31
votes
Thailand’s Buddhist clergy blackmailed for millions in sex scandal
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- Title
- Monks behaving badly: the sex scandal rocking Thailand's Buddhist clergy
- Authors
- Rebecca Ratcliffe
- Published
- Jul 17 2025
- Word count
- 859 words
This story's wild. At least nine abbots and senior monks have been disrobed.
More context:
Thai woman ‘had sex with Buddhist monks and blackmailed them for millions’
The Buddhist monk sex scandal that’s gripping Thailand
Corrupt monks have lost their way
That has to be a misunderstanding, right? The woman had 80,000 photos/videos across her phones, and the woman had photos/videos implicating monks in sexual antics, and those two facts got conflated into one.
I mean, it's possible, but I don't see any reason to doubt it as stated. This is over a three-year period, and if she was hustling that many senior monks out of that kind of money, I wouldn't be surprised if she made super sure she had pro-level dirt on them. It could add up.
80.000 photos / (365 days in a year * 3 years) ≈ 73 photos / day
Yeah, it's a lot. Maybe the police are counting individual frames as images in the videos too, as someone else said. But I don't think the number is beyond the realms of possibility, especially given the stakes. Devices can be set up to automate photos, screencaps, videos, etc., they don't have to be taken manually.
Sounds extreme, but I know if I were getting up to blackmailing people out of millions myself to fund a luxury lifestyle, I wouldnt half-ass it.
I don't claim to have any insight into the moral framework in Thailand but generally speaking I don't think there's anything so wrong with having sex with people and accepting gifts in exchange. Go after the monks, not the prostitute.
Rather than reconsider their stance on basic human needs, criminalize it at the state level.
Organized religion is the same everywhere I guess.
I mean, blackmail is illegal. And given the sheer volume of photos and video reported, if true ("tens of thousands of compromising photos and videos" supposedly, which... how many people was she with!?), I'm leaning towards the extortion and blackmail accusations being true. I can't think of any innocent reason to have that number of photos and videos of sexual partners. Personally I'm just kind of astounded at the scale of it.
Not saying that to defend the monks. This is exposing some serious corruption within the temples that would have likely remained undisclosed for a while. Or at least, it wouldn't have gotten this level of international notoriety. Now a lot of their other practices will be under heavy scrutiny. I won't be surprised if their investigations into the financial trails relating to this scandal unearths some totally unrelated suspicious transactions.
So basically, everyone here sucks.
I’ve read that in the United States the authorities often overinflate the number of images in these sorts of cases. They count each frame of a video as a separate image, which allows them to state that the person arrested was in possession of tens of thousands of images. Maybe something like that is going on here. I can’t imagine that someone engaged an extortion would need more than two or three photos of the victim doing something compromising in order to accomplish their goal.
Yeah, I'm willing to bet some inflation is involved, hence me saying "if true". Still, I'm willing to believe there was extortion and blackmail involved. The fact she seems to have focused on Buddhist monks and officials feels calculated to me. Their image relies on celibacy more than a lot of other public figures, and apparently it can be more lucrative than I would've thought.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that monks are prime targets for sextortion. It's one of the few fields where this sort of scandal can end a career for a man and ruin their lives. If she leaked a single guy's photos, I think he'd ultimately suffer more than her since the scandal would be the supposedly celibate monk. Even if her reputation takes a hit, she'd still have plenty of money since the other monks can't really accuse her without revealing their own misdeeds. She might even be able to charge more after exposing one monk because they'd be more desperate to preserve the temple's reputation and avoid this exact sort of scrutiny.
The only reason this came out is because one monk went missing. I'm guessing he left of his own volition because he'd reached the limit and knew it would be leaked soon. Either he decided to just leave and get distance before it got exposed, or... Well, hopefully that's it. Makes me wonder if any other similar large-scale schemes are going on with other temples right now...
Oh I have no doubt that she broke the law and did some questionable things, but she's not the problem.
It's sort of a uniquely clearcut situation in that she wouldn't have any blackmail material if the monks hadn't broken the tenets of their religion, and been unwilling to own up to it, in the first place.
The prosecutors could surely choose to give her immunity in exchange for cooperation in going after the monks, who doubtless broke bigger laws aquiring the cash to give to her. But of course, if it's anything like the west, the systems tend to protect the clergy over prostitutes, and even children and families.
You keep saying "prostitute", but I haven't seen anything indicating that she is one. Maybe you're using that word to frame it as "she had sex for money", but there's still a major difference between soliciting sex for money, and having sex before being blackmailed.
Remove the aspect where the victims are religious figures with a vow of celibacy, and that act is morally wrong and reprehensible. The fact they're monks does not change that.
That said, I agree she could only exploit this because of the Buddhist temples' corruption and other issues. As I noted in another reply, monks actually seem like prime targets for this sort of extortion since their livelihoods and reputation are strongly rooted in their vows of celibacy. "Owning up to it" would have gotten the monks defrocked and damage their lives and reputation, and the temples would prefer to deal with the scandal of a single "rogue monk" than allow a widescale scandal like this to expose and harm their reputation.
So long as it didn't come out all at once (which it did), this is a rare case where the woman actually had less to lose than the man. And based on the article (and others that give some more details), the clergy are already facing consequences from both within the Thai Buddhist institution and from Thailand's government.
None of that seems like "protecting the clergy" to me. The response seems much more serious than western scandals with Christian churches. I think it's in part because Buddhism is far more intertwined in Thai culture, as well as possibly just different cultural attitudes towards scandals in general.
I guess my first post in the thread gave you the wrong idea, it wasn't intended to imply extortion isn't wrong. I did follow that up in the second post though.
But it's a situation where on one hand you have widespread corruption revealed amongst the clergy (and much more implied). Not that it's anything new, there were arrests of people in Thai buddhist leadership over corruption a few years ago.
And on the other hand you have one person taking advantage of that corruption.
That doesn't make her right, but again she's not the problem. These monks are betraying not just their faith, but also the trust their society puts in their institution, the taxpayer money the government invests in those institutions and the individuals who donate to them.
But not because of the sex, because of the lies and financial fraud. Whatever this woman did, it's nearly irrelevant in comparison to what the monks appear to have been doing for some time. Surely the impact the scandal is having in Thai culture must be about the monks, not the sextortion. If anything she performed an unintentional service by collecting evidence and breaking the scandal by getting caught.
Surely it’s possible that both the monks and this woman are problematic? Albeit different problems.
Sextortion is a real issue where perpetrators prey on sexually immature and mentally unwell people and exploit their shame and insecurities for gain. It has led to suicides before.
It reminds me of the woman who got a high school boy to sext her, and then she tried to blackmail him: he ended up killing himself.
Sure she exposed the monks’ corruption, but she’s no hero. This only came to light because of Thai police work. She’s probably sextorting regular people too.
This feels like a chicken and egg problem.
They have access to, apparently and unbeknownst to me until this scandal broke, millions of dollars.
She is aware of this access and used it to blackmail them with sex.
So either, they were going to "misuse" the funds they have access to already and she (as you seem to be pointing out) decided "Well, if they're going to be corrupt, why shouldn't the money go to me?" or she seduced and blackmailed them and therefore they felt the need to steal the money to pay her off.
Vows of celibacy don't really hold any significance in my moral framework. If they weren't supposed to have sex but did anyway, that's an issue between them and their religion, which I'm not a believer in, and I think the idea of is a little silly anyway. They're hypocrites, sure, but basically everyone is.
Blackmailing people, however, is morally wrong in my view, and in the view of laws in most countries. So yeah, the monks may have been wrong according to their religion, but from my pov they just got some action from a willing, consenting adult.
She, on the other hand, enriched herself by threatening to ruin people's lives. It's pretty clear cut who's in the wrong here.
Again, it's the fraud, lies and financial crimes that are the issue, not the sex. When a religion at the heart of a culture is deeply corrupt that's a pretty big deal.
These monks didn't become corrupt because she had sex with them, the money they used to bribe her was already there. Also again, there is recent history of corruption, with convictions.
"Ye who pledges not to put his member therein, be but a knave, for his tongue doth weave falsehoods as a spider spins its web."
Ha! What is that quote from? My Google-fu is coming up short.
So Duck.ai can create original content! 😁
Figured I could ask it to elaborate on whatever BS rolled into my head. It worked!
That's a shame.
Alas, 'tis a great pity and a most lamentable circumstance.
Well, at least they didn't put their tongue in a child's mouth.
Are you still talking about the Dalai Lama? This guy's been talked about for years. You're asking—we have Thailand. We have this. We have all of the things. And are people still talking about this guy, this creep?
I'm pretty sure this is the first time I posted about that here, so I don't understand your use of "still".
Sorry, this was a flippant jokey take on Trump's recent deflection of Epstein inquiry (I was literally quoting him). Not directed at you personally. I saw a parallel between the way the administration is attempting to sweep Epstein under the rug, and the way that Dalai Lama tongue thing has basically been forgotten/buried over the last couple years. In both situations it seems like there might be bombshells waiting to explode, and certain parties who would prefer if no one mentioned them again.
The Dalai Lama thing was apparently cultural misunderstanding and/or propaganda campaign.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/tibetans-explain-what-suck-my-tongue-means-dalai-lama-viral-video/
Thank you! I had no idea about that, that changes my response entirely. Appreciate the info!