Buddhist priest arrested for underage sex

[frigidmagi]

I Yahoo

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.

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.