India: ritual dedication of girls (Devadasi/Jogini/Mathamma) feeding sexual exploitation
Request a correction or replyRecord class
Institutional event
Evidence status
Official finding
Authority role
community and temple structures dedicating girls to a deity
Organization
No organization assigned
Archive classification
This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.
The temple/deity 'marriage' dedication is the organizing religious mechanism: girls are ritually bound to a deity, which the community treats as conferring standing sexual access, replacing ordinary trafficking recruitment with doctrinal/ritual sanction.
- Religious marriage or family control
- Ritual, oath, or initiation
Evidence structure
Proceedings
2007-07-01 · official/institutional finding on a systemic practice
Anti-Slavery International report; cited in CEDAW review of India. Anti-Slavery International documented the dedication of girls (often Dalit) to a deity or temple (Devadasi/Jogini/Mathamma), after which they are sexually exploited by community men under religious sanction — a practice framed as ritual slavery. Despite a 1988 ban, enforcement is minimal (reportedly ~25 cases in the ban's first 20 years against an estimated tens of thousands of women in ritual bondage).
Documented coercion mechanisms
- ritual 'marriage'/dedication of girls to a deity conferring standing sexual access
Cited record
Sources
- specialist monitoring methodology and findings 'Women in Ritual Slavery: Devadasi, Jogini and Mathamma in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, Southern India', Anti-Slavery International (July 2007).
Anti-Slavery International documents the ritual dedication of girls to deities/temples and their subsequent sexual exploitation under religious sanction.
Source provenance
Source access and integrity log
This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.
- Source and tier basis
- https://www.antislavery.org/reports/women-in-ritual-slavery-devadasi-jogini-and-mathamma-in-karnataka-and-andhra-pradesh-southern-india/ Corpus classification: specialist-monitoring; evidentiary role: methodology-and-findings. SHA-256 ec99ab2eb86d69779790f86a3b0f8ca1900f9bef7f65b521fd72d354cffe9a2a
- Retrieval
- 2026-07-20 · Preserved
- Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
Named in this record? Request a correction, report a changed disposition, or submit a response.
Related record
Related cases · Hindu and Hindu-derived contexts
- 2018 · Jodhpur, India Asaram Bapu: life imprisonment, rape of a minor under exorcism pretext
- 1997 · Tiruchirappalli, India Swami Premananda: convicted of 13 rapes + murder; double life; died in custody
- 1998 · San Mateo, CA, USA Donald Walters / Swami Kriyananda and Ananda: civil verdict on abuse of spiritual authority
- 2023 · Paris, France Gregorian Bivolaru / MISA: French judicial investigation for aggravated rape and human trafficking
- 1994 · Lenox, MA, USA Kripalu removes founder Amrit Desai after concealed relationships with disciples
- 2013 · Kochi, Kerala, India Santhosh Madhavan / Swami Amritha Chaithanya: Kerala High Court affirms one rape conviction
- 2019 · Surat, Gujarat, India Narayan Sai: life sentences after convictions involving a devotee and ashram administrator
- 2018 · Alwar, Rajasthan, India Falahari Baba: life sentence for rape of a disciple in his ashram