#1 Buddhist priest arrested for underage sex
Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 8:17 pm
I Yahoo
Just posting this as food for thought. Sexual exploitation of minors by priest and other authority figures isn't just an American problem, it isn't even just a Christian problem. It's a problem that appears anytime you have people in authority over a vernable population and childern are amoung the most open to bad influence and exploitation.TOKYO (Reuters) - A Japanese Buddhist priest who was arrested on suspicion of having paid sex with a teenage girl said he was under stress and had given in to lust.
Itsushi Ehara, 73, chief priest at a temple in the western Japanese prefecture of Hiroshima and also head of a nursery school, paid the 15-year-old girl 80,000 yen ($675) to have sex in a hotel in downtown Tokyo, a police spokesman said on Friday.
"I could not resist my lust. A lot of stress built up from running the school," Ehara was quoted by Kyodo news agency as telling police.
Ehara, who is believed to have met the girl through a prostitute-dispatch service, is also suspected of having paid for sex with several other teenage girls over a period of two to three years, Kyodo quoted police as saying.
Japan has long had a relatively lax attitude toward sexual exploitation of young people. Teenage prostitution -- known as "compensated dating" -- was outlawed in 1999, but it still goes on, though less openly than before.