Documentary record Bound by Fear
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Conviction Sikh institutions and contexts Sikh institutions Potomac, Maryland, USA · 1997

Gurdarshan Singh: Sikh granthi's guilty plea for abusing a child music student at his gurdwara foundation

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

granthi (custodian and reader of Sikh scripture), Guru Gobind Singh Foundation

Organization

Guru Gobind Singh Foundation, Potomac, Maryland

Spiritual nexus

As the gurdwara's granthi, Singh held recognized religious authority within the Maryland Sikh community that he used to win the family's trust and gain unsupervised access to their daughter under the framework of religious instruction; the foundation's leadership subsequently pressured the family to withdraw the complaint.

  • Pastoral or clerical authority
  • Guru or spiritual-teacher authority

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 1997-01-01 · guilty plea

    Montgomery County Circuit Court, Maryland. Gurdarshan Singh, Granthi of the Guru Gobind Singh Foundation, pleaded guilty to one count of sexual offense in the fourth degree under Md. Code Art. 27, Section 464(C), for abusing a child he taught music from 1989 to 1991, when she was between 11 and 13. Community leadership pressured the family to drop the case; they did not, and Singh was convicted. He resigned his gurdwara role only in 2020, 23 years after the plea.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • religious authority as the community's granthi, used to win the trust of the family and gain private access to their child under cover of religious music instruction

Primary record

Sources

community investigative account case history Ramneet Sachdev, 'Gurdarshan Singh and Why It's So Hard to Believe Survivors', Medium (2020).

Details the 1997 guilty plea to fourth-degree sexual offense, the granthi's role and community pressure on the family, and his 2020 resignation.

advocacy organization report background '#MeTooSikh: Sikh activists take on internal sexual abuse crimes', SikhPA.

Corroborates the case within a broader account of Sikh community advocacy against clergy sexual abuse.

Related record

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