Shame Caused by the Abuse of Power Must Be Redirected to the Perpetrators
Shame caused by the abuse of power. A brave conversation which does include references to child sexual abuse.
In this episode of the Power Of Women Podcast, Di Gillett speaks with Dr Martina Zangger about childhood abuse, the psychology of shame, and the long path to healing.
Growing up in Basel, Switzerland, Martina’s childhood appeared privileged. The reality was abuse by powerful men within her own family – men who were respected pillars of society. Men whom should know better, be better, do better.
Disclosure did not happen until she was 27.
We also hear about Martina’s extraordinary experience having spent a decade in the infamous Rajneesh cult in the United States.
Now a psychotherapist and author of Not My Shame, Martina’s life work focuses on shifting shame back to where it belongs. – to the perpetrators.
➡️You’ll Hear :
Why shame attaches to survivors.
The common traits of perpetrators.
Why disclosure often takes decades.
The psychology of cult power dynamics.
How women move from silence to authorship.
Powerful quotes from Dr Martina Zangger:
“I believe that shame must change sides.”
“It took until I was 27 to disclose the abuse.”
“We can heal and we will have relief from the damage of abuse.”
👉 Read the full transcript of this conversation here
FULL TRANSCRIPT_DR MARTINA ZANGGER
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (00:02)
So I believe that my purpose in life is to hold rage in one hand and hope in the other. And that gives me the energy to do the work I do. I walk along victims’ survivors on their journeys of healing. And I need that rage and hope to continue. Also, I believe that shame must change sides.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (00:31)
if shame was never yours to carry? And what if shame belongs unequivocally with those who cause harm, not with those who survive it? I’m Di Gillett and this is the Power of Women podcast. And what I love about this platform is the opportunity to showcase and celebrate the strength, resilience and achievements of women from all walks of life.
Through revealing lived experience, it becomes a chorus of wisdom that makes sure women are seen not just for what we do, but for who we are. But before I begin, and as Hannah Asafiri has so rightly pointed out on this podcast in previous episodes, life doesn’t come with a trigger warning. However, this episode includes references to sexual abuse, so please
take care whilst listening. And let’s start with this point today as we kick off the conversation because it’s not designed to shock, provoke, or re-traumatise. It is designed to reframe, to shift shame back to where it belongs, to talk about survival without sanitizing it, and to name patterns, particularly narcissistic abuse.
So hopefully women can see them sooner, trust themselves more readily, and hopefully, where possible, leave earlier. And speaking out can be a key part of healing, which is exactly what today’s guest is doing. Martina Zangger, welcome to the Power of Women podcast.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (02:14)
Thank you so much for having me Di
DI GILLETT [HOST] (02:17)
Martina, I’m going to jump around a little bit today and we had a bit of a exploratory discussion before Christmas, before we decided to record this episode. And there are some dark aspects of this conversation, but there’s also such a richness of lived experience that I’d love to understand today. But I think what we need to do is frame the very beginning and
⁓ and allow our listeners to understand some context. Are you comfortable with us doing that?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (02:54)
Yes very much so Di.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (02:56)
Okay, lovely. So I want to know about your childhood because from the outside, anybody looking at it, it would have looked safe, but the reality behind closed doors was a very, very different thing. Where did you grow up?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (03:14)
So I grew up in a small town in Switzerland called Basel, which is on the German and French border in the north. I grew up in a well-to-do household with a mother and father and two older brothers. Everything looked normal, yet underneath it all, were very, very… ⁓ It was a dangerous childhood.
and there were terrible things happening in both in our home and in the home that I was left in, my grandparents’ home, many times, probably every two, three weeks for two or three days. And that was my grandparents’ home was where I was sexually abused by my grandfather and by my uncle.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (04:05)
What do you most want people to understand about that time, Martina?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (04:11)
I think it’s really important to know that these were ordinary men. In fact, they were highly regarded citizens in our society, in the Swiss society. My grandfather was a high court judge and academic, and my uncle was a beloved politician and barrister. So they were well regarded men. They were men that were looked up to.
and yet behind closed doors they turned into something quite different.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (04:46)
and nobody would have had any idea and it would have been hard to actually be believed given their standing in the community.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (04:54)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And this is why it took such a long time for me to disclose it. It took until I was 27 to disclose the abuse. And it happened, it happened between age two and age six. Yeah.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (05:14)
And you’ve decided to now put pen to paper and you’ve written your memoir touching on this. Why now, Martina?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (05:27)
I was really ready now because I had, in 2010 I had finished my PhD, which was on sexual assault and the legal system. I was teaching at Newcastle University and I was an academic there. And once I finished my PhD, I thought, I never wanna write an academic paper again. It’s so stifling.
we are straight jacketed as academics and we can’t say what we really want to say. And so after I finished my PhD, I became ready then to start creative writing, which is what I pursued then. I was still teaching, but I was no longer writing the PhD or journal articles that were academic yet.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (06:23)
What year did you land in Australia? Because you grew up in Switzerland. What year did you, did you immigrate?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (06:29)
I
came to Australia in 1975 when I was 14 years old.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (06:34)
Okay, and we’ll come back because there’s a couple of moves there about that. But what actually triggered the immigration to Australia?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (06:47)
So in my hometown Basel were all the big pharma factories. So there was Roche, Sandoz, Seabar, Guygee and all the people in that town worked for one of the big pharma companies. My dad worked for big pharma and he was ⁓ given a promotion to ⁓ lead the company in Australia and Asia.
and that is how we moved to Australia.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (07:21)
And was that break in moving countries the break in the abuse?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (07:27)
Yes, it was, absolutely. Because at that time, I was no longer abused by my grandfather who had passed away or by my uncle who got married, but by a 17 year old who abused me for a couple of years between ages 12 and 14. And one of the big benefits of moving to Australia was that then the abuse stopped.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (07:55)
Okay, so there was a physical break point that allowed that to take place.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (08:05)
Yes, I it was amazing. I remember when my dad told us that we’re moving to Australia, my first thought was, my god, this is so great because I’m going to be free of the sexual abuse. Because I just did not know how to disclose it or how to be assertive and say to this guy, I don’t like it. I don’t want to see you anymore. I had no words. I was very unassertive.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (08:31)
Had you declared it to your parents?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (08:34)
No, I didn’t declare it until I was 27.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (08:40)
and from the work that you have done post PhD and in your studies, I suspect that is not uncommon.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (08:51)
It’s absolutely the most common ⁓ time frame when victims disclose it takes on average 25 years. I’ve worked with women, I recently have worked with a beautiful ⁓ older lady who is 85 and she is seeing me for counselling because her father sexually abused her. She has never told anyone until she turned 85.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (09:20)
Go to heavens.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (09:21)
So it takes much courage and time before victim survivors can disclose.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (09:30)
So you referenced about this 85 year old woman that you’re coaching at the moment. I suspect her non-disclosure at an earlier age was purely a generational thing.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (09:46)
Not purely, because even now there are victims who will never disclose. Even now there are young children who will never ever disclose. And that is such a tragedy because if we don’t disclose, we can’t heal. Because we can’t heal in isolation. We heal when we tell someone and the other person believes us.
If we don’t tell, we can’t heal.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (10:17)
So are young children more or less inclined to disclose in current day by contrast to when you grew up?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (10:27)
Yes, they are much more likely to disclose. And when I worked in sexual assault services in rural and regional New South Wales, had at least ⁓ two thirds of our caseload was children and adolescents. So there are more and more kids and adolescents disclosing much earlier because there’s more education in schools about ⁓
being safe about consent and about sexual abuse and what ⁓ sexual abuse actually is. So children are now more likely to disclose, however many still don’t.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (11:12)
So is that about awareness, not confidence? That is, the children are more aware, they’re not necessarily more confident, they’re just more aware?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (11:22)
They’re more aware and they, if they have one safe person in their life, whether that’s mum or an auntie or a teacher or a best friend, they are more likely to disclose if they have a safe person in their lives. Yeah.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (11:42)
And you referenced off camera before about a particular Australian lawyer that you follow.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (11:49)
Yes, so I follow him on Instagram. He’s a Victorian lawyer and every day he posts the figures of child sexual abuse cases in court across Australia. And what he has found is that at least 25 % of all criminal cases that occur in courts across Australia are child sexual abuse cases.
which is just heartbreaking.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (12:20)
It absolutely is. And I suspect there are only the numbers that make it to court because somebody’s called it out. That doesn’t speak to the hidden abuse that is still ongoing or has taken place.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (12:35)
Yes, it’s
heartbreaking. But we’re doing much better education of kids, even little kids in preschools are getting information that they need so that they can disclose if anything ever happens to them.
which is wonderful.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (12:56)
It is, absolutely. Are we at risk that ⁓ an advanced thinking child might weaponize that or does that not happen?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (13:08)
I it happens. Yeah, I don’t think that happens. ⁓ Maybe one in a hundred. I know I’ve worked as a sexual assault ⁓ psychotherapist for 28 years. I would have maybe five in that time, five clients where I thought something doesn’t add up. But that’s out of hundreds.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (13:10)
can go on.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (13:35)
So yes it may happen maybe less than 1 % would fall asleep.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (13:41)
shitty lawyer using using it as their their lame defense to the perpetrator.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (13:47)
Yes.
Or someone that’s extremely unwell or someone who perhaps has a mother that is coaching them to say that. But I need to stress that is less than 1%. Disclosures. People often say, I mean, they’re called, ⁓ you’re a liar. that’s liars are only less than 1%. Yeah.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (14:02)
Also. Yeah, okay.
extraordinary lot. I think we’ve put that one to bed. So looking at shame and we talked about shame in the introduction and I’d like to go there in some detail if we could. It’s one of the most persistent burdens that a survivor carries even though logically it should belong to the abuser not to the victim. Why
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (14:18)
Yeah.
Yes.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (14:46)
does it attach itself so strongly to the person who’s been abused rather than the perpetrator?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (14:55)
Yeah, that’s such a tragedy because it keeps victim survivors silent. But it’s basically because the perpetrator uses power and control. The perpetrator always has more power. And therefore, they make the child or the young person or their wife or partner feel you are nothing, you are nobody, no one will believe you.
You are crazy and they themselves elevate themselves a bit like my grandfather and uncle. I am a pillar of society and no one will believe you. And that’s what I believed for 27 years. And it’s true, like some people did not believe me. Many people go, no, that can’t be true.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (15:48)
Were your perpetrators still alive when you called them out?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (15:54)
My uncle was, my grandfather had died.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (15:58)
How does that sit?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (16:00)
I will, I mean they have both passed away now and I feel freer for it and I feel happy that they can’t abuse any other kids. That’s the main thing I think. ⁓ I did confront my uncle, of course he denied it and perpetrators always deny it because the very thing that allows them to perpetrate abuse also allows them to lie.
and continue to try and use power over a victim survivor.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (16:33)
hence why it’s so difficult to shift that blame back to them from yourself. It really takes an intervention from somebody else to call it out and shift the blame.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (16:47)
Yeah, I remember when I was 20, I was probably 28 or 29, I decided I had this brainwave. I’d been in therapy for a couple of years and I said to my therapist, I’ve got a really great idea. I’m going to write to my uncle and confront him and then he’s going to say, sorry. And I believed that he would because I was still very naive and not as well informed as I am now. And she said,
let’s slow it down, I think we need to plan for this and think about it. But it was one of the times when I would not listen to her. I loved her, she was amazing, but I was like, no, I’m gonna do it. And I went home and I wrote that letter. We didn’t have email yet. I wrote the letter and I copied, made like, I think five copies for my parents, my aunt and my two brothers.
And I sent those to ⁓ those people and my uncle, I waited and waited for him to write back to me hoping he would say, I’m really sorry, I shouldn’t have done that. But of course he wrote back in his lawyerly ⁓ version of events saying, you have always been unstable. We know that you are crazy. You belong in a psychiatric hospital.
and I never touched a hair on your head. And if you continue to say this, I will prosecute you. And it sent me spiralling down for probably about six months. I was gutted. And I thought, you know, I went back to my therapist and I said, I should have listened to you. It was the worst idea for me to do that.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (18:41)
But did it then galvanise you after you hit rock bottom to go, I’m coming after you?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (18:49)
It did, absolutely. Yeah, I got strong again, but it took a while.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (18:51)
yet.
I can imagine. And there’s no guarantee that you can bounce back from that. That is an awful, awful thing to experience. I’m so sorry. Yeah.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (19:06)
Thank you. I’m fine now.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (19:10)
Your strength in talking about this suggests that you’ve got the upper hand in this story now. So, but if at any time this feels uncomfortable, you let me know. So, yeah. So women listening who are carrying trauma, Martina, without going into the clinical depths, because I appreciate you are now well,
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (19:25)
I
DI GILLETT [HOST] (19:39)
educated in this. Could you talk us through what healing tends to involve?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (19:47)
Yeah, healing. ⁓ Healing involves, first of all, finding a safe person that will believe you and support you through the healing journey, who will walk alongside you, whether that’s a sister, a therapist, a mum, or an auntie, someone who is believing and supportive.
can be difficult for some people to find. Sometimes they have grown up in families where there is no safe person.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (20:25)
Is it a coincidence that you’ve called out only female profiles or is that how it always plays out in terms of finding that safe person? Could that-
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (20:37)
Yeah, of course it could. Of course it could. I should have said that. It may be a male therapist. It may be a brother. Yeah, absolutely. A best friend. Yeah.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (20:47)
Okay, yeah. I think it’s probably important that we share that that be the case. We’re not pointing the finger at all men. ⁓
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (21:03)
Many men are very, very supportive and for example my husband who I’ve been with for 35 years, he has been my greatest support and has always believed me and believed in me.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (21:19)
Yeah, there we go. That’s a powerful thing to point out.
So I’d like to talk in a little bit more depth about perpetrators and there’s growing awareness that many abusers share common traits, particularly narcissistic behaviors. And there’ll be a crossover in DV in this as well. When you look at the work that you’ve done, are there similarities
in how perpetrators operate.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (21:58)
there are definitely similarities and there, I’ve talked about this a little bit earlier, they enjoy using power and control. They do not have empathy for their victims and that allows them to continue to perpetrate abuse, whether that’s domestic violence or sexual abuse or homicide. know, women,
DI GILLETT [HOST] (22:08)
They have.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (22:27)
I think last year 75 women were killed in Australia by partners or ex-partners. they have this in common that they, yes, they have not, they do not have empathy for their victims or for their victims loved ones who are also damaged of course.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (22:38)
Thanks.
And we’ve already seen those numbers start to rise for 2026 already. haven’t got our processes in place to keep everybody safe yet.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (22:54)
Absolutely.
No, no,
and we keep, you know, I’m on my soapbox a bit, we put, ⁓ for example, people who have addictions, who have stolen a car and ⁓ been speeding, we put them in jail for five years. We put perpetrators of sexual abuse in jail for 18 months, if that, for six months.
or we give them good behaviour bonds or we let them out early for good behaviour. So the consequences are not the same as they are for other crimes that are far less harmful to the population.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (23:46)
They’re
certainly not aligned to the gravity of what they have perpetrated against somebody else. It wouldn’t be uncommon for survivors to say, know, what drew them to me? Why me? Was this my fault? I suspect self-blame is a big part of what a victim faces.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (24:16)
Yes, self-blame is something I always challenge. And I know for me, I felt a lot of self-blame. I’m crazy, I’m unhinged. I was crazy because I was sexually abused. And once I dealt with it, I was not, I realized I’m not crazy. was just deeply, deeply traumatized. You know, there’s the victim blaming typical, what was she wearing? Why were you out?
Yes. I was wearing pink pyjamas. I was wearing nappies. People of any age can get sexually abused. They might be wearing ⁓ a hospital gown.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (25:06)
Do we victim blame? What is behind that?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (25:08)
Because
we don’t want to know the truth about what happens behind closed doors. don’t want to, know, men still have the power. Men, we’re still living under a patriarchy where men have the power and we don’t, we’re scared to give women power. You know, it’s the, even the, the old story of Eve was made from Adam’s rib. No.
Adam was made from Eve’s womb. But we want to believe that it’s men that are the creators of everything, that are the powerful and smart ones.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (25:52)
That being said, are women ever the abusers?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (25:58)
Yes, are. can ⁓ be.
Yes, a small percentage of abusers are women and I think it’s really important to say that and to be aware of that. I have worked with ⁓ hundreds of sexually abused children and adults and probably perhaps 3 % have been ⁓ girls and women that have abused those people. So 3 to 5 %
DI GILLETT [HOST] (26:31)
than I thought. Yeah. It’s higher than I thought. Yeah. And is that also about power?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (26:37)
Yes, it’s about power and control, same thing. Yeah. And it’s just as damaging ⁓ as if it was a boy or man.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (26:47)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (26:50)
I know we’ve seen that in the news this week haven’t you? We have. female teacher.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (26:56)
Yes,
that’s what prompted my question. Yeah. You’re listening to the Power of Women podcast and I’m talking with Dr. Martina Zenger who is a victim of child sexual abuse. And coming up, we’re going to hear about how she ends up at the infamous Rajneesh cult in the US.
If you’re loving the Power of Women podcasts, be sure to jump onto our YouTube channel and hit that subscribe button to ensure you never miss an episode. Martina, many of my contemporaries will remember the Raj Nish movement and I do. was working in retail as a recent fashion graduate and I can remember this group of individuals.
constantly coming into my store, buying up everything that ever hit the racks that was in orange. And that was my first exposure. And it just seemed like this strange anomaly. But I remember the orange robes, I remember the Rolls Royces, and there was that infamous 60 minutes episode where one of the spokespeople for the cult said,
when challenged in an interview, they said tough titties and that was spoken by a woman. And that resonated and sticks in my mind from the time. And it was framed as a provocative counter-cultural, even a glamorous cult at that stage. I right in?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (28:23)
Yes
Yes, was a bit like a rock star. He was a very infamous, charismatic rock star guru.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (28:47)
Mmm.
There’s going to be an intersection here in what we’ve talked about previously about narcissistic behavior. I would suspect, yeah. So you encountered the Raj Nish at 19. Could you talk us through that and what you were looking for that led to that encounter?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (29:02)
Yes, very.
Yes.
Yes, so I had been very lost. I’d been to uni and dropped out in my first semester because I believed I was stupid, I can’t cope, I couldn’t handle adult life. I had no skills to handle adult life. So I was kind of drifting, working any job that I could get.
being a cleaner in a factory, working at Piermont fish markets, working as an assistant to a sports photographer, ⁓ working in a nursing home as an assistant in nursing, a sandwich hand. One job after another, ⁓ absolutely lost young woman between 17 and 19.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (30:04)
after another.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (30:13)
I then went and lived on a commune in the bush and I attended in Australia, yes. And at that commune, I attended a rebirthing workshop, which I wouldn’t really recommend people do. at that rebirthing workshop,
DI GILLETT [HOST] (30:22)
Yeah.
even at saying that. mean we’ve seen more recent TV shows with Nine Perfect Strangers I think is the one that resonates in my mind now of how wrong that can go.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (30:50)
It
can go very wrong. I attended that workshop and I met a couple there who were Rajneeshis. They were wearing pink and red and purple and orange. They were wearing their necklaces, their beaded necklaces with the locket of his photo around their necks. And they gave me one of his books and that particular book was called My Way.
The Way of the White Clouds. And I read that book. They were going to, two days later they were travelling to America to live on his ashram, which was a 64,000 acre ashram in Oregon. Massive.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (31:38)
65,000 acre. I come from the country. I understand land math. That is enormous.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (31:43)
enormous, enormous. And so they looked so blissful. They were amazing. I just looked up to them, admired them, and I wanted what they had. I wanted that confidence, that smiling piece that detached happiness because I had none of that. So I devoured the book and
I devoured it in 24 hours and then decided I’m going to become a Rajneji too. And I moved back to Sydney to live near the ashram. They had an ashram in Darlinghurst. Yes, yeah, there was an ashram on the street.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (32:25)
is that right?
The
disenfranchised is such a successful strategy. There it is, laid bare.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (32:37)
Yes,
yes. I was so naive and I was such a needy young woman looking for, ⁓ looking to be saved by someone or something because I could not help myself.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (32:53)
Wow. And you then went to the US yourself?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (32:58)
I did, yes, so I had to save up madly because you had to have, it was an expensive cult to be part of.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (33:07)
You had to sustain this huge acreage.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (33:10)
Exactly. So we had to pay $8,000 to be there for a year. And that year we’re in 1981. So that was a lot of money in 1981. There was no way I could save that up doing making sandwiches.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (33:22)
That’s all.
You’ve been doing all of these odd jobs
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (33:33)
Yes, so I met another Rajneeshi. She lived across the road from me in Darlinghurst and she said, yes, I said to her, I need to make money because I want to go and live over there, which all of us wanted to do. That was the Holy Grail to live with him. And she said, ⁓ I’ve got a really great idea for you. I work in a brothel.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (33:41)
I they even existed.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (34:02)
and they’re always looking for people. It’s the easiest job in the world. Why don’t you try it? And I thought, yep, I’m going to do it. She said, you can make $500 a night. And that was in 1981.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (34:18)
The price of sex, it’s an expensive pursuit.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (34:22)
Yes. I went the next day for an interview and I was a real hippie. I didn’t wear makeup. had, I remember the ⁓ guy who interviewed me, he was a lovely gay guy and he said, just take off your clothes. Let me have a look at you. Cause I was wearing like baggy. ⁓ And I took my clothes off and I remember I was wearing like really sad, baggy cotton undies.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (34:43)
Big deal.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (34:52)
And he just shook his head. He goes, you’ve got to go and go next door and buy some really nice lingerie from, what was it called? ⁓ It’ll come to me. It was a really fancy, ⁓ the house of Maryvale. It was a few doors down in Pitt Street, yeah, in the city of Sydney.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (35:08)
Good heavens. Yes. It was next door to the house.
Angel Bar, House of Maryvale, right in the centre of town. Those who aren’t necessarily from Australia or Sydney-siders, the positioning of that is like centre of town anywhere in the world.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (35:22)
Right in the center. ⁓
center
of town exactly. And so he said go and get yourself some lingerie and this will be your uniform and you can start tomorrow.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (35:46)
Mind you, that is bloody expensive lingerie for somebody with no money who’s had odd jobs and is trying to look good for a stranger. mean… ⁓
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (35:57)
Absolutely, it killed my bank account. Yeah
DI GILLETT [HOST] (36:01)
I have no doubt.
There’s so many things wrong with that story, Martina. It’s like… So many things wrong with it.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (36:08)
you
Yes, so I started working there the following day. I was scared but so desperate to get to America, to the Guru that that overrode everything. It overrode my sense of this is dangerous, I’m scared.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (36:35)
So how long did you work at the brothel before you made that money?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (36:41)
Yeah, so I worked there for 18 months. I could have saved it up much quicker, but I then went on spending sprees because having all that money was so, it was so infectious and addictive that I would, you know, I would see a purple satin maxi dress halter neck and go, I want that. And I would buy it at the house of Maryvale.
⁓ I was having expensive hairdos and I was all of that stuff because I was young and silly. I wanted those things. So that’s why it took much longer than it should have. I was sending 10 to 20 percent of my income to the ashram, ⁓ which was what we were, it was tithing. It was tithing a bit like in churches where you tithe 10 percent of your income.
So that also drained the funds significantly. And I did workshops, I did these stupid Rajneesh workshops that were supposed to heal us. And they were expensive too. So yes, took a bit longer than I…
DI GILLETT [HOST] (38:02)
So what year did you land at the ashram?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (38:07)
I
think it was 1982. 1982, yes.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (38:10)
Yeah, right
What a very different contrast in what I was doing to the journey you were going through. But so many people be able to put a line in the sand and say, what did my life look like at that point in time? And it’s such a contrast. So you got there in 1982. How long before the penny dropped that this whole thing was a ruse?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (38:38)
Yeah, look, unfortunately it took eight whole years and it’s a bit like a bad marriage. I stayed in it hoping that things would get better. I stayed because I was committed to this path, this spiritual path that I believed would heal me. I believed that if I was on this path, I never had to
DI GILLETT [HOST] (38:50)
in beta.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (39:07)
deal with my past with the sexual abuse, I would just be magically healed by the Guru and by the
DI GILLETT [HOST] (39:14)
Did it ever come up in any of your workshops? it ever?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (39:17)
It did actually, but then I would just push it down. I would push it down very quickly. I did. You did. I did, yeah. And they, I mean, they would have too, but I would come up and I would just say, no, don’t talk about it.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (39:23)
You did all they did.
Yeah. Do you know why?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (39:39)
Shame. Again, was the shame. I’m dirty. I’m damaged goods. I’m a mess. I’m fucked up.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (39:47)
Yeah.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (39:49)
Yeah,
I wanted to be this spiritual shiny girl.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (39:54)
Yeah. So how did you, what was the tipping point to say this is not right and how did you extract yourself from that incredibly powerful hold that they had over you? Yeah.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (40:11)
So when I first got there I was so excited but very quickly I realized things are not ⁓ gonna be as I imagined them to be. So I was driven by a lovely Rajneesh man to my new home which was a little cute, the cutest little A-frame.
wooden A-frame and I just thought my god I’m going to be so happy here. But when I went into the A-frame I realised I had to share it with two other people. It was a tiny room, a tiny room with three mattresses on the floor with hardly any room to between the mattresses to walk and that was my home for 18 months and we had to work seven days a week
12 hours a day, there was no day of rest, no day for fun. ⁓ And I worked as a member of the pipe crew, was called the pipe crew, was, we were digging ditches in the desert, the Oregonian desert. And the ditches were like quite thin ditches and we laid irrigation pipes.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (41:29)
I was going to say you were doing the work to sustain the property.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (41:34)
Absolutely. We growing all the vegetables, all the fruit, all the trees. And I was shocked that I was so shocked. It was a hard job. Like digging with a pickaxe is really hard. A pickaxe and a shovel. So yes, it was a…
DI GILLETT [HOST] (41:55)
He
was on to a good thing while it lasted. Bloody hell! Yeah!
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (42:01)
And the reason I finally left there, I just want to add one thing before that. He was at that time in silence, so he didn’t speak. He used to give sermons, but he had stopped speaking publicly because he said, I’ve said everything I need to say and I’m tired of talking, so I’m not talking. instead of talking.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (42:25)
Before
I’m gonna get myself into more litigious shit if I keep going
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (42:31)
Yes, absolutely. So at that time, we only saw him at what was called drive-by, which was he would drive past us in one of his 84 Rolls Royces every day after lunch. And we would line up on the side of the road. 2,000 followers would line up with our hands in namaste and wait for him to drive by and
look at us and wave at us and we would jump up and down, we would play musical instruments and be so excited to see him.
Yes.
Adoring. Thank God it ended. eventually he went back to India because he was deported from America. He went back to India to his original ashram and I went there three times in the time that I was part of the Rajneesh movement. The third time I went
DI GILLETT [HOST] (43:39)
Is that what happened?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (43:58)
there was a really tragic event which actually allowed me to leave him and break up with the cult. And that was that his girlfriend, he had had this girlfriend called Vivek, a beautiful, beautiful English woman who had been his girlfriend since she was 18. She was the person I most aspired to be.
I thought she was the luckiest woman alive because she lived with him. She was always in the Rolls Royce with him in the front seat, the passenger seat. And yet there was a deep unhappiness in her and she actually died by suicide while I was there in India. The poor, poor woman. And he ⁓ told us we were not allowed to go to the funeral. She had done the most…
the most ⁓ gutless thing anyone could do and we would not speak about her again. is how he framed it. And that woke me up. just went, I am so angry that no one has compassion for this poor, beautiful woman, Vivek.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (45:14)
Was
there age power play in this? How old was
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (45:16)
Oh god yeah.
She would have been, she would have been 25 and he would have been 50.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (45:25)
So it’s exactly where we started the conversation.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (45:29)
Yes, exactly.
And it was that day that I went into town, into Pune, and I bought my ticket home and I left the cult and I changed my name back to Martina. Yeah, from India. And that was it. I never looked back.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (45:49)
How will?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (45:49)
Yeah,
that was, I was 27. So I was a Rajneji from 19 to 27. It’s a long time.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (46:00)
No wonder you had to write a memoir, Martina, because there is a lot of lived experience to put down, but it’s the same thread. It’s the same repetitive thread just in different settings. mean, it’s movie worthy. It’s extraordinary.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (46:24)
Yes, yeah if anyone wants to know more about the cult there’s a really good Netflix series called Wild Wild Country and it’s really worth watching because it’s about the ashram in Oregon the $64,000, $64,000 acre ashram. yeah it’s worth watching.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (46:43)
Yeah. Yeah, right.
Say that title again for us.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (46:50)
Wild, wild country. W-I-L-D, yeah, wild, wild country. It’s actually not completely, ⁓ it’s still the people that they interview ⁓ are all people that still love the Guru. So it’s skewed towards.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (47:13)
So is it documentary?
⁓
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (47:16)
It’s a documentary which has some propaganda but you can also see through it. Yeah, but the Rajneeshis, their interview are still Rajneeshis. I wish they had also interviewed… No, he passed away. He passed away. They don’t know. They said, I think they said heart failure but some people say he also… ⁓
DI GILLETT [HOST] (47:22)
Okay.
He’s no longer with us.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (47:46)
⁓ He chose euthanasia and that his doctor gave him a lethal injection. But I don’t know.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (47:57)
So without going into detail, there’s often solidarity in ⁓ women in marginalised or high risk environments, which is what I suspect you found in the sex work. Absolutely. again, in the cult. Very much so.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (48:18)
Yes,
it’s a absolutely.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (48:21)
call it a cult. What
from your personal and professional experience matters so much about this camaraderie that you find in these most extraordinary settings?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (48:36)
Yes, I mean the women at the brothel, were beautiful to me. They were just lovely because I was younger than them and they were much more experienced at their work than I was. They took me under their wing and I loved being around them. They were very funny. They they looked out for each other. They looked out for me. I looked out for them as well.
And I’ve always loved women ⁓ and felt very comfortable with women. I just felt very at home with them and cared for. If I had a bad client, they would always debrief with me afterwards and care for me. ⁓ So that was really important. At the ashram, I had…
really good, I made really good friends on the pipe crew. We were a gang of people who had a lot of fun together.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (49:42)
It
just, I can’t get my head around it on a gang on the pipe crew. It’s like chain gang stuff. It’s bizarre. Just bizarre. all jokes aside, this ⁓ choice of women to support women in these extraordinary settings is incredibly powerful. And something that
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (49:52)
Yes.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (50:11)
you know, I harp on about in Power of Women. It’s not always found and you found it in extraordinary settings to be plentiful.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (50:24)
Yes, absolutely. And I already had found it as a girl, as a child. found, because my own mother had a mental illness and was very suicidal and absent because she had been abused by the same two men, her father and her brother. So she was not a good mum. She was very troubled. This was generational.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (50:27)
Yeah.
Yeah.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (50:52)
⁓
I found very early on, I found girlfriends whose mothers took me under their wing. I would visit them, I would hang out there, I would stay weekends. I would be away from home as much as possible and those mothers and girls really loved me. I think I was a lovable kid. Thank God I was a lovable kid. And so I did always have loving women who
I think they sensed that things were not okay at home. And even though I hid it and would never talk about it, and they cared for me, which is very fortunate. And funny enough, I’ve done the same thing with my daughter. I’ve cared for her girlfriends ⁓ who also some of them have had difficult childhoods.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (51:47)
Yeah, there’s the positive aspect of that you have traveled. So at what point do you see women moving from surviving their past to authoring their future? Is there a profound point on the continuum that that happens?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (51:51)
Absolutely.
think it doesn’t happen straight away which is really hard because you want that healing so desperately once you embark on the path of healing, once you start therapy or once you disclose it to your best friend and yet it takes, I think it takes at least a couple of years to find some strength, some power and strength to ⁓ believe in yourself, to let go of the shame.
and to have a voice. And that is a long time to wait. I remember I used to say to my beautiful therapist, you know, how much longer until I feel better? And it took, I think it took a couple of years. Yes, yes. And I was very committed. And I think, you know, some other people, some other women can’t be committed because they don’t have the money to go to therapy. Or they have
DI GILLETT [HOST] (52:57)
It’s a string.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (53:11)
four kids at home and they don’t have the time to go to therapy or they don’t have a car to get there.
Yeah, so it takes time and patience. And money, absolutely.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (53:23)
and money.
Yeah. Wow! Is your book on the shelves already?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (53:32)
Yes it is, it came out in September last year and it’s on the shelves and it’s also available on Amazon and on Kindle.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (53:41)
Yeah, what a read. What a read. Could you just, the title is…
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (53:46)
Not My Shame. Not My Shame. that is, I chose that title because at the time Giselle Pellicot in France was talking about, with her court case, she was talking about shame must change sides. And that’s why I chose that title, yes.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (54:11)
What a profound point in time to bring it up, because that was one of the most terrific cases anywhere in the world that any of us could ever have heard about.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (54:23)
and yet what a strong woman she is.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (54:25)
Absolutely. And I’m assuming listeners know the story we’re talking about, but it was the woman who was repeatedly abused by strangers ⁓ for years as a result of her husband drugging her and running it as an enterprise. just one of the darkest examples of a perpetrator one could ever even imagine. So yeah.
I’m going to close with a couple of rapid fire questions today, Martina.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (55:01)
Okay.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (55:02)
what something survivors are really told but should be.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (55:09)
The most important thing is for a survivor to hear is, I believe you. And also, secondly, it’s not your fault. It’s the perpetrator’s fault. They’re very powerful statements.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (55:24)
Very powerful, they give me goosebumps listening to you say them just now. What’s one assumption about trauma that does more harm than good?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (55:36)
that you can never heal, that you’ll always be damaged. And we can heal and we will have relief from the damage of abuse.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (55:49)
Yep, great affirmation. If a woman listening right now is still blaming herself, what do want her to hear?
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (55:58)
I want her to hear that it is not her fault and that there is help available and maybe we can put some things in the show notes. There is help available, there is actually free help available for those who don’t, who can’t afford therapy ⁓ and they don’t have to walk this path alone.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (56:23)
Absolutely. Martina, thank you so much for what is just the most extraordinary conversation today about your own personal experience and the incredibly informative information that you’ve shared for somebody who has been through this horrendous trauma of sexual abuse and in particular child sexual abuse and how to…
⁓ approach that as part of a journey of healing and shifting that shame from oneself to perpetrator. And to your point, absolutely, I will ask you to share with me some links that we can put into the show notes for our listeners. ⁓ And that then becomes something powerful that they can also pass on and share the episode with somebody that
they believe really does need to listen to a conversation such as the one that we’ve had today. as unfortunate as it is, there are plenty of victims out there who are yet to face into the healing journey, I suspect. And hopefully this goes some way to…
identifying a roadmap for somebody to pursue to start that path.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (57:54)
Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time, and for the opportunity to have a chat with you.
DI GILLETT [HOST] (58:02)
my absolute privilege. Thank you, Martina. Until next time.
DR MARTINA ZANGGER [GUEST] (58:06)
Thank you, Di.
Chapters:
00:00 Rage and Hope: The Duality of Healing
01:53 Childhood Trauma: A Hidden Reality
05:57 The Journey to Disclosure
09:46 The Importance of Safe Spaces
14:02 Shame: The Silent Burden
18:13 Confronting the Past
21:58 Understanding Perpetrators
25:58 The Role of Women in Healing
30:04 The Rajneesh Cult Experience
38:02 Breaking Free from the Cult
46:00 Empowerment Through Storytelling
Connect with Di:
Follow Power Of Women on LinkedIn
The Power Of Women Podcast Instagram
Find Martina at:
Website https://martinazangger.com.au/
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-martina-zangger-9b29874a/
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/martinazangger/
Resources [Australia]:
Free Services for victim-survivors:
https://victimsservices.justice.nsw.gov.au (22 free counselling sessions for victims of crime NSW)
1800RESPECT: 1800 737 732 (free DV and SA counselling 24 hours)
https://www.thesurvivorhub.org.au (free monthly peer support group)
https://bravehearts.org.au (Bravehearts: Free counselling for victims of CSA)
This is the home of unapologetic conversations and powerful stories of reinvention. New episodes drop every Monday to fuel your week with insights on leadership, resilience, and success. Subscribe and join a community of women who are changing the game.
Want more fearless, unfiltered stories?
💫 Subscribe to the Power Of Women Podcast on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts
Your ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify keeps these stories alive.
📩 Sign up for our newsletter where I share raw reflections and thought leadership on the Power Of Reinvention.
Disclaimer: https://powerofwomen.com.au/podcast-disclaimer/
