On the Friday in question, Kasula said there was an incident involving senior temple members shouting at a person in the temple.<\/p>\n
\u201cI used my mobile phone and started recording, and then one man from the temple started shouting that I wasn\u2019t allowed to video here and attacked me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Kasula said the man snatched her mobile phone from her and threw it on the floor.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way he grabbed the mobile phone, it hurt my arm and I also suffered a cut on my finger,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause it happened inside the temple, I was truly shaken and traumatised.<\/p>\n
Kasula, a mother of two 4-year-old twin girls, said she also suffered humiliation because the attack happened in front of other devotees.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m now scared of returning to the temple for fear of getting assaulted again, and I don\u2019t feel safe there anymore,\u201d Kasula said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I feel so sad and empty, because the temple is where I draw my energy and peace from, and that is now gone.\u201d<\/p>\n
She believed the temple rule was to refrain from filming the the deities, but said she had been recording the incident – and not the statues.<\/p>\n
Kasula said she had since sought medical help and was now taking medication to help her cope with what happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cPolice came to see me [Monday] night to see if I\u2019m doing okay, and checked if I needed victim support. I told them it\u2019d be good if I could speak to someone,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n
Geetha Baradan, secretary of the temple, said it would be inappropriate for the temple trustees to comment as the matter was before the police.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe trustees will assist the police with their enquiries when we are contacted by them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
NZ HERALD<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A woman allegedly assaulted at a Papakura Hindu temple said the place she had depended on comfort and strength since she moved to New Zealand has become somewhere she is \u201cscared to go\u201d. Police have confirmed they have received reports of an incident\u00a0involving threatening behaviour\u00a0on July 19 in Papakura. \u201cThis investigation is in the very […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":10932,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10931"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10933,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10931\/revisions\/10933"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}