who came to the Ashram, gave up everything to live in that place,” Nilmi said. “They wanted to be
monks, and one of them was an American from Madison. So, I got to know the guy really well. He has a friend who is a psychiatrist from
Boston and he and his wife both came to do some research there. One day, I approached the monk and asked him, ‘What do you think about
this place?’ He said, ‘What do you mean? I am here for my life, I am giving up everything … Why do you ask?’ I told him I don’t feel the same
way. ‘I have faith in God, I do. I do believe if it wasn’t for His help, I wouldn’t be here today.’”
Then Nilmi related the story of the girls who confided to her about being raped by the guru. The monk could hardly believe what he
heard and wanted to know why the girls hadn’t come forward. The girls did tell others, but nobody in the Ashram believed them. “Some even
accused them of being jealous girls, trying to get attention any way they could,” Nilmi continued, adding that since most of these girls were
orphans, they weren’t taken seriously.
“I told him, ‘What do I have to gain, and what do I have to lose by doing this? I have a family; I can just leave and get done with it. But
you are here to give up your life, and those girls are asking for help,’” Nilmi said, trying to convince the monk to do something about it. Nilmi
thought since the orphangae gets financial support, the people financing it should know.
The monk decided to talk to the girls himself and was devastated when he heard the truth. “To make a long story short, I went back to Sri
Lanka, and the day after I left, the girls ran away from the village and went to the media. The press got the word out and then went to the
police,” Nilmi said with a sigh of relief. “The girls were interviewed; the police came in and took everybody, and threw Premananda to jail,
while the girls were placed into custody. One of the girls was pregnant. They ran a DNA test, and it was proven to be his. That was proof
enough of how the girl got pregnant. Premananda is now serving a life sentence in prison. “
April 5, 2005—“The Supreme Court on Tuesday confirmed life imprisonment for two consecutive terms against a spiritual guru who raped
13 girls and murdered an inmate in his Tamil Nadu Ashram in 1994. The Madras High Court had imposed the sentence on Swami Premananda
of Tiruchirapalli in Tamil Nadu.” — Times of India
Fame or curse for whistleblower
In Sri Lanka, Nilmi was interviewed about the case, but she was thoroughly misquoted by the reporter. “He wrote what he wanted to put in
there and not what I said,” Nilmi claimed. “He came up with all these sad stories like I had an abortion; that I was sleeping with him (the guru).
Even my best friends turned their backs on me. My brothers hated me for so long because everywhere they went, they heard people say, ‘O
yeah, we heard about your sister, you know. ‘“ Indeed, rumors such as these were enough to damage one’s reputation in a relatively
conservative culture as Sri Lanka.
Finding peace — and happiness — some place else
Ostracism has a way to push people out of the picture. Nilmi decided to leave her homeland in search for peace and a chance to study
abroad, perhaps not necessarily in UK this time. She came to the United States by herself, with the help of the American monk she met earlier
at the Ashram. His father was a professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
“I stayed with the monk’s mom in Minneapolis for a while, and I worked in a bakery,” Nilmi said with obvious excitement. “Nobody would
give me a real job because I had no experience and I spoke little English. But when I came here to Madison to his dad, I worked at Pizza Hut
and Steep & Brew, and I went to school at UW!” Nilmi later transferred to MATC and took up Business Management and Computer Science.
Meanwhile, she met the love of her life, a service technician at MG&E, while waitressing at Steep & Brew. The couple has been married 10
years and blessed with two kids — six and four.
Nilmi tries not to think of a past that was both painful and a disappointment, but instead considers it a blessing in disguise that redirected
her focus and energy to develop herself and help her family back home. Her parents and siblings from Sri Lanka have now joined Nilmi in
America.
all that,” Nilmi said. “Then, later she found out there’s another one like him, called Premananda, in South India.” Sometime in the late ‘80s,
Nilmi’s mom made a spiritual journey to South India to listen to Premananda’s teachings at the Ashram. When the guru was shown a family
photo with Nilmi in it, the guru said to Nilmi’s mother, “Next time, bring your daughter here with you.”
Premananda is the monastic name of self-styled godman Prem Kumar, who was born in Sri Lanka of Indian parents, and who later ran an
Ashram in the Tiruchirapalli district of Tamil Nadu, India. Initially, the Ashram was noted for taking in orphans, especially girls from the local
area as well as refugee families from Sri Lanka. (Wikipedia-“Swami Premananda of Trichy”)
“Because you do what your parents tell you to do, I went with my mom during her second spiritual retreat,” Nilmi said. “She wanted me to
meet this spiritual person. I think we went to India because she thought I was stubborn and I was having a bad time, and she wanted to refocus
me on the spiritual side, although I didn’t really believe in it. Before we left Sri Lanka for this spiritual renewal, we had to do everything ‘right,’
like not eating meat and wearing white. But as my mom said, I was stubborn; I ate anything I wanted to eat. I just had no faith.”
The Ashram
The village led by Premananda , called Ashram, was dotted with small cottages rented at eight rupees a day by people from all over the
world. “They came to listen to him speak, and they wanted his blessings,” Nilmi recalled. “There were people who just touched the soil that he
walked on, if they couldn’t get his blessing. Meanwhile, when I was there, I usually didn’t make it on time because I took a nap for example,
and when I walked in, Premananda would call me and ask me to sit right in front. I got all this attention!”
When Nilmi and her mom got a private interview with the guru in his shrine, Premananda confirmed that Nilmi was stubborn and having
a bad time of her life. However, Premananda said he was willing to help her reach her dream. “He said he can send me to UK if I want to go
there to study,” Nilmi recalled the guru told her mom. “ He said, ‘In order for me to send her to UK, she needs to come and stay with me here
for a couple of months, so the people can see her and see that she is part of my Ashram. ‘“
Nilmi and her mother stayed in the Ashram for two weeks, all the while anticipating the realization of Nilmi’s dream to go to UK. “We went
back home and decided we were going to talk to my dad about it,” she said. “There was no problem at all because my dad understood.”
“Once I got back to India, Premananda said, ‘Well, you can act as my receptionist,’” Nilmi said, and she was tasked to make
appointments for the guru. “Because I speak my language (Sinhala), and I started picking up Tamil, and I spoke some English, it was easy for
me to do the job because anyone who came to the Ashram could somehow communicate with me.”
Nilmi observed that the Ashram also had an orphanage with about 200 youths, mostly girls of various ages. “Most of them were the same
as my age, 19, some were younger or older,” she said, adding that not all youth in the Ashram didn’t have parents. “In India, if parents couldn’t
take care of their children, they go to the Ashram and drop them off with him.”
A revelation
As Nilmi staffed the front desk, she became a go-to person for many girls in the orphanage. “Some girls came from Sri Lanka, so we
basically spoke Sinhala, our language. Some girls spoke Tamil and a little English, so we communicated really well, too. We became good
friends,” Nilmi said. “Slowly, we got to trust each other.”
What her new friends told her shocked Nilmi. “These girls told me that the guru wasn’t all what he was saying,” she said with a deep sigh.
“They said, ‘He’s raping us.’”
Gradually, Nilmi observed that the guru was also interested in her. “He always called me daughter,” she recalled. “’You’re just like my own
daughter; I would never do no harm.’ He was trying to brainwash me slowly but then, I was always very conscious when with him. When he said
one thing to me, I ended up telling him 10 things. I was mouthy. And he would say, ‘I don’t understand why you’re like this!’”
Premananda also tried to convince Nilmi that long ago, he was a saint with an assistant who was reincarnated in Nilmi. “He would tell
that story, but I’m like, ‘Wow, I really don’t care. I just want to go where I want to go,’” she told herself then. “’Well, we can build you a little
house if you want to stay here,’ the guru was convincing me, but I said, ‘No, that’s not my plan; I want to go to UK. He said, ‘Well, you can’t do
that (right away). I need to talk to these people and they need to see you as part of this Ashram before I let you go.’”
The situation slowly turned for the worst for Nilmi when she kept on reminding the guru that she wanted to get out and go to UK. “At one
point, he said, ‘I want you to listen to me good. I’m like an express train, and if anybody stands in the way of the express train, what would
happen?’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’ He said, ‘Well, they will be ran over, so the express train will still keep going while those standing in the way will
be gone,’” Nilmi distinctly recalled. “In another way he was telling me not to do anything stupid. Well that’s fine, who will be dumb enough to
stand in the way of an express train? There are other ways to stop it.”
But Premananda was a man with a mission. He sent messages to Nilmi’s parents through people coming from Sri Lanka, telling them that
“she’s very stubborn, has a boyfriend (which Nilmi flatly denied), and goes out without my permission.” This made Nilmi’s dad furious and he
sent her a letter saying, “Don’t you dare come home, because I believe in him (Premananda).”
Nilmi thought she was stuck in a life she didn’t want until she decided to help stop the express train.
The Whistleblower
“There were people all over the world who came to the Ashram, gave up everything to live in that place,” Nilmi said. “They wanted to be
monks, and one of them was an American from Madison. So, I got to know the guy really well. He has a friend who is a psychiatrist from
Boston and he and his wife both came to do some research there. One day, I approached the monk and asked him, ‘What do you think about
this place?’ He said, ‘What do you mean? I am here for my life, I am giving up everything … Why do you ask?’ I told him I don’t feel the same
way. ‘I have faith in God, I do. I do believe if it wasn’t for His help, I wouldn’t be here today.’”
Then Nilmi related the story of the girls who confided to her about being raped by the guru. The monk could hardly believe what he
heard and wanted to know why the girls hadn’t come forward. The girls did tell others, but nobody in the Ashram believed them. “Some even
accused them of being jealous girls, trying to get attention any way they could,” Nilmi continued, adding that since most of these girls were
orphans, they weren’t taken seriously.
“I told him, ‘What do I have to gain, and what do I have to lose by doing this? I have a family; I can just leave and get done with it. But
you are here to give up your life, and those girls are asking for help,’” Nilmi said, trying to convince the monk to do something about it. Nilmi
thought since the orphangae gets financial support, the people financing it should know.
The monk decided to talk to the girls himself and was devastated when he heard the truth. “To make a long story short, I went back to Sri
Lanka, and the day after I left, the girls ran away from the village and went to the media. The press got the word out and then went to the
police,” Nilmi said with a sigh of relief. “The girls were interviewed; the police came in and took everybody, and threw Premananda to jail,
while the girls were placed into custody. One of the girls was pregnant. They ran a DNA test, and it was proven to be his. That was proof
enough of how the girl got pregnant. Premananda is now serving a life sentence in prison. “
April 5, 2005—“The Supreme Court on Tuesday confirmed life imprisonment for two consecutive terms against a spiritual guru who raped
13 girls and murdered an inmate in his Tamil Nadu Ashram in 1994. The Madras High Court had imposed the sentence on Swami Premananda
of Tiruchirapalli in Tamil Nadu.” — Times of India
Fame or curse for whistleblower
In Sri Lanka, Nilmi was interviewed about the case, but she was thoroughly misquoted by the reporter. “He wrote what he wanted to put in
there and not what I said,” Nilmi claimed. “He came up with all these sad stories like I had an abortion; that I was sleeping with him (the guru).
Even my best friends turned their backs on me. My brothers hated me for so long because everywhere they went, they heard people say, ‘O
yeah, we heard about your sister, you know. ‘“ Indeed, rumors such as these were enough to damage one’s reputation in a relatively
conservative culture as Sri Lanka.
Finding peace — and happiness — some place else
Ostracism has a way to push people out of the picture. Nilmi decided to leave her homeland in search for peace and a chance to study
abroad, perhaps not necessarily in UK this time. She came to the United States by herself, with the help of the American monk she met earlier
at the Ashram. His father was a professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
“I stayed with the monk’s mom in Minneapolis for a while, and I worked in a bakery,” Nilmi said with obvious excitement. “Nobody would
give me a real job because I had no experience and I spoke little English. But when I came here to Madison to his dad, I worked at Pizza Hut
and Steep & Brew, and I went to school at UW!” Nilmi later transferred to MATC and took up Business Management and Computer Science.
Meanwhile, she met the love of her life, a service technician at MG&E, while waitressing at Steep & Brew. The couple has been married 10
years and blessed with two kids — six and four.
Nilmi tries not to think of a past that was both painful and a disappointment, but instead considers it a blessing in disguise that redirected
her focus and energy to develop herself and help her family back home. Her parents and siblings from Sri Lanka have now joined Nilmi in
America.