OKC communauté bouddhiste enfants victimes Robert Spatz, Digi Mart USA News (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France): The story concerns about one hundred children whose parents entrusted them to a Buddhist community called OKC. The community promised an idyllic childhood on a large estate in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, along with spiritual awakening.
According to the report, behind closed doors the community’s lama became a guru, and the dream turned into a nightmare. Former residents told the program Affaires Sensibles of years of deprivation, humiliation, violent punishment and alleged rape, far from their families.
The community was led for nearly thirty years by Robert Spatz, a Belgian national, who imposed absolute authority over entire families who had sent their young children to pursue spiritual awakening, the ultimate goal of Buddhism.
The report also examines failures of French institutions. It asks how a community suspected of mistreatment was able to obtain the status of a private school in France, and why early warnings and a dramatic gendarmerie operation in 1997 did not protect the young minors.
It further asks how Spatz avoided a prison sentence in Belgium after a conviction for hostage-taking and rape there. A new procedure was opened in France in 2019, and the victims’ fight against their former guru continues.
Spatz, now 82, is reported to be living free in Spain and has not yet been questioned by French investigators.
The investigation was reported by Céline Chassé, Vincent Barral, Grégoire Lenoir and Sébastien Sega. The program is adapted from a France Inter broadcast and is a coproduction of France Télévisions, France Inter, INA and France TV Presse.
