My one remark relates to this part of your text:

8.)Understand the principle of psychological projection. Those of us who received and practiced Knowledge projected the peace we were experiencing onto our guru as the source of that peace. We listened to people we thought were more enlightened than we were raving about Prem and his magical powers. The community of followers around us supported our projection. In short, we became heavily brainwashed.

They catered to the childish need for security and the (also quite normal) childish wish to be able to control everything around him, because to our little ones, this world is an unfathomable and therefore, potentially dangerous place. By the time he came to the West (and probably earlier already) he had undergone a heavy brainwashing himself! He probably believed all the sh*t they'd be telling him about his "mission". And he acted accordingly.

~~~~~

This is NOT to whitewash anything which happened with him, how he developed further on in life, all the bad decisions he made.... etc. I just wanted to make myself understand WHY he developed into such a monstrous figure. Talking about abusing others .... abusers are the ones who got abused themselves in their early childhood. They are deeply disturbed in their inner being --- and very often, pedophily (w?) is their soul's helpless effort to heal itself. Again, I have NO intention whatsoever to whitewash this guy, but rather my humble trial to UNDERSTAND the how's and why's. 

I cannot forgive if I cannot understand... and actually, I don't have the slightest wish to forgive him - because he grew up in a distorted environment, does NOT mean he has to stay distorted himself! He, like anyone of us, has a "free will" and the potential to make better decisions within the blink of an eye. AND THIS IS WHAT HE NEVER DID! 

He'd rather live a foul life of luxury and "maya" ... and therefore doomed himself to a presumably "not-so-nice" end.

PS: Now the next question would be: HOW can we *forgive ourselves* to allow "them" to fool us to such an extent??? Common sense would have told us that a child is just a child, and not a philosopher, or a saint or what have you .... but we WANTED this stupid fairy tale to be true - hence the effort of all of us to do whatever he told us ... in a (childish!) trial to make it work. And because we loved fairy tales, not?