CAMBODIA
Cambodia Daily
BY BEN SOKHEAN AND ALEX WILLEMYNS | APRIL 22, 2016 | អានជាភាសាខ្មែរ
The chief monk of Kompong Speu province last month became the latest senior clergy member to be faced with a sex abuse case in his jurisdiction, with one of his monks jailed for attempting to rape a 9-year-old girl.
Coming little more than a year after an ex-monk shot dead his former pagoda chief just a few kilometers away from the pagoda now at the center of the sex abuse allegations, it was a sign that a severe moral sickness was going untreated among the clergymen provincial chief monk Dou Vandoeun had been tasked with managing.
The monk chief took no responsibility for the case, dismissing the attempted rape as an aberration, a crime committed by a “bad” monk, and he was neither disciplined nor told by his superiors to bring his monks in line.
Yet the same kid-glove treatment was not afforded to Dou Vandoeun on Thursday, with religious authorities deciding to strip him of his position for singing on stage at a post-Khmer New Year concert at his pagoda on Sunday night.
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