In February 2018, we read on the CAYA Facebook page and website that Yeshe Rabbit had resigned from her leadership position with CAYA during an ethics investigation and was now considered "not in good standing" in that community. Since then, we have been saddened to read the substantial first-person testimony from former members of CAYA who were victims of emotional abuse and financial and sexual exploitation at her hands.
Rabbit contributed an essay to our 2016 Pagan Consent Culture collection about matriarchal, consensus-based community organizing and consent. At the time, to our knowledge, Rabbit and CAYA had good public reputations in the wider Pagan community. We believe the article still has merit and that the principles described can be used to organize a healthy community. However, from the testimony of the victims, it seems clear that CAYA was not actually run in accordance with the principles described.
Although Rabbit's "Matriarchy and Consent Culture" essay remains in the collection and will do so unless and until we prepare a second edition, we cannot therefore recommend Yeshe Rabbit as a teacher or leader in any capacity. We hope that that those harmed will be able to find healing, and that Pagan organizations will learn from this situation.
--Christine Hoff Kraemer & Yvonne Aburrow
