Buddhist Monk Gets 15 Years for 2 Years of Sex Assaults

WLS
September 30, 2013

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=9267951

Camnong Bual Ubol

September 30, 2013 (STICKNEY, Ill.) (WLS) -- A Buddhist monk has been sentenced to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting a teenage girl for two years at a southwest suburban temple.

Camnong Boa-Ubol, 62, pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated criminal sexual assault for assaulting the girl "on numerous occasions" at a Buddhist temple in Stickney Township, according to the Cook County State's Attorney's office.

Boa-Ubol lived and worked at the Wat Dhammaram Temple when he the assaults took place, a statement from the Cook County Sheriff's office at the time of his arrest said.

The assaults began in 1998 when the girl was 13, prosecutors said in a statement. Boa-Ubol asked the girl to do work outside the temple in exchange for money, then later invited the girl into a trailer on the temple grounds, where he sexually assaulted her, the statement said.

The attacks, which also resulted in the girl becoming pregnant and giving birth in early 2000, went on for about two years. The girl did not report them because Boa-Ubol had threatened her and her family, the statement read. A paternity test confirmed Boa-Ubol was the father of the girl's child.

In a 2009 lawsuit, the victim and her daughter claimed Boa-Ubol sexually assaulted and battered her at the temple between July 1998 and May 1999.

The suit claimed the woman was a temple worker and potential member when Boa-Ubol approached her dressed in the orange robe associated with the temple. A picture of Boa-Ubol was hanging on the wall when she came to the temple for guidance, instruction and compensation for clean-up duties.

Ubol left the Stickney temple at some point after 1999, and investigators learned he had gone to the Wat Buddhavipassana Temple in Long Beach, Calif., but had been removed from that temple. He was arrested in May 2012 in Anchorage, Alaska, where he was working as a dishwasher, police said.