A secretly recorded video of a monk having sex with a woman rocks a Cambodian community in Lowell, Mass. — just as plans for a $10 million temple to be built went underway to “help unite an immigrant community with a history of ugly feuding”:
“Meas would later tell me that his interest in the temple ‘was selfish in a way. I want to make Cambodian Americans proud of what we have. We don’t have a Cambodian school, we don’t have a cultural center to teach the Cambodian-American culture.’ The temple, he said, would be more than a place of worship, it would be a symbol of unity.:
“Instead, nearly three years after it was first conceptualized, the project has reopened old wounds and ripped Lowell’s Cambodian community apart. Lawsuits have been filed with sordid allegations of financial improprieties involving CKBM and, most shocking, videotaped sexual hijinks involving a monk. Far from making an emergent community proud, the temple has so far been a source of outrage and embarrassment for the city’s Cambodians.”
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