A SURVIVOR’S TESTIMONY: New website section

20 thoughts on “A SURVIVOR’S TESTIMONY: New website section”

1. Dear Adele, as expected they start banning you fr. teachings and visiting India. Thanks for making public what needs to be made public. Unfortuneately you are playing a high prize for your honestly. Wish you calm and serene mind despite all shit thrown at you. Solidarity and strength. Klaus

   Loading...

   Reply

2. Deeply necessary documentation, Adele. This report shines a much-needed light on how deeply entrenched these patterns of social exclusion and bullying really are across European and Indian Dharma centers. Thank you for your continued courage in bringing the objective truth and the facts to light.

   This is an invaluable update that directly corroborates what many insiders have witnessed with Damien Jampa and his cult-like group of sycophantic enablers for many years. By directly naming the individuals responsible for these defamation and bullying campaigns, you are stripping away the institutional anonymity that has shielded the behavior of the ‘Syndicate’ going back to at least 2010, if not earlier in Bir. Dharamsala, and later, internationally.

   It is truly heartening to see this culture of silence and complicity broken in the public spotlight, ensuring that the broader Tibetan and Buddhist communities finally see the full scope of how these unethical actions are coordinated by abusive, misleading, and corrupt figures such as Damien Jampa and Ngawang Trinley (NT), as well as their uncritical followers or complicit associates. These include NT’s submissive older brother, Helios Hildt along with his wife Dani Vargas, Justin Kirkwood, Sean Griffin, Eugene Romaniuk, Evan Yerburgh, James Bradwell, Matthias Staber, and the other self-righteous, radicalized pseudo-intellectuals who emerged from the extremely dysfunctional and clannish Sherab Ling/Esukhia scene in the 2010s.

   This is a critical development that proves the harmful behavioral patterns first seen during the ‘Esukhia Era’ in the 2010s, and afterwards until at least 2024, were never just isolated workplace disputes. They are part of an ongoing, systemic playbook of gatekeeping, defamation, and social intimidation designed to control access to resources and protect their self-appointed status. This group behavior appears to be ultimately rooted in Damien and NT’s pathological, obsessive status-positioning, fragile and insecure egotism, and bureaucratic authoritarianism.

   Documenting these specific instances of bullying at European and Indian centers is vital for ensuring that these networks can no longer weaponize their proximity to powerful institutions in order to exclude and demean those who don’t “kiss the ring”.

   These highly questionable individuals have systematically undermined the human dignity of numerous practitioners, students, and scholars for many years, and breaking this culture of silence and complicity now ensures that total public accountability is finally catching up with them.

   Loading...

   Reply

   1. Hello, thank you for your input and interest. I have no idea what you say is true.

      However, I do know from my own experience that Damien Jampa (together with Titi Dolma, real name Neneng Setiawati) were both the mains diriving forces behind the bullying, harassment, gossip and exaggerated incidents etc that persistently disrupted the teachings in Vietnam and Europe 2025, and led to a severe and unnecessary destruction and ruin of a new Vajrayana connection and precious genuine connection between myself and Gyalton Rinpoche. The disruption was caused also by Damien Jampa’s derogatory and dismissive view of my work as a Buddhist scholar-translator which he exposed himself at the start of the Vietnamese Hanoi course, when he spoke about my work and introduced me to someone else. Considering Damien himself does not have independent book publications, postgraduate degrees nor is invited as a scholar to international conferences etc, or built up an entire website/translations project resource by himself from scratch, his dimissive comments seemed to come from a place of jealousy, competitiveness and resentment. The fact that he defended the Vietnamese oral translator’s refusal to answer a simple friendly question over the dining table as to what her “Dharma background” was, yet openly dismissed mine as if it were nothing, shows the level of hostility even then he had towards me and my efforts and studies.

      However, in relation to the online defamation, bullying, smear campaign etc. that was carried out (particularly during 2019-2020) by the named individuals in the website section, but also by Sangye Nyenpa, his family members like sister in law, monks at Benchen monastery. So I do believe that much of it came from Sangye Nyenpa or those connected to him, and not Damien Jampa so much, although I may be wrong about that.

      The creepiest thing is that Sangye Nyenpa himself seemed to be creating pseudonyms on FB and contacting me on them, before and after I reported the dishonesty, emotional bullying, and misconduct.

      That is why the identity of the author of the Github and the Youtube channel started in April 2025 also needs to be clearly identified. That will be very revealing.

      Loading...

      Reply

      1. That dining-table incident perfectly encapsulates the institutional double standard that has defined Damien’s playbook since 2010. It was never about objective standards or credentials; it was always about compliance and gatekeeping. If someone is part of the approved ‘in-group,’ they get an automatic free pass and total protection. But the moment an independent scholar or translator steps in, someone with actual drive and independent output who doesn’t beg for their stamp of approval or is part of their inner circle, they are immediately viewed as a threat, insulted, and dismissed. Meanwhile, if someone is part of the approved ‘in-group’—like Justin Kirkwood or Matthias Staber, who were given total free passes and absolute career support as translators/interpreters early on, regardless of their relative experience at the time—they get automatic protection.

         Seeing him pull the exact same hypocritical stunt in Hanoi in 2025 proves that this insular, provincial defense mechanism hasn’t changed a single bit in sixteen years. The guy is a total hypocrite and yes, obviously operates from a place of deep insecurity, fragile ego, and laughable double-standards.

         The really scary thing is how much his toxic, perverse, and self-serving attitude spread to the rest of the ‘Syndicate’, beginning with Ngawang Trinley (NT) and eventually infecting the rest of their close associates in turn.

         Their bad influence should not be underestimated. Because Damien, NT, and their ‘Syndicate’ captured early digital infrastructure and language-learning projects, starting with Esukhia back in 2011-12, they managed to position themselves as indispensable middlemen for several key institutions and numerous sincere students, practitioners, and scholars. Instead of using these resources to genuinely foster and support Buddhist scholarship and spiritual transmission, they weaponized them as political leverage: gatekeeping access, policing independent paths, and filtering out anyone they couldn’t directly control. The tragedy is that a field meant to preserve a profound tradition was instead subjected to the small-minded, territorial tyranny of petty bureaucrats who care infinitely more about their own unearned status than the actual integrity of the Dharma, translation and interpretation work, or authentic study and practice, despite their self-important claims.

         It makes you wonder how many others have been bullied, abused, gatekept, discouraged, defamed, and sidelined by these insecure, provincial French sociopathic maniacs and the pathetic, brown-nosing cartel of sycophantic enablers they managed to build around themselves over the years. Probably quite a few, all things considered.

         Loading...

      2. Yes, the “dining table” incident on the second day of the course, was a “red flag” of things to come. In fact, I did not return the following morning because of it. But as I had started the course, I felt magnetised to return by Gyalton Rinpoche’s presence.

         And yes, the Vietnamese translator’s hostile and exaggerated reaction to my asking a simple (and very normal) question on the second day of the course, when they both came down to sit at a dining table I was already sitting at, was also exacerbated and exaggerated by Damien Jampa. I had never met or spoken to the interpreter before either, but her hostility seemed excessive, so it may be that Damien had primed her. Or Titi Dolma was already working behind the scenes to ensure people their regarded me with hostility and suspicion too.

         I have never heard or seen any independent scholarship, study of the Vietnamese woman, and she did not speak or read Tibetan, and yet Damien Jamapa was rude and dismissive when he introduced me to her and other people there.

         In fact, I had just come from the International VESAK day conference in Ho CHih Minh City, as an invited guest speaker, flown there and put up in 5 star hotel by the organisers. So Damien’s rudeness and disrespect about my academic and translation achievements, seemed even more inappropriate and reeking of some kind of male jealousy, resentment and competitiveness. The refusal of the female interpreter to answer such a simplay question, and look at me like it was the most offensive thing I could have asked a translator, was bizarre and suggested she either already formed an opinion about me and my work (via Damian Jampa or herself) or she was majorly on the defensive about her lack or prior studies at a formal level in Tibetan, and whose English was OK, but certainly not someone I would call fluent in spoken English.

         Damien capitalised on that incident, and my asking him to ensure people did not take photos of me and put them on social media, nor take them of me during empowerments or meditations, as a green light to basically then bully, gossip, mock and target me with the Vietnamese male photographers, a few other Vietnamese women and create a situation where I started feeling bullied, and the invasive photography became worse, with the male photographers coming up right next to and behind me, which they had not done before I asked.

         As for my sitting in the wrong seat allocated to monks, there were laypeople like the translator and others sitting in those seats, so I have no idea why they had such strong objections to that either. It’s not a major crime and all it required was a polite, friendly chat to explain the seating arrangements. Instead Damien (and Titi Dolma) both went into the hyper offensive and all of a sudden, despite my sitting at the side and not speaking to anyone during breaks and after the course and being low-ket, I became a source of amusement, bullying and focus, when they all should have been focusing on their meditation. This was due to the disruption and gossip of Titi Dolma and Damien Jampa who encouraged others to act in these ways.

         In addition, I requested to sing a short song of a mantra I had recorded and composed previously on Youtube as an offering at the end for Gyalton Rinpoche, but was told by Damien (after he had consulted with Titi and a couple of other women) that would not be possible. Yet there was ample time for a 5 minute Buddhist song. I let that go too though, and accepted their decisions without complaint.

         However, after the course finished, unbeknown to me at the time, Damien and Titi took matters into their own hands again, and decided not to send me any of the links to the class recordings, or the online review classes. So I was excluded and discriminated against from the Buddha Within I course, right from the start without any explanation, discussion or due process with the person they were discriminating against, myself.

         This decision was later swiftly revoked by the Sherab Ling administration in India in September 2025, when they returned there. Damien then just sent me the online links without any apology about what he and Titi had done. So a total lack of humility and acknowledgement of their discrimination and wrong doing, even after Sherab Ling had clearly indicated that was a “wrong decision” on their part.

         Loading...

3. To clarify and add a crucial piece of nuance to the discussion on credentials: while Damien Jampa does actually have a few French translations out there through outlets like Dharma Ebooks (such as Tilopa’s Mahamudra of the Ganges / Le Mahamoudra du Gange and a few Kagyu practice liturgies), and of course he did complete the full monastic shedra curriculum at Sherab Ling, your broader point about the stark lack of real scholarly credentials and accomplishments across this circle is entirely accurate.

   First, when you look past the self-important titles at the academic and postgraduate realities of this entire group, the landscape is incredibly bare. Riffing on their total lack of formal postgraduate background exposes the ultimate, laughable irony of the ‘Septic Syndicate’:

   1. The Myth of Formal Authority and the “Naked Emperors”

   They have spent over a decade and a half acting like an elite, authoritative review board, policing who is allowed to be taken seriously in the field and who is a “a qualified translator” in their eyes (incidentally, no one actually cares about their self-serving opinion on these matters). Yet, if you look at their actual CVs, almost none of them have a single semester of formal, postgraduate academic training in Buddhist or Tibetan Studies. They didn’t earn their gatekeeping status through rigorous peer review, deep philological research, or advanced academic coursework; they earned it by capturing a niche digital pipeline early on and crowning themselves the arbiters of “standards”.

   2. The Illusion of Prolific Expertise and the Stark Reality of a Declining “Boys Club”

   Aside from Justin Kirkwood and Matthias Staber, who later managed to produce significant translation and interpretation work under the protection of institutional umbrellas (while still remaining firmly tethered to the toxic ideology of the Syndicate and the bullying mechanisms of its social hierarchy), the actual output from the rest of that crowd, both online and offline, is surprisingly thin. They talk and act like they are leading a massive, highly productive renaissance of Tibetan Buddhist scholarship. But when you strip away the administrative titles and look for published books, peer-reviewed monographs, volume of commissioned or independent translations, or scholarly works in general, there is barely anything there.

   Even Ngawang Trinley (NT), their “golden boy” and “grand visionary”, has produced almost nothing of intellectual substance outside of his digital humanities scaffolding and software infrastructure tech-work. This also applies to his perpetually submissive older brother and partner in crime, Helios Hildt, along with Helios’ cunningly opportunistic and brutally cutthroat wife, Dani Vargas, both of whom appear to operate under the very same type of delusional grandiosity, unjustified arrogance, and shocking sense of unearned entitlement as Damien, NT, and the rest of the Syndicate. Helios has a few short translations on Lotsawa House, and that’s about it. Dani, as you know, “somehow” managed to get high-level administrative positions in various institutions despite almost no qualifications or relevant experience; although it appears both of them have been completely removed from Khyentse Foundation after the fallout of NT’s illegal data-scraping practices, along with the systematic exploitation, abuse and neglect of his wife Jennifer Yo and their two children.

   This makes Evan’s sudden, pathetic “comeback” via Ngawang Trinley’s recent vanity setups—such as OpenPecha, WeBuddhist, and a few other related peripheral projects—all the more ridiculous. It is a completely transparent, desperate maneuver on both sides: a failing attempt by NT to salvage his own dwindling career and utterly ruined reputation by spinning up new technical infrastructure and squeezing out a few breadcrumb grants to hire yet another criminally underpaid mass of overworked Tibetan staff, and a sad attempt by Evan to claw his way back into the scene after a full decade of total inactivity in the field, likely as a desperate bid to escape the domestic realities and demands of his personal situation in Thailand. The utter absurdity of this alliance is that Evan isn’t returning as an equal or valued scholar; he is basically being treated like a compliant digital slave completely subservient to NT’s unhinged ego and desperate need to look relevant.

   As for Sean Griffin, James Bradwell, Eugene Romaniuk, and until recently, Evan Yerburgh, they are essentially total dropouts from the field who retreated into intense social isolation, conspiracy theories, religious fundamentalism, and PTSD-style groupthink, while never producing anything of note (with the minor exception of Evan’s ‘Treasury of Lives’ biographical entries from 2014-15). This unfortunate turn of events was likely due to their deeply damaging involvement with the sheer malignant narcissism of the Damien/NT Syndicate, which in all likelihood discouraged them from pursuing their paths and careers, while leaving them psychologically devastated and a mere shell of their former selves.

   3. A Cultish Culture of Mediocre Middlemen

   This is exactly why exposing their lack of credentials hits so hard. This group is essentially an administrative cartel based on nepotism, clannish insulation, obsessive status-positioning, and institutional capture—not a spiritual or intellectual fellowship, let alone a legitimate scholarly committee. Because they lack the baseline credentials or real field-tested expertise to stand on their own merits in the wider world, they rely entirely on trading favors, shielding one another’s mediocrity, and aggressively freezing out external talent to maintain their fragile positions.

   They are petty bureaucratic middlemen who have spent many years using their proximity to powerful, trusting traditional institutions to pass off incompetent, power-tripping administrative mismanagement as genuine traditional or academic authority. By weaponizing early digital access and masking their deep-seated insecurities behind a veneer of institutional gatekeeping, they transformed what should have been an open, transparent effort to preserve and disseminate a profound spiritual tradition into a sterile, territorial corporate fiefdom of petty rivalries and scarcity-mindset barbarism. When you strip away the unearned titles, the self-serving review boards, and the brittle infrastructure, you are left with nothing but the classic pathology of small-minded tyrants desperately trying to protect a monopoly that they never had the qualifications to run in the first place.

   Loading...

   Reply

4. Some independent observations:
   ” 500 metre boundary order? How would you know if someone is a ten minute walk away?” Seems like they think you have supranatural clairvoyant powers that they clearly DO NOT have. If so, they should be prostrating to you as their teacher.”

   “Seems like the “hanger-on, pick-me” white European woman, out of covert jealousy and to gain short-lived attention, chose ( on two separate occasions) to bully and harass you, an esteemed and prolific female Buddhist scholar-translator-practitioner, delusionally stated that the monastery guesthouse premises was “her home” and that she had the right to pressure and dictate to monk staff, and others staying there, who was permitted to stay or not. This was according to her personal wishes and dislikes (and that of a few of her friends in Europe), yet she also delusionally stated she was speaking on behalf of ALL followers of the teacher. It is possible the woman may need some psychological therapy, but at least should have received a verbal or written warning by monastic staff to refrain from such unlawful and aggressive conduct towards another permitted guest on monastery grounds.”

   “Since when has a man/person hiding/shielded behind a team of well-paid lawyers and his “nameless” associates, all “employed” to persecute, restrict, control, defame and harass a lone woman ever been a fair “fight”, just or brave? It’s a classic example of misogyny and cowardice. And is that really a beneficial or appropriate use of religious devotees donations? No. Small men, small minds. Chungpo by name and chungpo by nature.”

   Loading...

   Reply

5. Organizational Overview of the ‘Septic Syndicate’

   1. Damien Jampa
   Damien Jampa serves as the primary administrative strategist, political enforcer, and covert operator within the Syndicate’s broader organizational architecture. Positioned within monastic frameworks and European Buddhist administrative bodies, he operates as the non-technical counterpart to Ngawang Trinley, supplying ecclesiastical legitimacy, access to monastic leadership, and organizational muscle to back the Syndicate’s initiatives.

   His administrative strategy is defined by the systematic avoidance of open scholarly discourse, direct peer accountability, or transparent dispute resolution. Instead, he relies on backroom political maneuvering, whisper campaigns, and legal leverage to maintain institutional control and neutralize perceived dissent. Within regional bodies such as the European Buddhist Union (EBU), as well as through covert legal mechanisms—including proxy lawsuits filed in the Delhi High Court—his methods prioritize administrative coercion over open governance. These hidden, behind-the-scenes plots and backroom campaigns have been consistently deployed to suppress independent scholars, dedicated translators, former staff members, and critics who refuse to align with the Syndicate’s authoritarian administrative directives, self-serving organizational playbook, and extreme fundamentalist stances.

   This dependence on covert pressure creates a fundamental vulnerability within his public standing. While presenting himself publicly as a dedicated monastic figure, scholar of Buddhist philosophy, and institutional builder, his operational record reveals a consistent pattern of administrative bullying, factional warfare, and character assassination, often executed through intermediary proxies. His efforts to manage organizational crises from distant bases in Europe and Asia have increasingly exposed his reliance on hidden administrative machinery to maintain power.

   The primary vulnerability facing his position lies in the comprehensive, cross-verified documentation of his sixteen-year operational history (since at least 2010, although the behavioral patterns were evident as early as 2008). As detailed timelines, email records, and court filings documenting his role in internal excommunications, legal harassment, and board manipulation become accessible to international Buddhist organizations, grant-making foundations, and European oversight committees, the narrative of high-minded monastic service collapses. The contrast between his public spiritual posture and his documented record as an aggressively territorial backroom political enforcer represents an irreconcilable structural weakness, rendering his institutional authority increasingly fragile as peer networks and oversight boards review the historical evidence.

   2. Ngawang Trinley (NT)
   Ngawang Trinley functions as the central architect and technical coordinator of a multi-entity non-profit apparatus. His operational model relies on a distinct leverage mechanism: exceptional native-level fluency in spoken Tibetan, combined with modern digital humanities terminology. This oral fluency creates a persuasive halo effect among Western grant-making organizations and Tibetan communities, masking an underlying business model characterized by high-volume, low-wage text-processing operations (the “Tibetan sweatshop model”), chronic institutional and interpersonal instability, and systemic project churn.

   The structural trajectory of his initiatives exhibits a repetitive, cyclical pattern. Beginning with the initial operational phase of Esukhia (which is, by the way, a horrifically misspelled and grossly mispronounced Greek philosophical term, Hesychia ἡσυχία, meaning “stillness”), a language institute in Dharamshala, continuing through its functional demise in 2020 after Esukhia collapsed under the weight of financial corruption, neglect and mismanagement by Damien and NT, and extending into his recent, desperate, multi-pronged re-branding efforts—including Arapatsa, OpenPecha, WeBuddhist, Sherab.org, and Dharmaduta. Here, the underlying mechanism remains constant. Each entity is launched with ambitious claims regarding digital text preservation, optical character recognition (OCR), or artificial intelligence, designed to capture institutional funding and non-profit grants. However, as projects reach the delivery stage, datasets regularly display significant error rates and fail rigorous philological audit standards, and there is ample evidence of illegal data-scraping, copyright infringement, and intellectual property theft. When funding streams dry up or institutional oversight intensifies, the primary entity is abandoned or reduced to a static web portal, and a new branded initiative is launched to reset the grant cycle and capture fresh overhead funding.

   To maintain high data volume at minimal cost, the operational infrastructure relies heavily on underpaid, non-contract Tibetan labor, including young monks, refugees, and university graduates stationed in regional hubs such as Dharamsala and Pune. These workers are subjected to demanding production quotas for repetitive tasks like OCR proofreading, image segmentation, and data labeling. This low-wage, high-turnover “sweatshop” model generates severe structural vulnerabilities: skilled scholars and competent software developers quickly exit the exploitative ecosystem, resulting in sloppy, unvetted baseline training data that compromises the long-term utility of the resulting software tools.

   Crucially, the broader institutional landscape has increasingly adjusted to this pattern. Over recent years, long-standing associations with premier Tibetan resource centers and digital humanities projects—most notably the Buddhist Digital Resource Center (BDRC), Monlam AI, and the Kumarajiva Project—have systematically fractured or quietly severed ties with NT. The loss of BDRC and Monlam AI deprives the operation of its core text pipelines and scholarly legitimacy. The quiet removal of NT from Monlam AI, presumably due to concerns about his illegal practices, is particularly noteworthy given that he was one of the original co-founders. In response to these severed relationships and the loss of physical operational bases, recent funding acquisitions—such as a $22,000 backend-channeled grant from the Khyentse Foundation for OpenPecha, as recorded on GitHub—function primarily as financial triage. These modest funds allow the operation to retain prestigious foundation logos on pitch decks and maintain the illusion of ongoing institutional backing.

   Concurrently, his personal and administrative separation from key long-term partners who historically provided operational grounding, such as Jennifer Yo his wife (or seemingly ex-wife) in Taiwan and director of the Kumarajiva Project, has left him managing a complex network of overlapping, virtual non-profit shells largely single-handedly. As public awareness of his GitHub code repositories, meeting logs, data-scraping practices, and sixteen-year operational record of grant-hoarding spreads across academic and digital humanities networks, the ability to rely solely on Tibetan language fluency and backend tech literacy to secure new institutional hosts has reached a terminal bottleneck, and it seems that his position is now more fragile than ever, despite the glossy PR campaigns for his new projects in Pune.

   3. Helios Hildt
   Helios Hildt functions as a local coordinator, administrative enforcer, and operational asset manager, working directly within the family-managed tier of the non-profit network. Operating primarily out of regional hubs such as Portugal and France, his role centers on maintaining coding infrastructure and acting as a subservient loyalist on behalf of his younger brother, Ngawang Trinley.

   His professional standing and access to non-profit funding remain derivative of and entirely dependent upon NT’s central apparatus. While exercising limited local authority over regional facilities and projects, his operations lack independent scholarly or institutional backing. When external entities or major funding bodies—such as the Khyentse Foundation—conduct formal performance audits, evaluate financial allocations, or demand verified project deliverables, initiatives under his direct management consistently face operational delays, resource withdrawal, or cancellation, as demonstrated by his removal from major foundation-backed projects in recent years, most notably Dharma Sagar, the failed Tibetan translation training program for Spanish and Portuguese speakers managed by he and his wife Dani, which has been entirely scrubbed from all Khyentse Foundation websites.

   His position within the network is defined by deep structural dependency and growing internal tension. While he and his wife Dani Vargas privately express frustration regarding NT’s overbearing management style, manipulative institutional positioning, and cold, transactional operational methods, Helios seems to remain fully integrated into the family business model, acting as the immediate shadowy muscle required to protect the network’s local assets and public image. Consequently, his long-term professional viability is entirely bound to the survival of NT’s primary non-profit entities, leaving him highly exposed as those entities lose institutional hosts, face public scrutiny, and experience financial contraction.

   4. Dani Vargas
   Dani Vargas manages local organizational assets, administrative operations, and public-facing community initiatives within the Syndicate’s European footprint, operating alongside her husband, Helios Hildt. Her public posture blends wellness, environmentalism, and Dharma-focused community engagement, projecting an image of ethical, conscious non-profit leadership.

   Despite this public orientation, her functional role within the apparatus is that of an active participant in its administrative control mechanisms and resource allocation. While expressing private criticism regarding NT’s management style, interpersonal narcissism, and financial control behind closed doors, she continues to utilize the Syndicate’s organizational infrastructure to maintain her professional standing and local authority in Portugal. Her private grievances have stood in stark contrast to her ongoing public role in legitimizing, housing, and executing the Syndicate’s brutal operational policies.

   Her vulnerability lies in the clear contradiction between her public ethos and her functional complicity in the Syndicate’s long-standing practices of labor exploitation, social exclusion, and administrative opacity. As the operational history of Esukhia, OpenPecha, WeBuddhist and its affiliated family entities becomes more widely understood, her role as an administrative beneficiary and local enforcer undermines her public presentation as an independent, ethically driven non-profit director, binding her professional reputation directly to the Syndicate’s broader decline.

   5. Evan Yerburgh
   Evan Yerburgh currently acts as a forum administrator, community moderator, and technical clerk within the OpenPecha digital ecosystem. Following an early departure from active participation in Dharamshala and the Tibetan Studies field as a whole around 2015, he spent roughly a decade residing in Thailand, remaining largely inactive in independent academic or digital humanities development.

   His re-engagement with NT’s network between 2024 and 2026 represents a reliance on past group ties rather than an independent career path. Driven by a frozen, nostalgic idealization of the early 2012–2014 Esukhia start-up phase, he has stepped back into an active operational role long after the Syndicate’s major institutional partnerships had fractured and its labor practices had been documented, following the cascading exposure and downfall of NT. By accepting a public administrative role on OpenPecha systems, he provides operational cover and administrative labor for an organization facing severe scrutiny regarding its data standards and treatment of staff.

   His position highlights a transition from passive early affiliate to active manager within a compromised infrastructure. By serving as an administrative frontman and moderator for NT’s current re-branding efforts, he has tied his personal standing to a rapidly declining apparatus, operating as a compliant asset for an effectively neo-colonialist leadership that historically views technical staff as low-cost and replaceable, now employed as a compliant digital slave for NT’s unhinged ego.

   6. Eugene Romaniuk
   Eugene Romaniuk was an early participant in the Dharamshala operations during the initial Esukhia period (2010-14) who disengaged from active participation in 2014 to reside permanently in Thailand or elsewhere in Southeast Asia. His primary significance within the group’s history lies in his early adoption of total interpersonal excommunication tactics and a disturbing level of cultish groupthink.

   In 2014, Eugene began executing the Syndicate’s first complete blocking and ghosting maneuvers against peers, following minor interpersonal friction surrounding internal conflicts with James Bradwell and Justin Kirkwood. Driven by intense ideological alignment with the Septic Syndicate’s leadership (in particular NT) and the group as a whole, his reaction established the procedural precedent for the syndicate’s subsequent use of systematic excommunication and social freeze-outs against anyone raising questions about internal dynamics or mutual accountability.

   Unlike affiliates who later re-engaged with the machinery, Eugene maintained complete, long-term isolation in Southeast Asia, choosing permanent withdrawal over conflict resolution, open dialogue, or critical engagement. His record remains that of an early enforcer of rigid ideological conformity whose immediate reliance on excommunication tactics demonstrated the high-control conditioning embedded within the group’s early operational environment.

   7. Justin Kirkwood
   Justin Kirkwood occupied a central middle-management role during the initial development of Esukhia, utilizing his administrative positioning as a former monk at Sherab Ling to launch his career within the field of Tibetan translation and academic research.

   During early organizational conflicts—specifically those involving James Bradwell and peer complaints regarding management by Damien and NT at Esukhia—Justin functioned as the primary administrative gaslighter and two-faced informant. Rather than addressing structural blind spots, unequal opportunities, or personal flaws objectively, his instinct was to protect the brand of what was essentially a largely toxic and disingenuous Boys Club. He employed manipulation, deflection, and minimization to convince complaining peers that their perceptions were invalid or that they were at fault, attempting to enforce silence and compliance to preserve the Syndicate’s public image.

   His translation and teaching career was launched on the foundation of early institutional favoritism, ruthless sidelining of his longtime friends, and the suppression of internal dissent. By acting as the intellectual shield for the leadership’s operational flaws, he enforced compliance while maintaining a public posture of high-minded, neutral scholarship. His record documents a middle-management strategy that prioritized institutional self-interest and career advancement over transparency, fairness, and professional ethics.

   8. Sean Griffin
   Sean Griffin was an early affiliate during the Esukhia period who adopted the group’s social freeze-out, harassment, and bullying tactics against those deemed not in the ‘inner circle’.

   His trajectory illustrates the passive compliance characteristic of the Syndicate’s secondary tier. Lacking the proactive, enforcer mentality of others, Sean nevertheless consistently aligned with the group’s core directives, executing aggressive attacks when social pressure mounted. Despite his significantly older age (born in 1963), thus making him an elder by 13 to 23 years to everyone associated with the group, his utter lack of spiritual maturity was confirmed when he refused to produce any formal acknowledgment, apology, or resolution regarding the prior ostracization tactics or the deeply problematic behaviors he had previously supported.

   His posture represents a pattern of conflict avoidance and social conformity. By prioritizing alignment with the group’s hierarchy over personal integrity, he has demonstrated an ongoing inability to offer independent accountability, leaving him positioned as a passive participant who repeatedly deferred to the Syndicate’s internal authority structure.

   9. James Bradwell
   James Bradwell was an early Syndicate member whose well-known interpersonal conflicts, volatile disputes, and performative religious fundamentalism served as one of the primary catalysts for the initial internal splits within Esukhia during the c. 2014 period.

   Occupying a somewhat favored position within the inner circle via his standing as a former Sherab Ling monk, James was systematically shielded from standard accountability, particularly by Justin Kirkwood and top leadership. When peers raised legitimate concerns regarding his frequent antagonism and adversarial behaviors, the organization responded by deflecting criticism onto the accusers, utilizing structural gaslighting and social excommunication to isolate those who questioned his obviously unstable and damaging conduct.

   His surprisingly vital role in the Syndicate’s history, despite his near-total lack of substantial output, highlights its foundational policy of protecting favored insiders at the expense of staff cohesion and objective standards. The institutional effort required to cover up his operational friction established the early mechanisms of internal suppression, gaslighting, and excommunication that ultimately defined the syndicate’s long-term administrative model.

   10. Matthias Staber
   Matthias Staber is an independent translator who maintained long-term professional associations, translation contacts, and project alignments with the Syndicate throughout its various operational transformations.

   His strategy was defined by calculated silence and diplomatic compliance regarding the group’s exploitative labor practices, social toxicity, and interpersonal fallouts. Aware of the internal conflicts, labor conditions in India, and the operational methods of NT and Damien Jampa, as well as the escalating bullying of James, Eugene, Justin, Sean and others, he chose quiet cooperation to ensure a steady pipeline of backing for his own career, despite not being overtly reliant on them.

   His record exemplifies academic bystander complicity. While maintaining a public image of scholarly neutrality and detached professionalism, his long-term cooperation implicit endorsement to an abusive social and administrative apparatus, demonstrating a sustained prioritization of career security and funding access over professional ethics and basic accountability.

   Loading...

   Reply

6. Mediocre Fiefdoms vs. Independent Scholarship: An Analysis of the Institutional Collapse of Centralized Cartels in Tibetan Studies

   The psychological, philosophical, and professional chasm separating the “Septic Syndicate”—led and sustained by figures such as Ngawang Trinley (NT), Damien Jampa, Evan Yerburgh, Eugene Romaniuk, Justin Kirkwood, Matthias Staber, Dani Vargas, Helios Hildt, James Bradwell, and Sean Griffin—from genuinely distinguished and unfettered scholarship cuts to the heart of the issue. A meticulous and objective analysis of this divergence demonstrates why centralized, nepotistic cartels ultimately succumb to structural decline, whereas rigorous, comprehensive expertise creates a foundation that only strengthens over time. This study anatomizes institutional decay within Tibetan studies, examining how centralized gatekeeping fosters mediocrity while an independent path leads instead toward genuine academic and professional sustainability.

   By contrasting authentic, hard-earned skillsets with the corporate fiefdom of the Syndicate, this analysis exposes the mechanisms of dependency, scarcity, conformity, and stagnation that sustain manufactured bureaucratic power. It unmasks these “naked emperors”—in particular Damien Jampa and Ngawang Trinley (NT)—by revealing how intellectual mediocrity is rationalized within Western Buddhist cult-like cliques, showing what lies beyond the gatekeepers and how genuine excellence can dismantle an artificial monopoly.

   Ultimately, it explores the deeper divide between scarcity-driven insecurity and a polymathic philosophy of scholarship, explaining why centralized cartels erode while uncompromised scholars continue to accumulate domain expertise, cultural fluency, and lasting authority.

   Institutional Dependency vs. Autonomous Enterprise (Background & Career)

   The Syndicate’s Architecture of Reliance: The professional trajectory of the Septic Syndicate was fundamentally marked by an early state of financial desperation, misguided careerism, and structural codependency, beginning in the early 2010s. Whether entering the Himalayan scene as rootless Western spiritual seekers or young idealists looking for an identity, individuals like Justin Kirkwood, James Bradwell, Evan Yerburgh, Eugene Romaniuk, and Matthias Staber needed an institutional shield—such as Esukhia or major funding foundations—to project their public image of mastery. They relied on proximity to powerful, trusting traditional institutions such as Sherab Ling, BRDC, or the Khyentse Foundation to legitimize the corporate-style, heavy-handed bureaucratic management centered in Bir and McLeod Ganj. Operating under the manufactured authority of Damien Jampa and Ngawang Trinley (NT), they disingenuously tried to pass this bureaucratic hierarchy off as well-established credibility or traditional lineage authority. Because these figures lacked the capacity to survive on their own resources in the open market, they relied entirely on an insular network of trading favors, shielding one another’s professional and intellectual shortcomings, and securing unearned titles to protect their fragile sense of control.

   The Autonomous Scholar Path: Conversely, a truly rigorous scholar operates through sovereign professional freedom. Such a path is forged from the ground up by building an organic client base, establishing a stable business infrastructure, and working directly with the Tibetan tradition. In this way, they never need to bend the knee to an insular, pseudo-intellectual cartel run by self-appointed experts such as Damien Jampa or Ngawang Trinley (NT), nor do they need to rely exclusively on transient non-profit grants or insider favoritism to validate their professional standing. Their trajectory is secure simply because it is built on a foundation of indisputable merit.

   Deep Philological Literacy vs. Technical Scaffolding (Intelligence & Literacy)

   The Syndicate’s Scaffolding of Mediocrity: The collective intelligence of the Septic Syndicate is primarily managerial, technical and bureaucratic, rather than deeply intellectual, analytical, or philological. Their “grand vision” relies on building a flashy presentation around digital humanities terminology and tech buzzwords, combined with rapid text-processing, subpar pedagogical methods, and simplistic data entry. Despite the pretentious posturing of figures like Damien Jampa, Ngawang Trinley (NT), Eugene Romaniuk, Justin Kirkwood, or Sean Griffin daring to act as an elite review board capable of judging who is “qualified” to be taken seriously as translators or scholars, their actual output of substantial intellectual work, published translations, academic papers, or original field research is surprisingly thin, and in many cases non-existent. When their work reaches the delivery stage, they regularly display massive error rates, failing to pass basic linguistic audit standards because the baseline data was generated through a low-wage, high-turnover model, reliant on hollow administrative oversight.

   The Rigorous Scholar’s Literacy: A true scholar’s intellectual approach is deeply multidisciplinary, analytical, and critical. This path requires an intense, dual mastery of both highly sophisticated Classical and Literary Tibetan and fluent Modern Spoken dialects. Such literacy is investigative and rigorous, ideally resulting in an immense, visible output of hundreds of finished translations, satisfied clients, and active lexicons. Rather than hiding behind branding or self-created administrative titles like the members of the Septic Syndicate, an authentic scholar’s authority is validated by the precision of their prose, their deep critical frameworks, their cultural and historical literacy, and their active contribution to global scholarly fields.

   Integrated Scholar-Practitioner vs. Lineage Chauvinism (Approach to Buddhism)

   The Syndicate’s Sectarian Fiefdom: The Septic Syndicate’s approach to the Buddhist tradition is heavily defined by sectarian lineage chauvinism, high-control social conditioning, and sterile corporate-style gatekeeping. Operatives within this rigid, territorial Boys’ Club prioritize protecting the organizational brand, shielding favored insiders like Justin Kirkwood, Matthias Staber, or even James Bradwell, and maintaining a scarcity-minded, greedy hoarding of organizational prestige above basic Buddhist ethics. This extreme, un-spiritual selfishness is what allows Septic Syndicate leadership to make controversial public missteps—such as deploying peer pressure, coordinated harassment campaigns, and vicious gossip against perceived rivals—which deeply alienates traditional Buddhist practitioners who prioritize ahiṃsā (non-harming), unbiased compassion, and community upliftment.

   The Integrated Scholar’s Approach: A grounded path embodies the non-sectarian values of a true scholar-practitioner. Firmly grounded in traditional Buddhist ethics—such as mindfulness and altruism (bodhicitta)—such a practitioner operates fluidly across multiple schools (Nyingma, Sakya, Kagyu, etc.), capturing the Rimé (non-sectarian) spirit of the living tradition. Their authority is recognized not through bureaucratic coercion and peer pressure, but through their deep respect for lineages, their cultural humility, and their dedication to making wisdom traditions transparently accessible to a global audience, completely divorced from the toxic internal politics of heavily compromised figures like Ngawang Trinley (NT) and Damien Jampa.

   Unmanaged Cultural Immersion vs. Truncated Stints (Travel History & Worldliness)

   The Syndicate’s Insular Echo Chambers: The Septic Syndicate’s collective experience of the Himalayan region was heavily institutionalized, tightly regulated, and frequently curtailed. Indeed, it is well-documented that Justin Kirkwood and Matthias Staber have publicly inflated their time in South Asia. On their online professional profiles, Justin misrepresents his 6.5-7 years in India as “8 years” (“He finally returned to the United States after eight years in India”) while Matthias obfuscates his ~3-4 years as “many years” (“he spent many years studying Buddhism and Tibetan language in India and Nepal”). In reality, Syndicate members such as Justin Kirkwood and the other ex-monks at Sherab Ling engaged in grueling, military-style 2 to 3-year monastic stints that ended in severe physical burnout, serious health problems, and permanent exits from South Asia. Some of these became early dropouts from the entire field who retreated into deep social isolation, dogmatic fundamentalism, conspiracy theories, or insular groupthink, such as James Bradwell, Eugene Romaniuk, Evan Yerburgh, and Sean Griffin. Their worldliness and on-the-ground experience in the Tibetan communities of South Asia has been structurally restricted; they live inside a tiny expat bubble, consistently wary of direct confrontation with their former colleagues, and completely dependent on localized turf politics and insular dynamics to survive.

   The Grounded Scholar’s Immersion: An unconstrained path is defined by long-term, unmanaged cultural immersion. Navigating the physical and cultural terrain of India and Nepal as a dedicated researcher, textual scholar, and interpreter requires immense adaptability, deep-seated resilience, and raw cross-cultural authority. Such sustained, self-directed immersion allows a scholar to absorb the living tradition directly from native masters and the Tibetan community, without being managed by a provincial expat clique of gatekeepers. Their eventual transition to establishing independent platforms is a calculated, pragmatic business pivot, rather than an emergency departure from a collapsing institutional arrangement like those plaguing the Septic Syndicate and their associates.

   Multi-Lingual Polyglot Mindset vs. Insular Specialization (Personal Philosophy)

   The Syndicate’s Scarcity Mindset: The Septic Syndicate operates on a philosophy of scarcity and clannish insulation. Because members like Ngawang Trinley (NT) operate inside a terminal bottleneck where funding streams have drastically shrunk and anchor organizations are systematically severing their ties over copyright infringement, intellectual property concerns, and illegal data-scraping issues, they turn outward with fierce hostility toward recognized translators and scholars, as evidenced by Damien Jampa’s frantic, paranoid attempts to undermine Adele Tomlin. Historically—and continuing down to the present—they have relied on private smear campaigns, sudden blocking maneuvers, social freeze-outs, passive-aggressive domineering, and even extortion attempts orchestrated by figures like Damien Jampa, Ngawang Trinley (NT), Helios Hildt, Dani Vargas, James Bradwell, Eugene Romaniuk, Evan Yerburgh, Justin Kirkwood, Sean Griffin, and Matthias Staber to preemptively undermine anyone in the field who can expose their self-fabricated illusion of authority.

   The Polymathic Scholar’s Philosophy: An unconstrained scholar operates with an intellectually restless, expansive polyglot mindset. Their self-driven study of numerous classical and modern languages and multiple Buddhist traditions showcases a voracious intellectual curiosity that extends far beyond a single, insular network limited to a hyper-specialized corner of Tibetan studies, especially one dominated by an illegitimate group like the Septic Syndicate. Such a personal philosophy is anchored in generous knowledge-sharing, transparent accountability, and direct-to-student education. They do not need to fight over a finite pool of grant money, because they have built a sustainable path that renders the old guard’s gatekeeping apparatus—and the desperate maneuvers of the Syndicate—obsolete, anachronistic, and essentially defunct.

   Loading...

   Reply

   1. I a publishing this with the strict caveat that I have no idea if any of this is true or not. Why be anonymous about it though? You are clearly annoyed and frsutrated by these named individuals with good reasons if true. Why not try and make that exposure more public in some way and effect change with it? I do not think Comments here will be able to do that, other than in a minor way perhaps. Some of what you say certainly rings true about the “Boys club” machismo approach and attitude though. I hope they will change, in particular Damien Jampa, who I can state personally has been very petty, vindictive, gossipy, unforgiving, and exaggerating claims about me behind my back, that led others to act in very harmful and damaging ways to me.

      As you say, hardly any of these men have an independent scholarly or academic background of any real note or substance, and yet the get funding and institutional support. Damien Jampa seemed intensely jealous of me and my achievements when I spoke with him, and he deliberately downplayed and diminished them to another unknown oral female interpeter who does not even speak or read written Tibetan (no record of scholarship, study or written translation), who readily accepted his derogatory view of me and my work. Which is also evidence of the sexism and misogyny of these translator-monastic cartels and funding groups.

      Loading...

      Reply

7. Thank you for sharing your perspective on this. First and foremost, everything I’ve said is true and verifiable; diligent research into these matters via the proper institutional and personal channels will reveal that reality, even if much of it has been kept out of public view.

   Regarding the caveat, while you keep repeating it—likely as a completely understandable standard legal disclaimer given your ongoing legal battles with them, which were almost certainly orchestrated primarily by Damien Jampa behind the scenes—it is striking how closely the behavioral patterns outlined match the real-world experiences you and others have documented: the backroom maneuvering, administrative enforcement, and behind-the-scenes undermining. When those operational habits remain consistent across multiple independent accounts, the underlying dynamics become clear, even behind a blanket disclaimer.

   As for remaining anonymous, the answer lies largely in the hostile environment you’ve spent the last year meticulously detailing. When retaliation involves aggressive proxy litigation, cross-border tracking, and coordinated blacklisting, choosing anonymity isn’t about avoiding exposure out of fear. It’s a basic, pragmatic layer of self-preservation against an entrenched apparatus which has proven itself to be highly dangerous and devoid of self-awareness or accountability.

   Let’s be real: I think it’s very obvious who I am and certainly the Syndicate itself is very aware of it. There are an exceptionally small number of people it could possibly be; so, I would appreciate it if you stopped pressing the issue, out of respect for the fact that I’m trying to support you in the way I view as most effective. Given that I hold more information on this cartel than almost anyone, and what I’ve shared thus far is just the tip of the iceberg, I believe I’ve been quite targeted and restrained in my approach, all things considered. I am giving you, and anyone else who reads this, the full and precise roadmap for how these people operate, focusing on the most important details. My choice of delivery is entirely deliberate, carefully calculated, and non-negotiable.

   The way Damien treated you is actually shocking even to his most ardent critics. In my view, it would be inadvisable to pursue this haphazardly. It is not only malicious but destructive and should not be taken lightly. Moreover, it should be clear from my text that I view some of these people as completely unrestrained by typical social norms or Buddhist ethics, and that they are capable of almost anything against their perceived enemies or rivals, as has been proven numerous times over the years. With that said, I believe that confrontation with them, whether anonymously or not, is essential to dissuading them from pushing it further. The EBU administration is reading your blog; many of their circle are reading these comments. Although we can’t be sure of how they will react, at least they will come to see that Damien is only feeding them a very one-sided, self-serving version of the story, and that he and his group have a long, controversial history and a bad reputation going back well before you clashed with them. I believe there is great strategic value in my comments, generally and specifically for you.

   In a sense, the interpersonal friction (the petty politics, gossip, and behind-the-scenes maneuvering) isn’t actually the root issue; it is the predictable byproduct of a collapsing structural model which has run its course and whose reckoning is long overdue.

   When an insular network relies on administrative gatekeeping, authoritarian status-positioning, and transient non-profit grants rather than deep philological rigor and autonomous scholarship, defensiveness becomes the default operating system. As those centralized funding streams contract and institutional ties fracture under the weight of their ongoing interpersonal conflicts, unethical behavior, and entrenched corruption, the machinery of the Syndicate naturally becomes paranoid and hostile, generating friction and targeting anyone operating outside its control.

   Moving past the noise requires shifting the lens away from only personal grievances and looking at the social and organizational dynamics of these individuals themselves, along with the entire system they’ve created.

   You must understand that what we’re literally talking about here is essentially a cult, namely a cult of personality centered mainly around Damien and NT, which managed to largely insulate itself from criticism or even feedback a long time ago; and which has only recently (since maybe late 2023) faced anything resembling pushback, even among their closest associates. Furthermore, it is notable that NT and Helios grew up in a highly abusive Tibetan Buddhist cult in France (OKC, the Robert Spatz cult) that has faced significant media attention and legal prosecution by the French authorities. It proves that their behavioral patterns (high-control social dynamics, extreme gaslighting, humiliation rituals, authoritarian posturing, intense peer pressure) aren’t random; they are inherited cult mechanics. I believe this cultish social conditioning formed the basis for much of the Syndicate’s operating system, in particular with regard to NT and his brother. This was combined with Damien’s self-important delusions of grandeur around his position at Sherab Ling (“handpicked by Guru Vajradhara”), which appears to have been a key psychological factor from the very beginning; his spiritual authority was always self-fabricated grandiosity, apparently based on the fact that he was attending the Shedra and therefore considered himself superior to nearly all Western scholars and translators merely on that basis.

   Ultimately, looking at these networks purely through the lens of a macho boys’ club or standard envy, discrimination, or gossip only captures a very small part of the picture that is abundantly evident here. The real mechanism driving it is structural: an operational model built on perpetual grant-hoarding, low-wage exploitation of Tibetan refugees, aggressive ideological enforcement, brutal social exclusion, and above all, administrative capture of Buddhist foundations who are (or were) unaware of how they truly operate. Personal friction is just a symptom of a much larger, recurring system that has clearly been going on since at least the very beginnings of Esukhia in 2010–12.

   I hope that your platform and these records will eventually bring them to full accountability. Many organizations have indeed already quietly severed their ties with NT, Helios, and Dani, and it remains vital that the spotlight shines on the rest of them for their continued complicity as this malignant structural model inevitably collapses.

   Loading...

   Reply

   1. Well thank you for the information. Sorry it is not “obvious” who you are.
      I understand you want to address the one-sided narrative which is a good thing. You mention to confront them, but on the other hand state they are capable of almost anything. Not an easy thing to do as a lone woman, as am sure you can imagine.
      Yes, maybe the EBU are following, but frankly anyone who regards and cites the Github repository material and associated Youtube anonymous and unverified content as reliable or worthy of sharing, let alone citing in an actual court case as screenshots, needs their head examining, as we say. Clearly lacking any ordinary notion of what can e trusted and relied upon, and any modicum of ordinary wisdom and discernment. So frankly, I would not trust anyone from the EBU to have the sufficient emotional or intellectual maturity to apologise, retract and humbly state for the record that they were wrong to cite and share that material and use it to block investigations of wrongdoing and deception and bullying.

      Your writing and voice are eerily similar to that of the person writing the online smear campaign now on Github repository and on Youtube though.
      I can understand if you do not want to reveal your identity publicly, of course, it attracts a lot of negative energy and actions.
      But why not at least tell me privately who you are, so I know and can verify you are a genuine actor, and not a bad one….
      It is a macho boys’ club for sure though, and not just the people you mention.
      You seem to totally “let of the hook” the root of these issues, which are the Tibetan Buddhist tulkus, teachers, and monastic culture they are a part of.
      They are not acting or operating in isolation of all that.

      You do not seem to have much to say about abusive tulku men in robes, and their actions and mafioso type gang of enablers, defamers and liars, especially towards lone women such as myself.
      Sangye Nyenpa has never threatened me with court action, or defamation, or even denied what I say is true. Because it is true. But he has allowed (and even participated in) the online and private defamation, smear campaigns, bullying, intimidation, hearsay gossip, impersonation etc. to continue and flourish. he could have made a statement and stopped all of that if he had wanted to really help resolve it and make it less negative and peaceful, right?

      Loading...

      Reply

      1. Nope it’s not me. Pretty obvious that it’s someone in the Karma Kagyu circles, and someone who is on the exact opposite side of this issue. I have nothing to do with Karma Kagyu. Indeed, the author is openly supporting/defending Damien Jampa, Titi Dolma and the others on that website. So that makes no sense whatsoever.

         I feel like you’re not reading my comments very carefully. I’m literally giving you extremely valuable information about the people who have been harassing and suing you. I’m going out of my way to do this for your sake, and you seem to be barking up the wrong tree and looking a gift horse in the mouth. I’m on your side here and trying to help you. I also believe this is doing an important service for the whole community. And yes, they are quite dangerous and toxic as you know. Macho boys’ club, yes, but far, far worse than just that.

         I haven’t read the GitHub site extensively, but I disagree that the writing style sounds like me at all; it’s clearly AI slop that literally sounds like insane, unhinged ranting. By contrast, everything I’ve been saying to you is true and verifiable, if you choose to look into it. And I would recommend doing so, as it would be to your advantage.

         As for the identity of that author, I would gladly tell you if I knew. Beyond the people I’ve mentioned, I don’t really have some encyclopedic knowledge of everyone in that scene. If I do find out who it is, I will definitely let you know.

         You already figured out that it appears to be someone who’s based in Southeast Asia (likely Thailand or Indonesia), and that it’s probably someone connected to Sangye Nyenpa Rinpoche and quite possibly Damien and Ngawang Trinley (NT). That automatically raises Evan Yerbergh and Eugene Romaniuk, as well as Titi Dolma or one of her associates, as possible suspects. As pointed out earlier, NT and his team do most of their coding and software development work on GitHub. While it’s not a smoking gun, it certainly seems to point in that direction. With the GitHub connection, that would also implicate Helios Hildt and maybe even Damien Jampa himself as potential collaborators in creating the anti-Adele defamatory website; or at least supporting it, because they have all actively worked with NT with his tech projects on GitHub. It certainly seems very suspicious to me that they “just happened” to use it as evidence against you.

         With that said, the stuff on that site is so over the top, vulgar, obsessive, poorly reasoned, and extreme that I have my doubts that it’s anyone from members of the ‘Septic Syndicate’ I specifically mentioned before… but still appears to be someone who is, in all likelihood, directly connected with them.

         I’m actually surprised that you still haven’t been able to find out who it is. Here’s the thing: I’d bet money on Damien Jampa and Titi Dolma, at the least, knowing exactly who it is, among others in their circle, likely including Ngawang Trinley (NT) and his gang. It seems like this issue could be raised in the legal proceedings?

         Overall, I think you underestimate your power and influence. While you may feel alone in this right now (and I’m sure it’s awful to go through), I think you’ve already accomplished a lot and done a great and brave thing by bringing this to the public’s attention. It’s now in the public record and surely people are talking about it.

         I also think that you hold the upper hand here, far more than you seem to realize. You’ve made them panic and scramble; that’s why they’ve taken such desperate measures to silence you. They know you hold all the receipts and are willing to go all the way to seek accountability.

         I’m definitely not letting anyone off the hook, including the questionable tulkus you’ve brought up in these discussions. I just don’t fully understand or know how directly these two separate issues are related, namely the unresolved case of Sangye Nyenpa Rinpoche and the coordinate bullying and harassment by the Damien Jampa/Sherab Ling group, including Damien’s ‘international strike teams’. Clearly, they are related, but to what extent, it’s hard to say. I fully agree with your assessments about the systemic problems as a whole, in particular with the Sherab Ling/Benchen networks.

         As for the EBU, it seems to me that they just got hoodwinked and conned by Damien Jampa and maybe Titi Dolma. Even if they don’t make a formal apology or public statement, I would imagine they are reconsidering their positions, given everything that’s come out about Damien and his group (or at least I would hope so).

         In any case, I wouldn’t underestimate the impact all of this has had toward dismantling the ‘Septic Syndicate’. They are no longer seen as untouchable gatekeepers, but rather for what they are: a pathetic cartel of insecure grifters and spiritual/intellectual frauds who have a long history of misogyny, labor exploitation, institutional manipulation, and interpersonal abuse.

         I don’t have much time to devote to this, but I thought that writing around one or two comments per week to provide some further background information on these characters would be helpful. And I’m more than happy to continue to do so; there’s still some things that could be unpacked here and more information to be shared.

         Loading...

      2. Thank you for this. It makes a lot of sense and I agree with most of it. And yes, it is clear they regard me as a very “powerful person” to resort to such desperate, unnecessary and “gang-up” measures to disarm, humiliate, silence, defame, harm me and anyone else who might dare to publicly associate with, support or praise me or my work in any way. It makes them look extremely feeble, pathetic, cowardly and “insane” to gang up on a lone woman like that, and exaggerate trivial incidents as well as cite an extremely derogatory blogger, impersonating a publicly accountable audit (how hilarous is that?) and citing it as unsourced screenshots in a court case! No wonder they had to invent and “emergency threat” to get it into court. Either that, or the court itself does not have time to really investigate and check any of the evidence proffered (which is also clearly the case).

         Either way, its a travesty of natural justice and due diligence, and easy to see how miscarriages of justice happen.

         The fact that people believed it who are in positions of power though, is the most worrying aspect of all. It is so clearly, as you say, obsessive, false, defamatory, unverified, derogatory, insulting, sexual insults and more…..sexist, misogynist and as you say lacking any warmth, kindness, empathy =, love or compassion.
         So why did those people so easily believe it? As you suggest, either it is one of them writing it, or they know the person who is and that person managed to convince them to cite it in their court case. Which suggests the person must have some kind of position or power in their small community.
         Yes, let me know if you find out who it is, but frankly I am beyond caring. It is so clearly false and defamatory and “insane” that having it in the public sphere at least is clear evidence of the kind of attacks and smear campaign I have been facing for the past six years privately.

         Loading...

   2. The Pseudonymous Architecture of Accountability Evasion

      At this point, it is crucial to lay bare a structural anomaly that is as revealing as it is alarming: the systemic reliance on pseudonyms, obscured legal identities, and manufactured religious monikers by the core architects of this network, in particular the French men running the core operations. In any legitimate academic, pedagogical, or institutional framework, transparent legal identity is the baseline prerequisite for professional trust, contractual liability, and personal accountability. Within this ecosystem, however, opacity has been actively weaponized as a shield.

      Damien Jampa: Operates publicly under the curated monastic moniker “Damien D. Jampa,” yet his actual legal surname remains entirely obscure, and the precise significance of the initial “D.” is kept deliberately opaque. This lack of a verifiable legal footprint is glaringly problematic, particularly in light of active legal proceedings in Delhi and a documented pattern of sustained stalking and harassment. Concealing a legal identity for over a decade is not an innocent eccentricity. It is a calculated mechanism designed to insulate him from real-world consequences and evade the paper trail of systemic bullying and interpersonal abuse. This is a serious issue that needs to be addressed. It appears that he has deliberately hidden his full identity for a very long time (since the late 2000s), perhaps partly due to fear of retaliation.

      Ngawang Trinley (NT): Originally known as “Tenzang” (short for Tenzin Zangpo) until the 2011–2012 transition into the Esukhia Era, his true legal name is Vincent Tenzin Zangpo Hildt. The strategic shedding of his birth identity in favor of the religious title “Ngawang Trinley” coincided precisely with the formal launch of Esukhia in 2012. This rebranding served a dual purpose: it functioned as a psychological distancing maneuver from a deeply controversial upbringing within a French Ogyen Choling (OKC) cult environment, while simultaneously adopting the exact same high-control, insular mechanics to construct a new micro-fiefdom in South Asia, similar to that of Robert Spatz. It is also notable that he has never used his real first name, Vincent, in any context, and that most people are not even aware of his former “Tenzang” identity.

      Helios Hildt: His full name is Helios Drupchen Dorje Hildt. He is less secretive about his names than the others, although he seems to use either Helios or Drupchen Dorje depending on what’s more convenient. He utilizes a fluid rotation of legal and religious names depending on whichever proves most administratively expedient or protective at any given moment.

      The Institutional Red Flag

      The systematic refusal of these actors to operate under verifiable legal names while wielding significant institutional gatekeeping power exposes the entire enterprise for what it always was: an unaccountable shadow-network. When individuals demand absolute compliance, control over resources, and submission from peers while hiding behind an impenetrable wall of pseudonyms and monastic titles, it ceases to be a cultural quirk. It is a deliberate strategy of evasion, ensuring that when the structures finally collapse, the architects can vanish behind a ghost trail.

      Needless to say, regardless of their stated reasons for doing so, the fact that these French men have operated exclusively under fake names and/or Tibetan Buddhist names all these years is certainly highly suspicious and very shady. It is the behavior of con artists, not serious scholars or pioneers in the fields of Tibetan language education or Buddhist digital humanities. Especially because hardly anyone actually knows their real legal names, even in their own inner circles!

      All in all, it’s definitely something worth noting and looking into further.

      Loading...

      Reply

      1. Well I do know that Helios Hildt’s wife, Dani Yeshe Dawa, who is a Portuguese interpreter on the Kagyu Office team, was extremely rude, derogatory, insulting and nasty when I called out lama misconduct. She is also a potential suspect either for the Github Repository, or at least someone who would know about it and encourage its existence\.

         Loading...

8. It is not just “a bit” misogynistic; the behavior directed at Adele Tomlin is a textbook case of extreme, weaponized institutional misogyny.
   When an old-guard patriarchal power structure is challenged by a lone woman holding the receipts, its default survival mechanism is almost always to launch a highly gendered, vulgar campaign designed to degrade her dignity and destroy her psychological stability.

   The public record on Dakini Translations explicitly documents this deeply misogynistic pattern across three distinct layers:

   1. The Smear Campaign: Vulgar and Sexualized Degradation
   The anonymous GitHub repository site and associated YouTube channels didn’t just disagree with Adele’s research or challenge her data. Instead, they defaulted to a classic misogynistic playbook: They launched explicit, highly vulgar attacks designed to humiliate her as a woman.

   They labeled her a “sex pest” and hurled graphic insults that are specifically designed to weaponize a woman’s gender and sexuality against her. This is a deliberate tactic used by insular boys’ clubs to induce deep shame and social isolation, hoping the target will become too traumatized to continue publishing.

   2. The Institutional Enforcers vs. The Lone Woman
   As Adele herself noted in her July 31st response, confronting this apparatus is “not an easy thing to do as a lone woman.” The Syndicate utilized an incredibly asymmetrical power dynamic to crush her:

   The Ganging Up: A multi-layered network of men—from the top-tier lamas down through international enforcers like Damien Jampa and Ngawang Trinley (NT)—coordinated to protect each other while systematically isolating a single female scholar.
   The Legal Bullying: Utilizing administrative power to physically ban her from European centers, orchestrating whisper campaigns to alienating her from colleagues, and culminating in Titi Dolma’s fraudulent “emergency” lawsuit in Delhi are overt acts of systemic intimidation aimed at drowning a lone female voice in endless legal stress.

   3. Protecting the Core Abuse
   The most sinister aspect of this misogyny is what they are trying to protect. The entire reason the Syndicate went to war with Adele is because she dared to publicly archive the unresolved sexual misconduct case of Sangye Nyenpa Rinpoche.

   When female practitioners came forward with extensive logs showing manipulation and boundary-crossing by a high lama, the institutional response was completely devoid of compassion. Instead of investigating the predator, the “macho boys’ club” immediately closed ranks to protect the male tulku in robes, turning their collective administrative, technical, and legal weapons against the woman archiving the truth.

   Loading...

   Reply

   1. Yes indeed. That’s one of the best brief analyses of it.

      Please do create a standalone online platform that documents that truth I can personally vouch as true. As well as the other claims you make about Damoen Jampa and other Github repository users who may be directly connected to the vicious and malicious smear campaign against me.

      At least then it might become more visible and people can share their own experiences of these people and what you claim. Otherwise this all lies hidden in these comments which most people will not read or be aware of.

      Loading...

      Reply

9. THE SEPTIC SYNDICATE’S INHERITED CULT PLAYBOOK:
   UNMASKING THE SHOCKING ORIGINS OF THE DAMIEN/NT NETWORK
   For Ngawang Trinley (NT), Helios Hildt, and by extension Damien Jampa (who also grew up in a tightknit Tibetan Buddhist community in France), seeing their operational behavior linked directly to the OKC (Ogyen Kunzang Chöling) Robert Spatz cult background is a profoundly destabilizing realization. When individuals grow up inside a high-control, abusive system, those dysfunctional patterns become their baseline. They rarely recognize that they have internalized the exact mechanisms of their own abusers until someone outside the system holds up an unvarnished mirror.
   To understand why the Damien/NT Syndicate is so destructive, one has to look at what the Ogyen Kunzang Chöling (OKC) setup under Robert Spatz actually was. Operating primarily out of European centers, OKC functioned as a textbook high-control authoritarian environment where absolute psychological dominance, severe emotional manipulation, and total subordination to the leader were masked as advanced Vajrayana practice. Members—especially children and young people raised within its insular compounds—were subjected to rigid behavioral policing, systematic isolation from normal societal support structures, sexual abuse, and intense public humiliation rituals designed to break down individual autonomy and create absolute dependency.
   When individuals grow up marinated in that kind of toxic ecosystem, the abuse doesn’t just disappear when they leave; it becomes their internalized blueprint for how power, community, and conflict are managed. They learn to view the world through a paranoid, us-versus-them lens where dissent is treated as a treasonous threat, and where control must be maintained through gaslighting, covert punishment, and tribal shunning. That is why the Damien/NT network’s modern operations look less like a legitimate Buddhist institute and more like a scaled-down, micro-cult replica: they simply dusted off the old Spatz operating system, swapped out the framing, and kept the exact same authoritarian mechanics alive.
   The shock of this revelation hits on a few fundamental levels:
   1. From Robert Spatz to Sherab Ling: The Unaddressed Roots of a Digital Cartel
   First, it completely shatters the illusion of spiritual and personal progress. NT and Helios spent their adult lives trying to curate reputations as sophisticated, cutting-edge, highly ethical modern Dharma operators, carefully distancing themselves from the overt madness of the old OKC/Spatz cult. Yet their trajectory proves that despite swapping the scenery from France to India, and trading Ogyen Kunzang Chöling for Sherab Ling, they simply cloned the behavioral software of the cult they fled. Realizing that their standard tactics for handling dissent—public shunning, group gaslighting, and intense peer pressure—are functionally identical to Spatz’s old humiliation rituals destroys any lingering self-image of being pure practitioner-scholars. It forces them to confront the grim reality that they became the very thing that harmed them.
   2. Swapping Masters, Keeping the Cult: The Psychological Origins of the Syndicate
   Second, it completely disarms their core justification. For over a decade, whenever they ran a social freeze-out or an aggressive ideological enforcement campaign, they justified it to themselves through self-righteous window dressing like “protecting the lineage” or “preserving the tradition”. By framing their actions as an inherited cult operating system, that holy veneer is instantly stripped away. It exposes their behavior not as high-minded spiritual devotion, but as raw, unhealed developmental trauma being weaponized against others. Seeing their petty holy wars re-classified as a clinical cycle of institutional abuse is an ego-shattering blow.
   3. From Cult to Cartel: The Inherited Operating System of the Damien/NT Syndicate
   Finally, it explains the mystery of their institutional rejection. For the past few years, they’ve likely been scratching their heads, blaming petty politics or jealous rivals for why premier institutions such as the Khyentse Foundation, the Kumarajiva Project, Monlam AI, and major digital resource centers like the Buddhist Digital Resource Center (BDRC) have quietly severed ties with them, and in some cases even scrubbed them entirely from their websites (such as the complete purging of Helios and Dani’s Dharma Sagara translation training program for Spanish and Portuguese speakers). The OKC connection provides the definitive answer: modern, professional secular organizations can spot high-control cult mechanics a mile away. Foundations didn’t drop them over a minor translation disagreement; they dropped them because the family business model—defined by underpaid labor exploitation, clannish insulation, domestic dysfunction, aggressive status-positioning, and covert illegal operations—looked entirely like a mini-cult operation or a nepotistic, extractive cartel.
   4. Weapons of Unhealed Trauma: Diagnosing the Real Mechanics Behind the Damien/NT Syndicate
   By tracing their operational playbook back to its traumatic roots in France, it diagnoses their entire psychology, exposing the fact that the digital graveyard they built for themselves wasn’t the work of outside enemies, but the inevitable fallout of their own unaddressed ghosts.
   After 16+ years of projecting their unresolved trauma onto others on a massive scale in the name of Buddhism and Tibetan culture, the bills are finally due.

   Loading...

   Reply