When asked for the original KQED investigation what was holding people back from reporting abuse in yoga, Rachel Brathen, also known as Yoga Girl, said: “I think the biggest piece is fear of being alienated from this community that means so much to us.” That community built through yoga, she said, is “sacred” and such an “important part of the practice.”

Some of the students interviewed by Sargeant shared those feelings — or knew people who did.

Person 12 had initially told Sargeant she knew of other people who had sexual abuse allegations against Manos to share but later told her most people had decided not to participate in the investigation for at least one of these reasons: “They are too afraid or too traumatized; they still want to or have to have contact with Manos; or they have removed themselves and do not want anything to do with the community anymore,” Sargeant wrote.

But others like Hitt, today a management consultant for health care companies, decided they had to come forward. In sharing a January 2018 email with Sargeant that she wrote to a former teacher about her experience with Manos, Hitt wrote: “I never ended up sending (to IYNAUS) for all of the obvious reasons" — until after the KQED story published. "However, now I see that we all must speak up about this painful topic.”

‘All I Asked Is That They Stop the Investigation,’ and Then a Resignation

Manos previously said he had offered to resign from IYNAUS if it would stop its investigation. IYNAUS rejected Manos' resignation.

"All I asked is that they stop the investigation,” Manos wrote in a letter on Nov. 13, 2018, to Iyengar’s children, Geeta and Prashant Iyengar, according to correspondence shared by his lawyers. “They have refused my offer and did not tell me why they refused it. They have given me no indication of any further complaints anonymous or otherwise.”

On March 7, outside The Abode of Iyengar Studio in San Francisco's Glen Park neighborhood, Manos, 67, briefly spoke with KQED. When asked if he had confidence in the independent inquiry led by Sargeant, he mouthed the word: "No." Then he added, "I was cleared by a unanimous committee of females and I don't know what anybody else wants," in a reference to the initial ethics committee investigation.

As KQED began to ask Manos about new allegations of sexual misconduct that it had received, he got into his gray Tesla and closed the door.

Manos resigned from IYNAUS the next day, Friday, March 8. His resignation was posted to The Abode of Iyengar website, saying he was quitting IYNAUS, where he had been a member of its senior advisory council until it was abolished in October 2018.

"I am leaving though I only adjust students who give their consent. I am leaving though I do not touch inappropriately. I am leaving because I cannot prove my innocence," said Manos, who began his studies with B.K.S. Iyengar in 1976 and holds one of two advanced senior certificates granted worldwide by the founder, who died in 2014.

On Friday, his spokesman said, “Manos voluntarily resigned from IYNAUS not because of any wrongdoing, but to try to prevent the fracturing of the organization. It is his sincere hope that despite the Board’s actions toward against him, IYNAUS can continue to thrive in the future.”

IYNAUS said on Friday that Manos will not be permitted to apply for membership with the organization in the future.

‘Conditions that Fostered, Supported and Perpetuated This Abuse Remain’

Farhi said she has professionally been involved with the Manos case since the late 1980s and early 1990s when — as a member of the board that ran Yoga Journal magazine — they received several credible allegations from women who did not know each other relating “strikingly similar reports of having their breasts fondled while in deep relaxation, or fingers inserted into vaginal and anal orifices.”

“What is implicit from this (IYNAUS) report is the systemic complicity within an entire yoga community and organization that up until now has seen the abuse suffered by these women as unfortunate, but permissible collateral damage,” she said in a statement.

Though Manos will no longer be a member of IYNAUS, he can continue to teach yoga — no certification or license is required for instructors in the U.S. The most that yoga organizations, like the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute (RIMYI) in Pune, India — the mother institute of Iyengar Yoga worldwide — can do in such cases is revoke their certificates.

“But as it stands, Manos can continue teaching in San Francisco under the newly abridged banner of his school ‘The Abode of Yoga' (formerly The Abode of Iyengar Yoga). He can continue to teach through independent hosts and in countries where he can rely on the naivety of foreign students eager to receive some of his supposed brilliance,” Farhi wrote. “Which calls into question whether we can, as we’ve been saying for years, uphold and police the standards of our own profession or whether it is long since past due for government licensing.”

Remski said it was: While IYNAUS’ investigation marked a “significant moment” in the yoga world and provided a model for other organizations to aspire to, “it's also shown how some broader-based regulatory oversight is probably going to be a necessity because — even with the good intent and the resources that IYNAUS had — it really struggled to come to the conclusion it's come to.”

“They did the best they could and it's just not good enough,” he said. “How then does the IYNAUS decision or the Iyengar family’s decision, how does it actually protect anybody else?”

He noted, too, that, “had there been a license for teaching yoga in the state of California in 1990 Manouso Manos would have lost it, and he would have lost it in a way that probably would have marked him or prevented him from gaining a license in another state.”

A precedent has been set with the IYNAUS investigation that “these behaviors can result in a serious consequence,” said Farhi. “But the truth is, this is a hollow victory. The soil, the climate and the conditions that fostered, supported and perpetuated this abuse remain. The question now is how we collectively turn the corner and create a wholesome yoga culture in which all may feel safe and respected.”

Farhi noted that after B.K.S. Iyengar gave Manos a second chance in 1990 following the first wave of allegations, Manos “continued his meteoric rise to fame as the senior most representative of the method.”

"Yoga culture needs to take a good, hard look at itself," she said Tuesday.

Of the report’s findings, survivor Cassie Jackson said her reaction was twofold: She found it “monumental” and a “sign of solidarity” but also overdue.

“They're doing what they should have been doing 30 years ago,” said Jackson, whose name was redacted in the report but she'd spoken with KQED about her story and agreed to have her name shared.

“And what is to come of the last 30 years of women … who as Donna (Farhi) said have been collateral damage? But this is a step, this is a step in the right direction,” she added.

As for herself, she is grappling with leaving a world behind, one she once considered home — The Abode of Iyengar Yoga — and having her story publicly shared.