A widow and a supposedly defrocked monk fight it out on Facebook. When the widow is also a good-looking singer, and the monk is young and hansum, the dispute has all the makings of celebrity soap opera, which will likely be conducted on Facebook in a battle of "likes". Who needs a court system when you have FB ? Who even knew that monks have FB pages ? Stay tuned.



A singer has accused a monk from Champuvoin Pagoda in Phnom Penh of physically abusing her and stealing thousands of dollars from her a few months ago.
Touch Sderng – a widow – brought the scandal back to life after three months of inaction by police. Former monk Hy Phearum was defrocked because of his relationship with Ms. Sderng, and in a 14-minute video posted to Facebook yesterday, she claimed he physically abused her but was never arrested.

The abuse damaged her honor and she said she plans to file a complaint to “get her life back.”
“Now I will file a complaint for you through legal procedures. Please tell Hy Phearum that I will not pardon him regardless of how the case turns out,” she said.
“They want him to be happy, but he himself does not want it. After he was defrocked, he went and became a monk again, mocking and editing photos.
“This destroyed everything and now it destroyed my honor as well.”

Mr. Phearum claimed he became a monk again after a three-month probation period. He denied the allegations aired by Ms. Sderng in a Facebook post of his own and said she is deliberately attacking him even though he had not disobeyed any of Buddhism’s rules.

“I was defrocked for a while to resolve many problems, but I have not seen Ms. Sderng file a complaint after I was defrocked,” he said. “When she found out I became a monk again and had many Buddhist supporters, now she posts on Facebook to cause trouble for me.
“I will not respond. They will get what they deserve.”

Ministry of Cults and Religions spokesman Seng Somony said the scandal between the monk and the widow calmed down after a few months and the board of monks decided to defrock Mr. Phearum along with purging themselves of any disputes of people related to them.
“This is not about the monks any more,” he said.

“We checked the facts, and it is not right because the report sent to the ministry said Mr. Phearum had already been defrocked, but there were still images of him as a monk,” he said.

“We did not know he was the Phearum who caused all the problems and not another Phearum. We are also checking because we are afraid that someone may have created a fake Facebook page to attack the person, because there is no individual who posted about this scandal themselves...

http://www.khmertimeskh.com/news/32070/ ... sed-widow/