The Dalai Lama on Saturday said that he has known about sexual abuse by Buddhist teachers since the 1990s and that such allegations are “nothing new.”
The Tibetan spiritual leader, revered by millions of Buddhists around the world, made the admission during a four-day visit to the Netherlands, where he met on Friday with victims of sexual abuse allegedly committed by Buddhist teachers.
He was responding to a call from a dozen of the victims who had launched a petition asking to meet him during his trip, part of a tour of Europe.
“We found refuge in Buddhism with an open mind and heart, until we were raped in its name,” the victims said in their petition.
“I already did know these things, nothing new,” the Dalai Lama said in response on Dutch public television NOS.
“Twenty-five years ago ... someone mentioned about a problem of sexual allegations” at a conference for western Buddhist teachers in Dharamsala, India, where he lives in exile.
People who commit sexual abuse “don’t care about the Buddha’s teaching. So now that everything has been made public, people may concern about their shame,” he said, speaking in English.
Tseten Samdup Chhoekyapa, a representative of the Tibetan spiritual leader in Europe, on Friday said that the Dalai Lama “has consistently denounced such irresponsible and unethical behavior.”
Tibetan spiritual leaders are due to meet in Dharamsala in November.
“At that time they should talk about it,” the Dalai Lama said in his televised comments. “I think the religious leaders should pay more attention.”
In related news, more than half of the Netherlands’ senior clerics were involved in covering up sexual assault of children between 1945 and 2010, a press report claimed on Saturday, further engulfing the Catholic Church in a global abuse scandal.
Over the course of 65 years, 20 of 39 Dutch cardinals, bishops and their auxiliaries “covered up sexual abuse, allowing the perpetrators to cause many more victims,” the daily NRC reported.
“Four abused children and 16 others allowed the transfer of pedophile priests who could have caused new victims in other parishes,” the newspaper added.
Church spokeswoman Daphne van Roosendaal told reporters that the church could “confirm a part” of the report.
Other elements were based on anonymous information provided by a victims’ assistance unit set up by the church.
“The names of several bishops correspond to those named in a report commissioned by the Church in 2010,” the spokeswoman said.
Most of the accused clerics have since died and the statute of limitations has expired in all cases, she added.
Those still alive declined to comment, the NRC said.
Meanwhile, in France, a priest has been charged with sexually abusing four brothers, now aged from three to 17, his lawyer said on Saturday.
The family brought the complaint against the 64-year-old priest, whose parish is in the central Cantal region. All four boys were said to be in the church choir.
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