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Michael Lyons may have raped dozens more women
Police fear dozens more women around the world have been raped by cult leader Michael Lyons.
Published: 7:09PM BST 26 Jul 2010
Michael LyonsPhoto: NATIONAL PICTURES
Officers said many victims were too scared to come forward after falling into the clutches of his intimidating group. They said Lyons, known in spiritualist circles as Mohan Singh, was a calculating criminal masquerading as a healer.
Lyons was jailed for 10 years yesterday after being convicted of raping one woman and assaulting another. However police say many more women around the world may also have been victims. London detectives investigating two rape complaints issued a warrant for his arrest in 2007.
After being held at Heathrow Airport, he was questioned about a third alleged attack in 2002 which had been investigated and dropped through lack of evidence. Detective Sergeant Nicholas Giles, who pursued Lyons, said officers liaised with colleagues at the FBI as the net closed around their suspect.
He said Lyons travelled widely between London, Paris, Miami and New York, spending only a few months in each place. Internet campaigners claim to have drawn up a list of 20 potential victims in New York alone. Mr Giles said the complex and unusual case created many difficulties, including persuading the jury how dangerous Lyons was.
He said: ''This is all about control, brainwashing, a cult. It is not someone with a mask jumping out of a bush. It is very hard to prove. ''We had to bring family members, people who have lost people to the cult, from America.'' Police were helped by the family of another woman who was sucked into Lyons's cult who appeared in his defence.
The Orthodox Jewish family, from Miami, paid private investigators to examine the group and gathered other potential victims together. The first alleged attack took place in July 1998 when a 24-year-old American research marketing manager said Lyons raped her at a London flat.
The court heard she was whisked away in his Bentley before he made her watch a religious documentary called Bliss. The documentary examines parents who sexually abuse their children and the woman became convinced she too was abused in her childhood.
After watching the film, she said she fell asleep and woke up to find Lyons on top of her, raping her. The second alleged attack took place in June 2002, when an aspiring actress and Buddhist said she was raped at a flat in Belsize Park. She described how a friend introduced her to Lyons, who by this time was surrounded by a remarkable flock of beautiful young women.
After an evening of vegetarian food, song and music, the woman said she was was taken into a bedroom and attacked. Police sent a file to prosecutors but they decided not to pursue the allegation as it was Lyons's word against the woman. In January 2005, a third woman, a 43-year-old Sheffield school teacher, claimed she was sexually assaulted by Lyons while visiting the group in London.
As he groped her intimately, the woman said she screamed and shouted: ''What the hell are you doing?'', to which he replied: ''Feeling your energy pulse.'' The woman made no formal allegation to police at the time, but spoke to her counsellor who took notes, later used in the police inquiry.
Also that month, a fourth woman, a 23-year-old stripper from New Zealand, claimed she was raped by Lyons after being introduced to the cult by a group of friends. She said she was forced to take a shower during which Lyons rubbed her chest with soap, and he then climbed on top of her and attacked her.
The woman said Lyons spouted ''spiritual mumbo jumbo'', including claims he was enlightening her with his ''organic penis''. Police said her friend and other members of the group were sitting on the other side of a curtain during the attack but did not intervene. In October 2005, a fifth woman, a 26-year-old office temp, claimed she was raped twice by Lyons as she spent a week with the cult.
After meeting Lyons at a health food shop in Soho, central London, she was invited back to a vegetarian dinner at his flat. The woman said she was kept up late, fed unusual foods and challenged by Lyons and others about many aspects of her life.
Bullied into taking her clothes off, she said she was then attacked by Lyons in the shower, as he forcibly rubbed herbal soap over her body saying it would ''unblock her chakras''. She said he then gave her a deep tissue massage that was so strong she was left immobilised on a bed and then he asked her to concentrate on her breathing while he raped her.
After leaving the room in a deeply disturbed state, she said the other women told her she looked great and she was persuaded to stay for a week during which she was raped again. The court heard how she escaped the cult, who telephoned her incessantly and visited her workplace, after meeting her brother for dinner.
The sixth alleged attack took place in November 2007 when a 31-year-old massage therapist from the United States travelled to meet Lyons on a trip paid for by his cult. She said he made constant sexual advances towards her and repeatedly touched her intimately at his flat in Manchester.
After fending him off, she was abandoned by the group, stranded in Britain with no money or phone. The seventh alleged attack occurred in July 2008, when a 45-year-old mother-of-one claimed she was sexually assaulted by Lyons after he offered to treat her back.
The woman was at a house party in Cavendish Road, Kilburn, north-west London, when Lyons allegedly pushed his hand into her underwear and attempted to push acupuncture needles into her. Other cult members did not intervene, despite her pleas for help, and told her to ''stop being silly, it is for your own good'', police said.
The court also heard bad character evidence against Lyons in which it was claimed he raped several women. One American student said he picked her up with an accomplice in a limousine during a Tibetan folk festival in Washington DC in 2000. The woman said Lyons took her to a remote forest and raped her while the other man had consensual sex with her friend.
