Verdict: Robert Spatz found guilty!
5 years suspended sentence, yes it is laughable and even if it can be explained, legally speaking, it is an aberration of the legal system in 2021, it must be the occasion for a reflection on Justice in Belgium.
A group of cult-born kids now adults & free of the grip of the sectarian drifts of a Buddhist community they were born in where physical, sexual & mental abuses enfolded for decades, are fighting against the cult founder & his organization in court after a 20-Year-long Judicial inquiry :
Our Story
We are 23 ex-adepts’ children, constituted as civil parties in the current trial against the guru Robert Spatz (alias, “Lama Kunzang”) and the sect Ogyen Kunzang Choling (OKC). Several of us have filed complaints of rape and sexual abuse of minors. Other ex-adepts have also filed complaints: Spatz is accused of manipulating OKC members for personal and criminal purposes.
OKC was created in the 1970s by Spatz with the (according to him) aim of working for the “transmission and putting into practice of the Buddhist teachings of the Tibetan tradition”. While community life was dreamed of as a utopian and idyllic alternative, it would prove to be dictated by a sadistic and pedophile manipulator.
As the trial judge established in 2016, the followers were exploited for his benefit. While they worked tirelessly on a voluntary basis – then as false self-employed under/unpaid – in Belgium, Portugal and Spain, their children, therefore us, were sent to Château de Soleils (alias “Nyima Dzong”), a place isolated from everything in the Alpes de Haute-Provence, separated from our own parents & familly.
Robert Spatz was sentenced in the first instance in 2016, following a 20-year trial (1997), to 4 years suspended imprisonment and compensation for multiple charges, including hostage-taking of children with aggravating circumstances of torture, sexual abuse and rape of young teenage girls, and more than 100 reprehensible acts ranging from the use of forgery and extortion to money laundering.
Spatz and the OKC organisation played the court into showing Spatz wasn’t leading the organisation anymore but a few days after the first sentence, both appealed the condemnation. (see below)
The brainwashing
Out of sight, we were indoctrinated with hours of daily prayers and “religious” practices specific to Spatz. Without any other reference, far from our parents who were described to us as polluted corrupted by their emotions and Western civilization, we learned to rely on him, day and night.
Physical and psychological abuses
Before the court of first instance, we described severe deprivations: emotional, nutritional, medical, educational. Physical and psychological violences were daily: beatings with sticks, confinement, running outside barefoot in the snow, deprivation of food, having to stay outside at night are just a few examples.
It was impossible for us to realize the injustice we were suffering and we were terrified at the thought of disobeying. The pain was presented as beneficial. We were told that suffering was good for us, that it would harden us and prepare us to survive to the end of the world. We grew up with the idea that the end of the world was near, and Spatz wanted to prepare us as warriors. According to Spatz, only those living on the “pure land of Nyima-Dzong” would survive.
Sexual abuses of young girls
The young girls were probably the most affected by the drifts of the guru. Spatz was taking teenage girls (raised in Nyima-Dzong) for domestic service from the age of 12 and 13, and secretly using them to satisfy his sexual needs under the pretext of practicing “Tantric rituals”.
The difficult reconstruction
When we left this organization, we all had the greatest difficulty adapting to the world and rebuilding ourselves psychologically. Some of us have the great disappointment of having parents who continue to defend Robert Spatz whom they worship as an emanation of Buddha on earth rather than taking the side of their children.
The trial...
In 2016, Robert Spatz was convicted in the first instance on multiple charges, including hostage-taking of children with aggravating circumstances of torture, sexual abuse and rape of young teenage girls, and more than 100 punishable acts ranging from forgery and extortion to money laundering. We hoped that this decision would be final but Robert Spatz, having sufficient funds allowing him to drag out the sentence which was all in all light considering the charges (4 years of prison suspended and fines), and OKC (partially acquitted because considered as victim of Spatz) lodged an appeal.
...and the appeal
It is because of this appeal that we need help to fund our defense costs. We have reduced these costs to a minimum – two lawyers for 23 civil parties, while Spatz and its organization have 7 lawyers!
We are fortunate to have talented lawyers who believe in our cause, despite our inability to pay them properly for their service.
This is a complex appeal that must take place over a minimum period of six months and will require them to work long hours.
We need your financial support in order to be able to carry out our defense and restore justice
As a result of our stolen youth, few of us have sufficient resources to pay these two lawyers. We can only count on the generosity and solidarity of those who believe in our fight to carry out our defense and restore justice…
2018...and the verdict of the Appeal
Inadmissibility of proceedings! Years of investigation and judicial proceedings that the court dismissed with a wave of its hands. The testimonies that these people who grew up in the cult made great efforts to overcome their emotions after growing up in the sect were not even examined. Read More
2019 : the counter-appeal
The Belgian State & the civil parties decided to counter-appeal the appeal verdict.
After months in the limbo of the Belgian Justice system on the 12th June 2019 the Cassation court reversed the previous court decision : the entirety of the previous judgement is now nullified.
2020 : the New trial
Back in February the trial started in the city of Liège. It enfolded with sworn testimonies by remaining adepts of the cult, they tried to discharge their toxic cult guru but it didn’t work out so well, it just exposed how today in 2020 there are still people under his toxic influence.
Then it was the turn of the civil parties, 3 of us exposed stories of sexual abuses at Nyima-Dzong/Château de Soleils against Robert Spatz aka Lama Kunzang, the trial twas interrupted because of Covid-19.
It resumed on the 23rd of June, during the entire week, more civil parties exposed stories of physical, mental, spiritual and sexual abuses in front of the court.
This Monday 29th of June ended with hours of interrogation by the defense against of the initiator of the OKCinfo initiative, the day ended with the testimony of another civil party, a mother of another absent ex-civil party, confirming her son allegations and asking for forgiveness.
On June 30, at the request of the public prosecution and the civil parties, the court listened to an audio tape from 28 years ago, where Robert Spatz in just one of many monologues display control, ownership, gas lighting of the OKC sect and arrogantly elevate our impossibly difficult & love depraved conditions of life, as children’s as the condition, the Law, to govern us all in Nyima Dzong. (France)
Septembre 2020 enfolded with the pleading of the civil parties and the accused lawyers.
Next step : Judgement December 2nd 2020
Verdict : Guilty for the second time, 5 years suspended sentence.
Media (French) : BX1 – LeSoir – NOS – NieuwsBlad
It's too little, but it can be explained, in part.
Several elements have come to intoxicate a harsher judgment towards the accused:
- Reasonable delay to an outdated judgment (20 years)
his age and alleged sick state of the defendant - Sums of money seized (which will therefore be reimbursed) that no longer correspond to offenses that have been proven and therefore judged by the court.
- Collapse of part of the financial charges (procedural defects)
So What's left ?
A feature article on the content of the Judgment of December 2, 2020 is still in the making, but several points can be highlighted:
- The recognition of civil parties as victims
- The recognition of sexual and psychological abuse, even if not all of it has been judged by the court (prescription, not investigated)
- Recognition of physical and psychological abuse
Torture and mistreatment, hostage-taking - The recognition of the stranglehold on the adepts/parents, the indoctrination of the OKC direction, its followers, defense witnesses, parents.
- Financial compensation for the civil parties. (still to be determined in some cases and in all cases still to be executed, depending on the maintenance of the judgment of December 2nd, 2020)
What's next ?
2 months after the Judgement, we know that Spatz is appealing the judgement in the High Court of Cassation.
We have not much doubt that this last attempt at blocking a court decision with more proceedings is going to fail.
In the End, the December 2nd 2020 Judgement is going to be upheld and Spatz will have to face financial compensations towards the civil parties.
the OKC organisation in Belgium is still directed by the same individuals that presided the organization’s drift into abuses, resignation is not even an option because the remaining adepts are too far gone to take care of their own future, they keep trusting OKC enabler in chief because they have no other choice.
OKC hubris is so huge that they don’t even consider changing their name, much less making a public formal apology,e not just to the victims but also to the parents and everyone else that have met OKC in the last 40 Years.
This website is going to stay online forever, because it is the only way for people to know the truth about OKC and its abuse enabler in chief : OKC general secretary Rui Lamten & Yana
Timeline
- 1997 – Cult wide police raid
- 1997 – 2003 Instruction of the case, first 2 cases of sexual & physical abuses
- 2003 – 2008 Lost in Limbo of the Belgian Justice system
- 2008 – New complaints of sexual abuses
- 2013 – More Limbo’s in the Belgian Justice system
- 2016 – First Trial
- 2017 – First verdict (4 year suspended sentence)
- 2018 – Appeal by Spatz-OKC of the first verdict trial (they won)
- 2019 – Counter-Appeal by the civil parties
- 2019 – Court of Appeal break the entire previous appeal verdict
(we won this round) - 2020 – New trial started but was paused due to COVID-19
- 2020 – Spatz is guilty of pedocriminality, torture and kidnapping, condemned to a 5 years suspended sentence (no jail time)
- OKC is largely recognized as indoctrinated and under the direct influence of Spatz, hence acquitted.
- 2021 – Spatz launch an appeal in the high Court of Cassation, depending on the outcome it will either enforce the 2nd December 2020 judgement or if accepted, a new trial will have to take place.
Table of Contents
Media / TV (in French)
Vews / RTBF 2021
2019 NRJ12 #Morandini
2018 France 2 #CCA
2017 Mixed RTL OKC/other cult drifts
2015 RTBF documentary
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About OKCinfo
OKCinfo was launched at the end of 2015 as a desperate last minute attempt in a 20 year long existing trial launched by the Belgian state against the OKC cult in 1997.
The 23 of us – supported by more than 40 other former OKC-born young children – have since been supported by talented lawyers ready to champion our cause.
The initiative was born from the realization that if we, children of the first, second and third generation, did not speak, the sect guru and his surrounding clique would manipulate the trial and the court to establish that there are no victims, no complaints, nothing, that it is not a sect but a “community of Tibetan Buddhist inspiration” persecuted by the Belgian state. We’re here to restore the truths.
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