Monks walk away from sex-abuse cases

Text: Megan Twohey (Chicago Tribune, July 24, 2011); Wisdom Quarterly

Across the U.S., temples frustrate investigators by insisting they have no control over monks' actions or whereabouts. The scourge is not limited to Catholic priests and nuns.

 

The meeting took place at Wat Dhammaram, a cavernous [Thai] Theravada Buddhist temple on the southwest edge of Chicago.
  
A tearful 12-year-old told three monks how another monk had turned off the lights during a tutoring session, lifted her shirt and kissed and fondled her breasts while pressing against her, according to a lawsuit.

• In fairness to the monks, but more so to the abused, they probably do not know that outside of pious Thailand and other Buddhist countries, where this sort of behavior may be tolerated and kept as a terrible secret behind layers of agonizing shame and dysfunctional fear, in this country, "Homey don't play that!" In other words, expect legal troubles. This is not Rome. In no way can this behavior be tolerated, condoned, excused, or covered up. It is the ruin of the monastic Sangha and Buddhism.
• U.S. has about 350 Theravada Buddhist temples 
• Buddhist temple embroiled in bitter dispute
• WHAT IS THE SOLUTION? What would allow monastics to stay on the path rather than endangering themselves, child victims, and Buddhism? Sexual contact is a serious offense; moreover, any kind of penetration means immediate and irreversible defeat and expulsion. Only practicing the meditative absorptions (jhanas) works in the long run, and only liberating insight finally frees one permanently. The Western Buddhist nun Ayya Khema explains this (at Minute 3:25) from first hand experience. This also applies for non-Buddhist clerics and monastics because the absorptions are not limited to the Buddha's teaching.
• VIDEO: "Losing My Religion" (R.E.M.)
  

Editor: Prof. Cabezon, UCSB

Shortly after that meeting, one of the monks sent a letter to the girl's family, saying the temple's monastic community had resolved the matter, the lawsuit says.
   

The "wrong doer had accepted what he had done," wrote P. Boonshoo Sriburin, and within days would "leave the temple permanently" by flying back to Thailand. "We have done our best to restore the order," the letter said.

   

But 11 years later, the monk, Camnong Boa-Ubol, serves at a temple in California, where he says he interacts with children even as he faces a second claim, supported by DNA, that he impregnated a girl in the Chicago area.

   

Monastics are often beset by defilements.

Sriburin acknowledges that restoring order did not involve stopping Boa-Ubol from making the move to California. And it did not involve issuing a warning to the temple there. Wat Dhammaram didn't even tell its own board of directors what happened with the monk, he said.

"We have no authority to do anything. … He has his own choice to live anywhere," Sriburin said.

   

A Tribune review of sexual abuse cases involving several Theravada Buddhist temples found minimal accountability and lax oversight of monks accused of preying on vulnerable targets.

   

Because they answer to no outside ecclesiastical authority, the temples respond to allegations as they see fit. And because the monks are viewed as free agents, temples claim to have no way of controlling what they do next. More

Documentary: A Thai Buddhist temple in Florida (Thomas Livezey)