A 35-year-old Thai woman named Wilawan Emsawat has been charged with extortion for allegedly recording herself while having sex with Buddhist monks, then threatening to make the photos and videos public unless she was paid off.
The case, which has scandalized the Buddhist community in Thailand and dominated headlines in that country this week, began when a monk named Phra Thep Wachirapamok went missing.
Wachirapamok was the abbot of the Wat Tri Thotsathep monastery. It was very unusual for such a high-ranking member of the clergy to disappear from his post without explanation. The police launched an intensive manhunt and unexpectedly found his trail leading to a woman.
Emsawat, also known as “Sika Golf,” is a woman from a humble background. She allegedly exploited monks’ attraction to her to develop an industrial-scale blackmail operation.
“The abbot took very good care of me. Whatever I wanted, he provided. One day, I said I wanted a Mercedes, and he bought it for me,” she said of her first abbot paramour, Phrathep Watcharasitthimenthi, whom she allegedly was involved with from 2013 to 2015.
“I felt guilty. I knew it was a sin, but I didn’t want to struggle anymore. I wanted enough money to look after myself and my children,” she said.
Emsawat allegedly grew impatient with waiting for her monk lovers to shower her with gifts, so she began coercing money out of them, with everything from old-fashioned sex-tape blackmail to phony paternity lawsuits, according to prosecutors. She allegedly landed one of her marks by asking him for help with identifying some religious items in her possession. He wound up spending the night at her house and “loaning” her thousands of dollars.
The monks allegedly obtained some of the money they lavished on Emsawat by looting temple funds. She stands accused of looting one monk of his six-figure life savings by claiming she needed the money to start a ceramics business. When his bank account ran dry, he allegedly took another $3,000 out of temple funds. Some of her paramours allegedly provided her with credit cards and quietly paid her bills.
When the police raided Emsawat’s luxurious home near Bangkok, they reportedly found a trove of over 80,000 compromising photos and videos of her trysts with monks, captured with at least five different recording devices.
The missing abbot who prompted the search that led to Emsawat was among her many alleged blackmail targets. The police determined he fled across the border into Laos when Emsawat threatened to expose their affair. Some of her monks were reportedly still wearing their robes when they engaged in distinctly un-priestly behavior with the enterprising blackmailer. One of her lovers told police he broke off their relationship when he found out she was seeing other monks.
Not every monk in Emsawat’s orbit appeared in her sex videos. Some monks told the police they never had a physical relationship with her – they just enjoyed talking to her and, when she asked them for money, they gave her whatever she wanted.
“Police were reportedly shocked at the high success rate of her luring tactics, considering her appearance was reportedly different from her social media profile,” the Nation of Thailand delicately observed.
Emsawat turned out to be the ex-wife of a local politician, who said he left her because she spent her evenings phoning monks and shaking them down for “donations.” According to Bangkok police, the total haul from her monk operation was over $12 million. Emsawat said she blew most of the money on online gambling.
The case has outraged the Thai Buddhist community, which includes about 90 percent of the population, and has exploded into a massive national scandal. Nine senior monks have been defrocked so far, and one has been charged with embezzling temple funds.
Intense scrutiny has been turned upon the financing of Buddhist temples, which can develop surprisingly large fortunes because they receive gifts of money from worshipers on top of fees charged for performing religious services, and their income is not taxed.
Emsawat was arrested on Tuesday. Some on Thai social media expressed sympathy for her, painting her as a scapegoat for the lust and foolishness of the monks who had relations with her. One of the charges against her is “abetting alleged abuse of authority” by the monks. Thailand is watching closely to see if the actual perpetrators of that abuse are punished as harshly as the woman who “abetted” them.
“Women have long been depicted in mainstream teachings as ‘enemies’ of monks’ spiritual purity. Some temple murals even show them as snakes. That’s why the clergy still bans women from Bhikkhuni ordination. And now, when the clergy’s moral decay is in full view, it’s the woman who takes the fall while the monks are cast as victims,” columnist Sanitsuda Ekachai of the Bangkok Post wrote.
On Wednesday, the police announced they would run background checks on all 300,000 of the Buddhist monks in Thailand, using information provided by the National Office of Buddhism (NOB). They said they might also reactivate old cases of abuse dismissed by the NOB, although the NOB still has the final say on disciplining monks.
“I don’t want these problems to remain a cancer in the side of Buddhism,” said Jaroonkiat Parnkaew, deputy commissioner of Thailand’s Central Investigation Bureau (CIB), a division of the Thai Royal Police roughly equivalent to the FBI.
Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn this week canceled invitations to over 80 Buddhist monks who were scheduled to attend his 73rd birthday celebration this month. The king cited “inappropriate behaviour that caused mental distress among the Thai people” as the reason for the cancellations.
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