Buddhist Monks Arrested over Thai Child Sex Abuse Claims
The Telegraph UK
Two Buddhist monks who allegedly organised acts of child sexual abuse have been arrested by Thai police, the latest controversy to hit a clergy struggling with challenges to its clean-living image. Police in Chang Mai, in northern Thailand, said they had detained two monks for procuring a 14-year-old boy to perform sexual acts with an abbot. The alleged perpetrator was to be arrested as soon as a warrant was obtained, they said. The pair, who deny any knowledge of the alleged abuse, could face up to 15 years in prison if convicted, Police Colonel Wirachon Bunthawi told AFP from the northern city of Chiang Mai. The police said the arrests were made on the basis of accounts from a driver and the victim himself, who claimed the two monks had taken him to see the abbot at the temple in Chiang Dao district several times since February. "The abbot is still at the temple and we're waiting for an arrest warrant for him," Col. Wirachon said. The arrests of the two monks - aged 20 and 23 - comes as the Thai Buddhist clergy grapples with scandals that have damaged its reputation of morality and austerity. Earlier this week, footage emerged on YouTube of three monks living an apparently ostentatious lifestyle, flying in a private jet, wearing earphones and sunglasses and carrying a Louis Vuitton bag. The video, which quickly went viral, prompted debate in the Thai Kingdom over monks' compliance with Buddhism's strict lifestyle code. Monks are required to live as ascetics, shun worldly possessions aside from a few robes and receive their sole sustenance from local residents, rules that are increasingly challenging in the modern world. The clergy in Thailand has recently been scandalised by a series of cases reported in local media, involving drug-taking, drinking, gambling and the use of prostitutes by monks.
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