By Ann Gleig, Amy Langenberg, and Sarah Jacoby
October 25, 2024 was one of the most meaningful days of our academic careers. Along with Nancy Floy (founder of the Heartwood Center, Evanston IL), we co-organized a survivor-centered conference on sexual abuse in Buddhism at Northwestern University. From the opening presentation on the abuse of nuns in Bhutan and Malaysia, a presentation on the abuse of child monks in Sri Lanka, and a roundtable discussion by survivors of abuse in North American contexts, it is clear that sexual abuse cuts across Buddhist lineages and cultural contexts and is a problem that multiple parties need to tackle together. The diversity and unity of the presenters and audience — over seventy survivors, monastics, journalists, lawyers and academics– was profound and impactful. Throughout the planning process, we were concerned to safeguard the space. On the day itself, all in attendance in the packed conference room listened attentively, commented respectfully, and responded with compassion.
Buddhist abuse has devastating consequences for its victims, often with collateral damage to its communities. Yet, Buddhist Studies has failed to acknowledge it as a structural problem, an aspect of Buddhist history, institutions, and even doctrines, and one that is deserving of scholarly attention. We feel this is an ethical as well as intellectual failure in our field and are committed to changing it through survivor-centered scholarship and pedagogy. The symposium, a hybrid event including scholarship, advocacy, and survivor testimony, was the public facing element of a three-day conference with two survivor-only days focused on healing and connection that took place at the Heartwood Center, under the auspices of the Heartwood Connecting Survivors of Teacher and Guru Abuse program.
Three things are particularly significant about the symposium:
- As far as we know, it was the first academic conference in the history of Buddhist Studies to focus on sexual violence.
- It took a survivor-centered approach. We worked closely with survivors throughout the planning process of this event from the grant application, which includes funding for two years of therapy, to inviting survivors to attend and to present at the conference.
- It centered global representation and was sensitive to the colonial and postcolonial conditions that affect many Buddhist institutions and require us to acknowledge and simultaneously address multiple forms of violence—sexual gender, racial, and ethnocentric.
After a brief welcome and introduction to the event presented by Nancy Floy of Heartwood and Sarah Jacoby of Northwestern, the symposium began with a groundbreaking lecture by two Buddhist nuns, Choela Tenzin Dadon, originally from Bhutan, and Choela Karma Chodron, originally from Malaysia. Their joint presentation titled “Sacred Spaces, Silent Suffering: Sexual Abuse in Tibetan Buddhist Contexts” courageously addressed problems pervasive in Vajrayāna Buddhist nunneries caused by monks in respected teaching roles in nunneries taking advantage of their nun disciples, in some cases by claiming that what is actually sexual misconduct is a catalyst for advanced spiritual attainment. The Choelas’ presentation did not shy away from listing the many instances of such abuse they have encountered, thereby accentuating the severity of the problem.
The next lecture was presented by Somtsobum, doctoral student in Buddhist Studies at Northwestern University, who is from Tibet. Somtsobum’s lecture was titled “The Demoness who Embodies Wisdom: Gender, Violence, and Justice in Tibetan Short Stories.” Beginning with an ancient story of Queen Tsepongza, Somtsobum traced a series of Tibetan literary representations of women as demonesses, likening them to witches. After analyzing the ways in which these old stories illustrate what feminist philosopher Kate Manne refers to as “himpathy,” she concluded her talk with an analysis of several contemporary Tibetan women writers who are retelling women’s stories as complex agents endowed with their own strong sense of karmic justice.
The morning concluded with a powerful and personal account of coming forward as a survivor of sexual abuse presented by Willa Blythe Baker of Natural Dharma Fellowship in Boston and its retreat center Wonderwell Mountain Refuge in New Hampshire. Lama Willa’s talk was titled “Coming Forward: The Treacherous and Empowering Path of Breaking Silence.” Even though Baker’s talk was the only one presented over Zoom, she “read the room” as if she were sitting right in it, connecting with survivors and allies in the room through a vivid account of the terror and profundity of returning to the community in which she was abused accompanied by an envelope filled with testimonies from women who had also been sexually abused after being ordained as nuns.
After lunch came a survivors’ roundtable called “Centering Survivors’ Voices,” featuring survivors Catherine Pilfrey, Nancy Floy, Rachel Montgomery, Caroline DeVane, and Linda Modaro. The conversation was moderated by Rachel Bernstein, a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Cult Specialist. They took turns responding to a series of targeted questions, including these: “How would you describe how others have responded to your experience? Is the guru-student relationship inherently flawed? When it comes to improving the safety and health in Buddhist communities, who is responsible? Since your experience, how has your Buddhist practice changed? What have been the lasting impacts of the harm you experienced – physically, emotionally, mentally, relationally, and socially? In your experience as a survivor, what or who has been your greatest source of support? The survivors’ varied and heartfelt responses to these questions left no one in the audience unmoved, proving the deep and long-term impacts of sexual abuse in Buddhist contexts. Coming from different Buddhist lineages—Theravada, Zen, and Vajrayana–demonstrating that sexual violence is not a problem specific to just one bad apple Buddhist guru or even to one bad apple Buddhist lineage.
Psychotherapist and former monastic from Sri Lanka Chandana Namal Rathnayake is the first scholar ever to produce sustained attention on child abuse in Buddhist monasteries. Based on his compelling 2023 doctoral dissertation from Canterbury Christ Church University titled “Breaking the Silence about Institutional Child Abuse in the Buddhist Monastery in Sri Lanka,” Rathnayake’s lecture titled “Buddhism and Sexual Abuse: A Burden on Sri Lankan Buddhist Children” exposed the magnitude of the problem of the sexual abuse of young boys perpetrated by teachers and elder monks in Buddhist monasteries. His research is based on sociological methods as well as his own experience growing up as a child monastic in Sri Lanka, where he estimates more than 50% of children in monasteries have been sexually abused. Rathnayake’s scholarship on this topic is as courageous as it is tragic and demands further research and institutional reform.
The next lecture was delivered by Carol Merchasin, an attorney at McAllister Olivarius who is well known for her legal work on cases involving sexual misconduct in religious, faith-based, and spiritual communities. In the United States, she is the most prominent lawyer supporting survivors of sexual abuse in Buddhist communities. Her talk was titled, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Can the Legal System Offer Justice to Survivors of Sexual Abuse in Spiritual Communities?” Carol’s dynamic and expressive talk first unveiled the “ugly” aspects of bringing a case through the U.S. legal system, including how slow the process is and the challenges of communicating with judges who lack knowledge about how long it takes for many survivors to come forward with their stories. She outlined the process of taking a case through the civil court system, as well as described the benefits survivors can experience through taking their case to the court system. She didn’t shy away from critiquing aspects of the current system in the U.S., focusing in particular on the challenges of non-disclosure agreements.
The final event of the day was a roundtable discussion called “What Can Buddhist Studies Offer Survivors?” This panel featured five Buddhist Studies scholars including Kali Cape, Damchö Diana Finnegan, Ann Gleig, Sarah Jacoby, and Amy Langenberg, and was moderated by Darcie Price-Wallace. Scholars on this panel responded to a series of questions including “What barriers and challenges have prevented Buddhist Studies from supporting survivor-centered scholarship? What would survivor-centered research in Buddhist Studies look like? What might we learn about Buddhism that current approaches obscure? What is the relationship between scholarship and advocacy? The panel of scholars expressed the need for a more robust Buddhist Studies methodology that makes room for instead of marginalizing the question of abuse. They were united on the need to incorporate the topic of abuse into the introductory Buddhist Studies classroom in order to safeguard young students from abuse and normalize the topic in Buddhist Studies at the grassroots level.
The feedback we have received as co-organizers has been gratifying. Survivors reported feeling that their voices had been heard by scholars for the first time and academics shared that the event has inspired them to tackle abuse in their scholarship and pedagogy.Moving forward we hope to inspire further academic and survivor collaborations across cultural contexts.
For further coverage of the conference see:
Justin Whitaker, “Symposium at Northwestern University Addresses Sexual Violence in Buddhism,” Buddhistdoor Global, October 31, 2024
Mariana Restrepo, “The Heartwood-Northwestern Symposium: A Groundbreaking Symposium Centering Survivors of Sexual Violence in Buddhism,” Lion’s Roar: Buddhist Wisdom for Our Time
About the authors
Ann Gleig is Associate Professor of Religion and Cultural Studies at the University of Central Florida.
Amy Langenberg is Professor of Religious Studies at Eckerd College.
Sarah Jacoby is Professor of Religious Studies at Northwestern University.
Amy and Ann are co-authors on a book-length study of abuse in North American and Transnational Buddhist convert communities, under contract with Yale University Press. Sarah is a specialist in Tibetan Buddhism with a focus on gender, sexuality, and religious auto/biography. She is author of “She Said No: Toward a Survivor-Centered History of Vajrayāna Buddhist Sexuality,” which was recently published in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion. All three have worked together on bringing attention to the issue of sexual abuse in the field of Buddhist Studies.
