An Oregon woman has sued an influential Buddhist monk and trusted guru for a series of alleged sexual offenses including rape and pressure on her to keep an unwanted pregnancy.
Dzogchen Kenpo Choga Rinpoche, who also went by Choying Rapgam, also allegedly asked her to sit on his lap and “suck his tongue like a popsicle,” echoing accusations against the Dalai Lama earlier this week.
Rachel Montgomery, 30, filed a lawsuit accusing him of sexual assault and sex trafficking in 2011, when she was just 19 years old.
The two met when Montgomery was a teenager who studied under him at the Dzogchen Retreat Center in Eugene.
Montgomery alleges that Chuga, as he was known, would constantly use her relationship with students and teachers to make unwanted sexual advances, eventually raping her inside a Buddhist temple when she was twenty-one.
Rachel Montgomery who filed a lawsuit accusing Dzogchen Khenpo Choga Rinpoche of sexual battery and sex trafficking in 2011, when she was just 19 years old
Dzogchen Khenpo Choga Rinpoche at Dzogchen Retreat Center in Oregon
She also claims Chuga, now 58, pressured her to get drunk before he became so sexual that she was ‘barely conscious’ when he assaulted her and ordered her, like the Dalai Lama asking a child, to suck his tongue. For “tantra empowerment”.
‘I feel Buddhism has been weaponized to take advantage of me,’ said Montgomery The Daily Beast. I do not want to say that it is armed to everyone. But for me, it was weaponised.
She says that while she was barely conscious, she remembers Chuga’s body on top of her and his long hair across her face.
Montgomery claims that Buddhism was an escape from what was a traumatic childhood and that Chuga eventually twisted her teachings to sexually abuse her.
“I had pigtails, no fashion sense.” I mean, I look back and say, “Wow. I was a kid. I didn’t have a smartphone yet. I was new to this world. I had very little knowledge and know-how in general.”
Montgomery said she abused drugs from the age of 13 after her father died, while her mother struggled with drugs and alcohol. She got clean but was looking for a purpose.
Suga claims to have taken an interest in her quickly, even offering her a job as a nanny for the families who lived at the resort and said they knew each other in a previous life.
She even becomes Choga’s unpaid personal assistant within the resort.
A view from the Dzogchen Retreat Center in Oregon where Rachel Montgomery claims she was raped at a temple by Dzogchen Kenpo Chuga Rinpoche
People join hands in a circle at Dzogchen Retreat Center in Oregon
Montgomery then claims to be pregnant a month after the night in question and tried to contact Suga, who confirmed their sexual relationship.
Suga convinced Montgomery that although the interaction was similar to what the Western world considered ‘sex’, it was in fact an act of blessing intended for her spiritual benefit, the suit alleges.
He tried to convince her that the child would be a Buddha’s reincarnation and an “enlightened being” before finally agreeing to pay for the abortion of the fetus.
Montgomery’s accusations also reveal a more obsessive and controlling relationship between the two.
The lawsuit alleges that “Shuga monitored (Montgomery’s) daily activities and controlled her lifestyle, making remarks that oscillated between kindness and harshness.”
He also put an end to Montgomery’s burgeoning love affair with an unnamed potential male partner, abusing him in the process to the point of telling him to sign a contract saying he would leave the United States in his own blood.
She eventually wrote to the board of the Dzogchen Shri Singha Foundation about the assault, but they told her there was nothing they could do because they had no power over Choga and that too much time had passed since the incident, the suit alleges.
Feeling left out, Montgomery left the community and joined the Peace Corps instead.
Shuja and the Buddhist Center and Dzogchen Shri Singha Foundation have yet to respond to the accusations.
Montgomery, who now works in a program to keep young people off drugs and alcohol and lives in Washington state with a husband and a cat, wants what she’s been through to be a lesson to others who are just as “young, curious, and semi-naive.” it was.
She indicated that she assumed that everything that happened to her and Chuga was normal within the framework of tantric sex.
“If they try to Google where I was abused, they won’t find anything,” she said. Therefore, it would be really difficult for them to discern the possible damages that could be caused to them.
The Dalai Lama has come under fire after a video showed him kissing a young boy and asking him to ‘suck’ his tongue, forcing him to make an apology.
Montgomery added, “My experience should be accessible to the people you are going to protect.”
It comes days after a clip of the Tibetan spiritual leader drew criticism, including from the Survivors Network of Victims of Abuse by Priests, a US-based organization that supports survivors of spiritual and religious abuse.
The group expressed their disgust on Monday after disturbing footage emerged, which showed the Indian boy kissing the Dalai Lama on the lips as he came to pay his respects during a charity ceremony at a temple.
The disturbing interaction took place at a public gathering in February at the Tsuglagkhang Buddhist temple in Dharamsala, where the exiled leader lives. He was getting questions from the audience when the boy asked if he could give him a hug.
The incident also brought some of the Dalai Lama’s past controversies back into the spotlight.
He’s previously faced backlash over his comments about the possibility of his successor being a woman, about refugees in Europe, Pakistan and India, Donald Trump, and his $1 million payment to attend an event hosted by NXIVM’s notorious sex cult. “.
