Jorge Llano, the great master of 'constellations' and Gestalt therapy, accused of sexual abuse in Colombia

Jorge Llano, for years a reference in the world of psychology and spirituality in Colombia, has been accused by a dozen of his former students at the Human Transformation school of having taken advantage of his power and, through manipulation strategies, having taken them to commit sexual acts that they did not want.

Three of them told EL PAÍS his stories.

Llano has refused to give an interview to this newspaper, but has maintained his innocence.

This newspaper spoke with two people from the school who deny having seen the reported abuses and believe that whoever he believes is his teacher has been demonized.

They all came to school looking to heal their wounds.

They didn't imagine that they would come out with new ones, even deeper ones.

Llano was a professor and founder of the Claudio Naranjo Gestalt School in Bogotá, he traveled the world giving lectures on family constellations, bioenergetics and personal growth.

Charismatic and intelligent, with him his students felt safe to open their hearts and tell their lives.

The school was a “home for the excluded,” remembers one of its students who, like the other two women interviewed by this newspaper, speaks on the condition of anonymity.

“In the midst of this world of so hurt people,” adds another of them, it was a refuge of love where the attendees, many of them psychologists, not only sought to expand their therapeutic tools, but also to heal themselves.

But the path proposed to them was, at times, tortuous.

They say that strange things happened in the individual and group sessions, which Jorge warned them beforehand that it was better to keep quiet, because the outside world would probably not understand them.

The testimonies agree that they usually occurred with young, intelligent women, whom Llano treated as his “chosen one.”

He would ask them to sit on his legs, and sometimes he would grope them, spank them, or rub them with an erection, according to several stories collected on the Instagram account

Rompiendo el fear.

The check

has published 21 anonymous testimonies: 12 of them narrate, in first person, situations of sexual intimidation.

Her name is the same as the group created by eight women who consider that they were victims of sexual abuse by Llano and who say they are aware of about 30 cases;

the oldest they have traced dates back three decades.

Llano, meanwhile, has flatly denied the accusations.

Contacted by this newspaper, he declined to speak.

He explained that this was recommended to him by his lawyers, who are collecting evidence to initiate a defamation process against the complainants.

According to testimonies, Llano would have led several women to commit non-consensual sexual acts in a context of emotional manipulation – like his therapist, he knew the “blind spots” and psychological weaknesses of each one – or under altered states of consciousness, in workshops. in which he gave them medicines from indigenous traditions or psychoactive substances, under the promise of healing.

The complainants say that Llano suggested that they do exercises to work on their eroticism and unlock their sexuality.

“He told me: kiss me, sleep with me, get into bed with me, seduce me, let's finish the exercise,” says one of the interviewees.

“They went several times at night.

'Let's go to work', and that's what work was.

And without him specifically telling me 'don't tell anyone', I didn't tell anyone.

It was something that made me feel ashamed and at the same time privileged.”

The victims say that they isolated themselves and opted for silence, until, little by little, one found the other, telling each other what had happened, detecting patterns and astonishing coincidences.

They agree that the most terrifying thing was discovering that they were all enneatype 2. In Human Transformation they used the personality classification system known as the enneagram, which is based on nine archetypes and was so key in the way of relating within the school. , that “people did not see the person but the numbers,” says one of them.

In that taxonomy, the two are “cheerful, generous, spontaneous, seductive, feminine, warm and willing to help” women.

But Llano taught that they also had a “hidden whore.”

One of the interviewees believes that the abuse began to brew since he classified her.

“Who is going to believe me?

The people at school love Jorge and I'm the hidden fucking victim.

2 is a hypochondriac, she plays the girl.

So my voice is not worth it,” she says.

“It looks like

House of Cards

, everything planned,” she adds, referring to the famous political drama.

They remember that when they learned about the case of an 18-year-old girl and another in which there was a struggle with the student, they decided to face their fear and make their first publication on Instagram.

It was June 21, 2023. “How many more?” they asked themselves.

The complainants say that they still do not fully understand what happened to them, why an almost supernatural power seemed to overcome their will.

They look for metaphors to try to explain it, and all three find the same thing: it was like being in a Netflix series.

For better or worse]

In the middle of the pandemic, a friend suggested to one of the women that she watch the docuseries

For Better [or For Worse],

which in each episode explores an alternative therapy that had been good for many people, but had ruined others. life.

She insisted that she watch the second episode, about tantric sex.

“And I, innocently, look at that and start crying,” says the interviewee.

“That's what happened to me.

In the series they tell how women come to want to heal themselves and the guru tells them that for that they have to have sex, to revive their eros.

They don't want to do it, but the group tells them: 'Don't you want to be cured?'

The guru tells them: 'you don't know, I will cure you'.

They end up doing erotic acts that they do not want in the name of healing, forced and under pressure,” she adds.

She remembers that that night she was finally able to give a name to what happened and recognize herself as a victim.

The interviewees say that Llano often mentioned eros, the archetype of loving behavior.

“I saw your eros, your power and your light.

Stop behaving like a girl and be a woman, I know you dressed me like a man with eros on, don't lie to yourself,” she told one of her students, according to testimony 7 of

Breaking Fear

.

“It was a very dark moment in my life,” the text states.

She relates that Jorge offered her a massage, told her that “he had seen that her heart was closed and he could help her open it (…) He started touching my chest, my waist, my legs, my face, and he came up to kiss me.” .

I still feel very guilty and stupid, because I didn't stop it thinking that it was going to get me out of my depression, and it ended up doing more things to me."

Another woman maintains that “she told almost all victims of sexual abuse: 'you want me and you don't see it, you bastard, legalize your desire, open your eroticism, you want me and you don't say it.'

How are you looking at me!

'You want to eat me'.

She said it like that, and in public.

She hurts your head and then secretly she tells you: 'Do you want to work?

Let's go home".

The interviewees agree that Llano also used another element widely explored in psychoanalysis: the relationship with the father.

“We all get it because of a wound with our father and to awaken our eroticism,” adds one of them.

In some sessions she applied the countertransference technique and impersonated someone else.

“Jorge represented everyone's father (…) and since supposedly almost all of us had a desire for the father, then we wanted him,” explains another.

The most serious complaints refer to situations in Agua Blanca, the school's country headquarters, located in Guasca, Cundinamarca.

Surrounded by mountains and silence, this farm not only facilitated the retreat and introspection that the workshops held there promised, but a three-minute walk away, far from the classrooms, was Jorge's house, the complainants say.

The women in the group report that he invited many of them there to continue “working,” or made them go with excuses.

One of them says that she wrote to him telling him that she was fainting, but when she arrived and told him that she was going to ask for help, Jorge responded: “What I need to heal is for you to lie naked on top of me.”

The so-called Sexuality Workshop

was held on the farm .

“We all signed informed consent that we know what can happen,” says one of the attendees, “but it is a workshop in which they force you to undress.

They forced me to 'heal' myself by letting all my classmates grope me.

They are public, legitimized sexual abuse, all as if in a dream.”

But she claims that the promised healing was not coming.

What emerged was silent crying, in the shared rooms, and a feeling of guilt that, all those consulted say, led to depression and a crack in her self-esteem.

The body warned them that something was not right, but they doubted.

From 'love bombing' to 'follow into it'

Llano was putting everything together like a house of cards, say the women of the group.

From above, he moved the pieces: he organized couples — “he was a very matchmaker,” a man who was close to him tells this newspaper — or he suggested divorces.

The links between people at the school passed through him, while external support networks were dissolving, sources say.

There was a process of 'triangulation', adds one of his former collaborators: “You speak badly about each other, with the other about the other, and what you do is fragment the fabric of the group.

“It is a technique to isolate people so that no one speaks.”

The testimonies indicate that Llano advised some women to get pregnant and several men to break a condom to prevent their partner from abandoning them.

Others, he says, she convinced that her father had abused them.

“I started getting the idea.

During the yagé intake, at a time when he was in crisis, vomiting, he came up to talk to me and tell me like: 'Let it go, that secret is not yours, stop taking care of your dad.'

I became convinced that my father had abused me.

It's a terrible thing because we had a wonderful, super close relationship, and I went into crisis.

I went months without speaking to him,” says one of those affected.

This interference is due to a process of depersonalization, explains Danny Ortiz Basante, lawyer and representative in Colombia of the Support Network for Victims of Sects

.

“The ultimate goal of a leader of a destructive organization [profile that he considers Llano has] is to depersonalize his victim, so that he no longer makes decisions through his own cognitive processes, but rather depends on the leader.

That he gives in absolutely everything, from a pair of shoes to professional, relationship, and health decisions,” says the expert.

Ortiz finds in Human Transformation the typical process of what he describes as destructive organizations.

He begins with love

bombing

: “They make you feel cared for, included, loved.”

Then they demand small resignations, which escalate to larger ones.

It is the stage he calls

follow into it.

In the words of one of the interviewees,

who was a tutor for years at school, “you give up your border, and the closer you are to power and the leader, the more transgressions and the more difficult things they ask of you (…) In the end, you realize that you compromised to belong.”

Men also had to pay a price.

They were more of type 8. “Llano brought them closer, but it was to get money from them,” a student who was part of the organization tells EL PAÍS.

He demanded loyalty from them, and betrayal was punished.

The man says he witnessed when Llano made one of the teachers kneel, in front of the entire school, as a condition for forgiving him after having taught classes at another institution.

“Humiliation was an everyday thing,” he adds, and he says that he applied it to the men who he felt questioned him, and to the women he liked the most: “He was a patient person, who did the work of making her feel the worst before making your move.”

In his case, he says that Llano used him as

a dealer

, in charge of buying the drugs that were distributed in the

Todo por amor

workshops .

“I had an addiction problem and he made me look for drugs, to expose myself to relapse or something,” he explains now.

To the MDMA he got him, he says, Llano “added little flowers and things to make it look natural.

He gave it names like 'father's ray, death'.

In most sexual abuse cases, Llano would not have used physical force.

Almost all the women say they were paralyzed.

“I froze,” narrates testimony 1. Ortiz explains that in these cases, which are replicated all over the world, the force exerted is “indoctrination,” and clarifies that it is not a matter of ignorance, but quite the opposite.

“It has been shown that the more intelligent, the more risk a person has of falling into a destructive organization, because they are very introspective and are looking for answers,” she argues.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Rompiendoelmiedo (@rompiendo_el_miedo)

The victims of these abuses in the world, says Ortiz, are men and women of all ages.

“When you ask the girls who were abused if they wanted to have sex [with the leader], they say, 'No.

I've never wanted to, I don't like him physically, I don't find him attractive.'

And when you were having sexual intercourse, were you able to object?

And the answer is: 'No, I couldn't.'

They want to but they can't resist.

They are persuaded by an invincible force,” she explains.

Llano's response

Jorge Llano has another reading of the facts.

Four days after the first Instagram publication of

Breaking Fear

, he posted a letter on his personal networks announcing his retirement as a teacher and therapist.

In it he sent a message to those who pointed him out: “I pray that some women take their power and take charge of their eros and their dynamics;

That would also help us all unwind and help each one collect their energy and what they have done.

“Adult/adult.”

“I have been a channel of forces, and bearer of lineages of healing and emotional healing, of personal empowerment, of health and spiritual love, I am not looking for truth, only God has that,” he said in a text in which he apologized. general, without mentioning sexual abuse.

And he continued: “I know that my work was also in many phases of the unconscious, and outside of contexts it is complex to understand.

I can understand, respect and accept that, for several people, what was useful to them at the time, today in their retrospect they have not integrated it or it has not served them, or even caused harm;

I am very sorry (…) I took it like this from my teachers and in blind and faithful love I passed it on to others.”

These are not the first complaints of sexual abuse in Gestalt therapy, developed by Fritz Perls, Laura Perls and Paul Goodman in the 1940s and 1950s. At the same time that the complaints against Llano were breaking out in Colombia, similar testimonies, without the women knew each other, they spread through Mexico, Peru and Argentina.

In those countries, schools did not close;

They removed the designated teachers and established protocols.

In Colombia, on the other hand, the accusations opened a deep crack in the union.

On the one hand, there are those who claim to have seen inappropriate behavior on the part of Llano—24 people wrote to the group to add their voices—;

on the other, therapists, patients and students close ranks around their teacher.

They remember how he helped them overcome painful stages in their lives and have nothing but admiration and gratitude for him.

EL PAÍS spoke with two of the people who were in charge of the foundation at the time the scandal broke out.

They say that after

Breaking Fear

they were forced to close the workshops, and they say that they were harassed and blamed, despite not being responsible for Llano's alleged behavior, not having been alerted or having witnessed any type of sexual abuse.

“They demonized us.

We were all rapists,” comments one of the former trainers, who prefers not to give his name to avoid more attacks.

Faced with pressure and student desertion, the school closed its doors and its members were scattered.

Llano disappeared from the therapeutic scene and his international tours were cancelled.

The managers consulted say that they looked for the complainants.

“Our plan was to put together very ethical protocols, reintegrate the victims and carry out a restorative process.

We open the communication channels, we begin to prepare the processes.

We had psychologists, we had lawyers, but they did not want to reconcile with us,” says one of the therapists.

It was a “golden opportunity to do deeper reflection,” they argue.

And although they maintain that women had the right to go to social networks, they consider that they also had the responsibility to show a result.

“Such strong processes in networks are a form of judgment,” says a woman who was part of the foundation's directives.

“But who decides and where is the right to a good name.

There is no redemption possible.

For Jorge this meant his downfall from everything.

“They killed him and his legacy.”

The psychologist María Paula Herrera Durán, a member of the Corporación Colectiva Sancción, which serves women victims of gender-based violence and who has worked with

Rompiendo el fear

, defends the publications.

She points out that this form of public denunciation, known as escrache, is a right protected by the Constitutional Court.

For her, it is a useful tool “when patriarchal justice generates multiple barriers, or when the legal space is used to exert greater violence on women, to minimize their testimonies.”

Herrera highlights that the escrache has helped the therapeutic process, as it has contributed to them letting off steam and supporting each other, and argues that it is especially valid because Llano has denied these acts.

Indeed, Jorge's letter did not meet the expectations of the group: “We feel that there is still a way to go because there is a lack of recognition, the will to make reparation, and to genuinely assume responsibility for the damage caused,” the women wrote in response.

Up to this point they have not filed any legal action;

They assure that they fear a long, painful and re-victimizing process.

They also say they are afraid of the supernatural powers that have been attributed to Llano, who is considered a shaman.

“All sectarian leaders are going to establish themselves as having received that power from a magical episode that changed their lives,” explains Ortiz.

The night the school issued its statement, the women of

Rompiendo el fear

could not sleep: “A deep fever, fires all over their faces.

They were all: I haven't slept, I'm sick, I'm sick (…) A friend does say: Jorge has the candle lit for me.”

The complaints meant a deep break: broken friendships, doubting colleagues and mutual recriminations.

All in the midst of the nostalgia they say they feel for a school with a mystique that they have not been able to replicate, even though it left them broken.

“Gestalt still seems like a powerful therapy to me,” one of them clarifies.

“The problem is that it fell into the hands of some psychopathic, narcissistic, macho men.

I spent a long time with shame, but two years ago I told myself: Jorge stole so much from me, he is not going to steal my love for spirituality.”

In the end, they are applying the tools they learned, because that is what constellations and Gestalt therapy are about: detecting patterns, diving deep, working on unhealed issues and bringing them to light.

Subscribe here

to the EL PAÍS newsletter about Colombia and

here to the WhatsApp channel

, and receive all the key information on current events in the country.