“Apostate” ex-members have a right to express their distress, and their stories should be carefully considered. But are they always believable?
by Massimo Introvigne and Rosita Šorytė
Article 3 of 4. Read article 1 and article 2.
Recruited by Hugues Gascan or not, “Twisted Yoga” presents the experiences of some of the “apostate” ex-members who left MISA and agreed to testify in the French case against Bivolaru. “Apostate,” by the way, is not an insult: it is a term introduced in the 20th century by leading American sociologist David Bromley to designate the minority of ex-members of a religious organization who devote a substantial part of their lives to the militant opposition against the religion they have left. “Apostate” is not a synonym of “ex-member,” as most ex-members are not apostates.
Some of the figures introduced by “Twisted Yoga” are well-known and have told their stories several times before. We have mentioned Agnes Arabela Marques (born Mureșan). She appears in “Twisted Yoga” with shocking revelations about Bivolaru: “My initiation took place at the beginning of 2000. I was a virgin. I don’t want to give you too many details about my initiation, but it was nothing very special. I didn’t feel any pleasure. On the contrary, I remember that the bed was full of blood, but he didn’t mind. I remember that at one point, I had some tears. I was 15 years and 6 months old.”
The documentary never pauses to explain who “Agnes” actually is, though viewers familiar with the anti-cult media landscape might recognize her. Back in 2016, she released a book in Portugal titled “A Adepta” (“The Adept”), a semifictionalized memoir in which MISA and Bivolaru appear under the barely disguised aliases “ASIM” and “Bregor Glav.” In that narrative, Marques presents herself as having entered the group at fifteen, becoming sexually involved with Bivolaru before turning sixteen, and later being sent to Japan, where she performed as a pole dancer. She writes that students affiliated with MISA who worked in Japanese clubs were not formally required to engage in sexual relations with clients, though she claims some did. Eventually, she says, she fell in love with a wealthy Japanese businessman who helped her realize the “cultic” nature of the movement, married her, and enabled her departure from ASIM (i.e., MISA). The Portuguese book served as background for “The Believer,” published in English in 2024.
Although the book is openly novelized, anticult activists and tabloid outlets—especially in Romania—treated it as documentary truth. Marques had already become a minor celebrity in Portugal in 2014 when she was cast in the fifth season of “Casa dos Segredos” (“House of Secrets”), the Portuguese version of “Secret Story,” itself a spinoff of “Big Brother.” The gimmick of the show was that each contestant carried a secret that the others had to uncover. Agnes’ “secret” was that she had been “kidnapped and brainwashed by a cult.” She also repeated the story of her affluent Japanese husband, now deceased, who had supposedly left her a substantial inheritance, as well as the tale of the child she claimed to have had with him.
Her notoriety in Portugal only grew. She became a fixture in tabloids, thanks to her singing career, her tumultuous romantic life involving various celebrities, and her willingness to pose seminude. But fame cuts both ways. The same tabloids that elevated her also investigated her. They reported that her Japanese husband, Katsuno Yasunori, was financially comfortable but not a millionaire, and was not the father of her child, who was, in fact, born of a relationship with an Iranian partner. The money she received appears to have come from a settlement between Katsuno and the Iranian, who had been business associates. One tabloid even alleged that Marques worked in the pornography industry “after” leaving MISA.
Tabloid reporting—whether flattering or accusatory—always requires caution. That caution was notably absent in the Romanian press, which repeatedly and incorrectly claimed that Marques was responsible for sending Bivolaru to prison. In 2013, “Evenimentul Zilei” ran a story titled “The Model Who Put Bivolaru in Prison.” In 2016, “Libertatea” published an unsigned piece calling her “the blonde who sent Bivolaru to jail. Guru made her his sexual slave; she made him a… jailed man.”
Court documents show that these claims were pure fiction. Bivolaru was imprisoned for the Dumitru case discussed earlier in this series; he was never convicted of having had sexual relations with Marques when she was underage. Her involvement in the Cluj humantrafficking case was marginal, and Bivolaru and MISA ultimately won that case. DIICOT, the Romanian antiterrorism and organizedcrime agency, attempted to use her testimony to reframe the Cluj accusations from “human trafficking” to “trafficking minors,” based on her assertion that she had worked without pay for MISA before turning eighteen, including in an erotic videochat operation. In 2021, the Cluj Court of Appeal explicitly stated that Marques has provided no convincing evidence for her allegations.
“Twisted Yoga,” as noted earlier, omits the fact that Romanian judges—despite their welldocumented hostility toward Bivolaru—never found Agnes’ accusations credible. He was never convicted of any alleged sexual relationship with her as a minor.
Marques’ stories may have inspired another participant in “Twisted Yoga” and in reality shows, Ashleigh Freckleton of “Bachelor Australia” fame, who, in 2021, announced that she, too, had “survived a cult.” She described attending a yoga camp in Romania and then being taken to Paris for a sexual initiation with the “guru,” from which she says she escaped. Although she did not name the group, the identity was obvious. Gascan certainly recognized it and says he connected her with French authorities.
Unlike Agnes—whose claims were contradicted by Romanian courts—Ashleigh does not allege that she had sexual contact with Bivolaru. Nor does she say she was unaware of what the Paris trip entailed. In “Twisted Yoga,” she recounts being told that Bivolaru was in hiding because Interpol wanted him and that she fully understood the initiation would be erotic in nature. “I was completely intrigued by the possibility that I could have a deeply spiritual experience in lovemaking,” she says. At some point, she changed her mind and decided not to participate. Viewers might expect the “cult” to have coerced her into staying. Instead, she reports that she was “allowed to leave.” She was asked to sign and record a statement affirming that she had not been sexually abused—which, by her own account, was true. One may question the legal value of such a document, but the precaution itself was not irrational.
Another witness featured in the documentary is Miranda Grace, already known from the BBC podcast “The Bad Guru,” which one of us (Šorytė) analyzed in 2025. In “Twisted Yoga,” she repeats that she initially enjoyed the group and appreciated its teachings on the sacredness of the body. She traveled to France knowing the initiation would be sexual. “And here was this opportunity for beyond satisfaction, a kind of ultimate happiness and enlightenment. It was a promise. You will experience these things, and everything will change,” she recalls.
There is no reason to doubt that Miranda now interprets her experience negatively, even if she acknowledges earlier positive aspects. Erotic rituals can be experienced very differently by different individuals. Some MISA students have engaged—privately—in unconventional erotic activities: adult films, performances at erotic festivals, erotic audio and videochat work, and pole dancing in gentlemen’s clubs. Miranda’s accounts of chat line work are unsettling, but not revelations. One of us (Introvigne) discussed these practices in the 2022 book “Sacred Eroticism,” which MISA students themselves received positively. The book, available in English and freely accessible in French and Italian, situates these private activities of some students within a paradoxical strategy of entering the world of adult entertainment to introduce some participants to MISA’s alternative vision of eroticism.
To be absolutely clear: if any women were coerced into such activities, those responsible should be prosecuted. But to date, no MISA leader has been convicted of such crimes, despite accusations spanning decades. It also remains uncertain whether these activities were private ventures by individual members or connected to leadership. The BBC podcast featured Mihai Rapcea, inaccurately described as Bivolaru’s former lawyer, and accurately described as a vehement opponent of MISA. Asked whether Bivolaru was directly involved in the videochat business—beyond the indirect fact that students who earned more could donate more—Rapcea replied emphatically: “No, no, no, no. He was involved only in writing books, studying, and having affairs with girls.”
“Twisted Yoga” portrays the witnesses as victims. MISA members we interviewed, who knew them personally, called them “liars” and emphasized that some of them have an agenda. Miranda seeks significant damages from the British yoga center where she learned about Bivolaru’s ideas. Another “victim” featured in “Twisted Yoga,” Bonnie, makes a living teaching “yoni mapping therapy” and methods to enhance female pleasure. She admits she developed these ideas after receiving her first yoni massage at the Tantra Temple in Copenhagen, where some students and teachers of MISA used to work. Bonnie is now a competitor of MISA and has a personal stake in discrediting it, as do some of the Finnish apostates who accuse Bivolaru (not featured in “Twisted Yoga”), according to the late Liselotte Frisk’s investigation.
“Liar” is a moral label that holds little significance for social science. While some witnesses may have conflicts of interest, their stories closely resemble those of members of “cults” who were deprogrammed. Some admit they experienced forms of “therapy,” which led them to reinterpret their experiences as abuse. They also acknowledge the strong influence of reading anti-cult literature; Ashley mentions “a constant reading rampage.” It is this anti-cult socialization that led them to conclude they had been “brainwashed.”
Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and of the executive board of University of California Press’ Nova Religio. From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the “Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.
