Afterwards, the devotees stopped at Denny's restaurant for coffee. The dissenters sat together. Rama approached. Anne mentioned that the brakes of her car were not functioning properly, and that she had had difficulty getting to the meeting. Rama took credit for the problem. He said: "Let that be a warning." Then he told the three women that they had better not send him any bad vibes. "One out of twenty women gets breast cancer," he told them. "Five out of twenty women could get breast cancer. Twenty out of twenty women could get breast cancer. Some women get cancer of the uterus..." * * * I was shocked when I learned how Rama had treated Rachel, Dana, and Anne. I was shocked that Rama's world had gotten so out of hand. But according to what I read in the press, the experiences of my friends were by no means isolated. In 1990, Anne and I sat together and read Rama's seven-page "Statement To The Press." Near the start of the "Statement," Rama lists the names of "credible persons who can verify the truth of my assertions." I glanced at the names. "Karen Lever." True, she had been accepted at a number of medical schools, including Stanford. She *was* extremely bright. But as Rama's mouthpiece, she was the one who had threatened dissenters with serious harm. "Dr. Wayne Surdam" and "Dr. Ermano Rambaldi." True, they were an award-winning UC Berkeley scholar and a UCLA geologist respectively. True, they *had* taken the study of spirituality to heart. But they had never gotten close enough to Rama to observe his *other* side. "Richard Loftin." I did not know him. But during nightmare weekend in Seattle, he reportedly sat across from the three tripping women and giggled. Rama continues in the "Statement": Annie Eastwood alleges that we had a single sexual encounter over five years ago in my home in Malibu, California. She has told the press that in hindsight, she now views the sexual encounter we had together as forced. She has alleged that during the course of an evening together I brandished a hand gun. She then states that she had sex with me out of fear. Rama then claims: ...at no time during our evening together did I brandish a hand gun. Anne looked up from the "Statement" and said, "But Rama explicitly told us at the meeting in Malibu that he *did* take out a hand gun that night with Annie." "Maybe," I replied, "Rama is playing off the difference in meaning between *holding* and *brandishing* [waving] a hand gun." "What Annie perhaps did not know," Anne added, "and what Rama fails to mention, is that he nearly *always* slept with a gun by his bed." Rama writes: Ms. Eastwood continued to attend my seminars for another year after our night together. This would not seem to be likely behavior on the part of a person who was allegedly forced to have sex at gunpoint.