As you may know, Triratna featured in the British newspaper The Observer on Sunday 19th February 2017, in an article referring to allegations of sexual misconduct in the FWBO in the 1970s and 80s.
As the person interviewed for the article, I thought I’d explain how this came about and what I actually said; in several places the article was misleading or quoted me inaccurately.
On 8th February a journalist emailed Adhisthana:
“Hi. I'm a journalist writing about what is going on within the Triratna community re sexual abuse claims. I understand you have reported some concerns about one individual to Croydon social services. But other people say claims of abuse against a senior figure in the community is not being investigated. It would be good to talk to someone about this urgently. Many thanks, Jamie Doward”
Given the subject matter, it was decided that I should respond, as Triratna’s Safeguarding officer.* I emailed Jamie Doward immediately but he postponed the article by a week and so the interview took place on the phone on the following Wednesday, 15th February.
It was a very friendly 35-minute phone conversation, which started with him asking me to explain the content of last September’s BBC report because he hadn’t seen it. At the end of our conversation he said,
“I’ll do a very straight story saying a few people have come forward, you’re aware of it and have apologised, you’ve put in new measures, you’re offering to talk to people from the past who’ve had these problems; it’s a legacy of the 70s and 80s and the Order is looking to address these issues but there is nothing contemporary that gives rise to concern.”
The finished article differed somewhat from this description. Let’s take it bit by bit:
Fears mount over scale of Buddhist sect sexual abuse
Jamie Doward never asked me whether I had any fears over the possible scale of sexual misconduct in Triratna and I did not express any such fear.
One of the UK’s largest Buddhist orders has been forced to report allegations of sexual abuse after a former follower claimed he was coerced into sex with one of its elders.
From his email to Adhisthana, we know the journalist had been told that Glenn’s account of being groomed for sex as a teenager by the former Chair of Croydon Buddhist Centre during the 1980s had been reported to social services. He did not ask whether or not I had been “forced” to report; and indeed we were not “forced” to report. I reported swiftly and willingly, and I said so in the interview.
In the 1980s its Croydon centre was closed down…
I said the Croydon Buddhist Centre had been “closed down by Sangharakshita” but later reopened “with a completely new leadership”, and that “it is a very thriving centre today.” [Author's note 10th March 2017: I have since learned that I was wrong in stating that the Croydon Buddhist Centre closed down. The arts centre, Independent Arts, closed down but the Buddhist Centre continued without a break, with completely new leadership.]
A document produced by the order suggesting that relationships between students and teachers could be beneficial was until recently still available online. ‘We took it out of public circulation, not as a way of covering it up but because we agreed it was unsuitable,’ Munisha explained.
He asked about something he’d heard about Sangharakshita suggesting somewhere that sex between teachers and students was a good idea, something to do with “a Clear Vision website”. I said several times that he was referring to a 4.5-minute video clip from an interview with Bhante [many years ago] which had been on the Clear Vision website, among hundreds of other such clips, 35 seconds of which had featured in the BBC report.
In this 4.5-minute clip Bhante is asked if there is anything he would like to say to lay to rest some people’s concerns about his sexual relationships. He says that people will always speculate, “people being what they are” and goes on to say how creative the late 60s, the 70s and, to some extent the 80s, were. In the 35 seconds the BBC extracted from this video, Bhante says “there was a lot of experimentation within the FWBO and for me personally within my own life there was also quite a lot of experimentation. In fact I may say that this was for me personally one of the richest and one of the most creative periods in my whole life. And it is because of that, because the FWBO was like that in those days, and because I was like that in those days, that we now have the FWBO that we have today.”
I told the journalist I thought this a “wholly inadequate” response to the question. I said, of the whole video clip, “We took it out of public circulation, not as a way of covering it up but because we agreed it was unsuitable”, but that it remained in the offline archive.
I’ve checked the full clip and at no point in it does Bhante say anything directly about relationships between teachers and students, or that they are a good idea. However, he does say that we should not look back and apologise for our past.
I explained that it had been alleged on the BBC programme that the presence of the video on the Clear Vision website indicated that Triratna still advocated sex as an element in friendship between Buddhist teachers and students, but that this was not the case: it was there because an archive’s job is to keep everything, whatever we think of it, for posterity.
I said our current teaching materials were on our main website [The Buddhist Centre Online] and that they did not advocate sex between teachers and students.
See Triratna’s response to the BBC programme.
Munisha said: 'Everybody knows he’s had sexual relationships with some of the people in the community. Some people around today say they were very happy with those relationships, and some say, no, they didn’t really want to, and felt confused by his advances and felt he should not have put them in that position.'
He’d asked me about Bhante’s having “admitted” in 2009 to having sex with some of his students and whether I would “accept that there might be a systemic problem in the Order”.
I said, “It’s not really a question of him admitting to it because it’s never been a secret. Everybody knows that he had a number of sexual relationships and some people are around today and say they were very happy with those relationships and they gained a lot from them, and then there are some who say they know that they didn’t really want to, and that they felt confused by his advances and afterwards felt that he shouldn’t have put them in that position. So I wouldn’t accept that there is something systemic there. There may be more to come out - that’s always a possibility - but nothing I’ve seen so far suggests anything systemic.” I said that so far at least there had been just two allegations of abuse committed by Order members in the 30 years since the late 1980s.
She said the order had set up a safe space for people who had been members of the order in the 70s and 80s who believed they were abused to have their stories heard.
What I said was that we had “set up a safe online space for the Order, where they could share their stories and be heard – the beginnings of a sort of truth and reconciliation process - first of all closed because you wouldn’t expect people to tell personal, painful stories in public. We’ve been criticised for that because it’s closed but we have to start somewhere. And the College have now set up a small subgroup which is going to work every day for the foreseeable future on looking at a process including possible external reconciliation processes so that we get to the bottom of absolutely anything that is still outstanding. We really want to do right by anyone who is still hurt.”
Finally he asked me if there was anything else I wanted to say. I said, “I want to make it clear we really do want to get into dialogue with anyone who feels that they have been hurt, that we are ready to listen, that we very much regret if anyone has been hurt through their encounter with Triratna.”
*I stepped down as Communications officer last October when it became clear there was a conflict of interests between that job and the work of a Safeguarding officer.
Afterwards, I emailed the journalist these documents:
Sangharakshita's 2009 quote:
"...I have had many, many human encounters, the great majority non-sexual, and most of those encounters, including the sexual ones, have been satisfactory for both parties. If there were any encounters that were not satisfactory for the other person, whether at the time or in retrospect, then that is a pity and I am truly sorry that that should be the case."
This comes from an interview on his website transcribed as 'Conversations with Bhante'
The public page we have had on Triratna's main web platform since 2013, regularly updated, containing links to material critical of Triratna: Our Development & Values
Statement from the College of Preceptors (endorsing Sangharakshita's statement)
Statement from the College of Preceptors making explicit their pre-existing rule on sexual relationships between those conducting ordinations and those they ordain
Triratna's model ethical guidelines for those who run/teach at our centres, including one on sexual relations with those new or relatively inexperienced to Triratna (reviewed and developed annually)
Our latest model safeguarding documents (reviewed and developed annually)
Job ad for new Safeguarding officer
Our public static page on safeguarding in Triratna
Various public posts relating to safeguarding in Triratna