Two days ago, Willamette Week published two in-depth investigative reports on further abuse allegations within the FPMT (Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition).
What Was Reported?
At the center of the story is Yangsi Rinpoche (legal name: Kesang Tuladhar), longtime president and spiritual director of Maitripa College in Portland, Oregon — a state-accredited institution offering graduate degrees in applied Buddhism, which simultaneously functions as a religious center. Sunitha Bhaskaran, a former student and staff member, alleges a five-year sexual relationship (2015–2021) that she experienced as unwanted and at times physically painful. She alleges Yangsi Rinpoche used his position as guru to frame these encounters as religious obligation or tantric practice. Bhaskaran reached a confidential out-of-court settlement with the college in 2025. Yangsi Rinpoche and Maitripa deny the allegations, yet they reached a confidential out-of-court settlement with Bhaskaran in 2025.
Following a formal complaint filed with the FPMT — submitted by Bhaskaran together with another former student — Yangsi Rinpoche was suspended from all teaching activity at FPMT centers in March 2026. An external investigation is underway.
The Institutional Context: The FPMT and the Pattern
What makes these reports particularly troubling is not the individual case alone, but the recognizable pattern. Already in 2019, multiple allegations of sexual assault were raised against FPMT teacher Dagri Rinpoche — incidents that the women involved said had been reported internally long before, without any response from the FPMT. An externally commissioned investigation by the FaithTrust Institute confirmed the allegations against at least five women and explicitly criticized the structural deficiencies in the FPMT’s governance and oversight. Dagri Rinpoche was only removed from the teacher registry permanently after considerable public pressure, spearheaded by the nun collective TARA-SOS, a Change.org petition, and — to reach a broader audience — a post on this blog calling for an independent public investigation. (see: Petition To the FPMT Board of Directors by Senior Buddhist Nuns, 2019/05/16)
Particularly revealing was the response at the time from FPMT Spiritual Director Lama Zopa Rinpoche: when concerns were raised, he warned — in writing — that even thinking negatively about one’s guru would lead to rebirth in hell. This is not a regrettable isolated incident; it reflects a logic that is often deployed in such environments to suppress dissent. This logic is not simply deployed cynically from above. In Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s case, by all accounts he was a genuine and deeply convinced adherent of guru devotion, formed by his own teachers and lineage. That conviction, however sincerely held, does not reduce its consequences — it may in fact explain why the culture of silence in Tibetan Buddhism is so rampant. That silence is further supported by a deeply rooted cultural taboo against criticizing Buddhist teachers in Asian cultures.
The Stafford Complaint: A Summary
Stafford v. Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition, Inc. et al (filed November 2025, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of North Carolina) is a civil complaint brought by Madeleine Stafford, now 25 years old, against the FPMT and two affiliated centers — the Kadampa Center in North Carolina and the Milarepa Center in Vermont, though the latter has since been voluntarily dismissed from the case. The FPMT remains the primary defendant, facing the most serious allegations of vicarious liability for assault, battery, and federal sex trafficking.
Stafford first encountered FPMT in 2008 as an eight-year-old child, when her family joined an FPMT-affiliated center in Massachusetts. Within two years, senior FPMT figures — including Lama Zopa himself — had singled her out as a “tulku,” a reincarnate of an enlightened being, granting her celebrity status within the organization and access to private spaces closed to ordinary members.
The complaint alleges that this elevated status was systematically exploited. Sangpo Sherpa, the personal attendant of Lama Zopa, sexually molested Stafford repeatedly over six years — beginning when she was ten years old — at annual FPMT retreats in North Carolina. These assaults took place at a wooded lookout point near Lama Zopa’s private cabin, and the complaint alleges that senior FPMT figures, including the organization’s COO, witnessed Sangpo and Stafford disappear into the woods together on multiple occasions without intervening. A second FPMT employee, Tenzin Gyaltsen — attendant to Dagri Rinpoche — assaulted Stafford in a public hallway at the Milarepa Center in Vermont in 2011, in view of other FPMT members, who also did not intervene.
The complaint documents a pattern of institutional failure that goes far beyond these individual acts. FPMT had received credible allegations of sexual abuse against Dagri Rinpoche as early as 2008, and against Sangpo by implication through his conduct, yet continued to grant both men unchecked access to members, including minors. Lama Zopa, far from addressing these concerns, publicly mocked those who spoke about child sexual abuse, told abuse victims their suffering was the result of their own bad karma, and instructed FPMT followers to “rejoice” in Dagri’s teachings regardless of the allegations against him.
When Stafford’s mother finally reported Gyaltsen’s abuse to FPMT CEO Roger Kunsang in 2019, he acknowledged the allegations were “quite serious” but deflected responsibility to individual centers — despite FPMT’s own published ethical policy placing clear obligations on everyone in positions of authority within the network. Shortly after the report, Stafford’s mother was fired from her FPMT position in what the complaint describes as direct retaliation.
The damages described are severe: Stafford began self-harming at age twelve, developed PTSD and bipolar disorder, experienced auditory hallucinations, was unable to complete her education or sustain employment, and was hospitalized for suicidal behavior in 2023. The complaint alleges that FPMT actively discouraged her from seeking Western medical or psychological help, directing her instead to Lama Zopa for spiritual remedies.
The complaint brings claims under North Carolina and Vermont common law — assault and battery, negligence, gross negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, breach of fiduciary duty — as well as federal sex trafficking statutes (18 U.S.C. §§ 1591, 1594, 1595), arguing that the spiritual status and privileges granted to Stafford constituted the “benefits” exchanged in a trafficking arrangement.
The case is ongoing. The FPMT denies the allegations.¹
Guru Devotion as a Means to Control and Abuse Devotees
Those familiar with Tibetan Buddhist contexts will recognize the dynamic: the emphasis on guru devotion — the teaching that one’s guru is to be regarded as fully enlightened and every one of his actions as beneficial — structurally creates a situation in which disagreement is not merely difficult, but spiritually sanctioned. According to former Maitripa students, the entire college operated under this framework, and Yangsi Rinpoche reportedly taught guru devotion as a central theme in his own classes.
Sunitha Bhaskaran has named this mechanism clearly: she did not actively resist the sexual contact because she felt she had no choice — not through physical force, but through the spiritual power differential and the cultural expectations the environment produced.
In the Stafford case, this logic was applied to a child but the coercion extended to her parents as well. A witness familiar with similar cases involving other young children singled out as tulkus by Lama Zopa describes a consistent pattern: mothers were made to feel selfish for wanting to keep their children close, made to feel ignorant compared to the wisdom of lamas and monastics, made to feel they did not know what was best for their child, and made to feel that surrendering them to Dharma contexts was absolutely in the child’s best interest. Their insecurities as parents, insecurities every mother and father has, were deliberately stimulated and preyed upon. One mother was told by Lama Zopa that her young son would die if he was not sent to the monastery; she wept as she spoke of sending him. It should be noted that such warnings are not unique to Lama Zopa — this kind of pressure on parents has been common among older-generation Tibetan lamas more broadly, and is thankfully heard less often today. Within the FPMT, however, this dynamic was not an isolated incident but a reproduced pattern across multiple cases.
This context makes the FPMT’s legal strategy of shifting responsibility onto Stafford’s mother particularly difficult to accept. It also raises serious questions about claims that the organization’s headquarters had no control over what happened at individual centers — given how routinely center directors consulted Roger Kunsang and Lama Zopa on decisions, and how much central direction was in practice imposed across the network.
This is a form of coercion that conventional legal frameworks struggle to capture: it operates not through physical force but through the internalized authority of the teacher, the fear of spiritual consequences, the social pressure of a closed community, and — as these cases may suggest — the systematic manipulation of entire families. It can be, and was, institutionally enabled at the highest levels.
None of this diminishes the institutional responsibility of the FPMT. But it points to something worth naming clearly: parents in spiritual communities need to ask questions that are too rarely asked. Have the adults working with children undergone background checks? How many adults are supervising? Are parents aware at all times of where their child is and with whom? The cases documented here involve children who were walking alone in forests with adult men while other adults passed by and said nothing — and while their parents were often present at the same events. Organizations must be held accountable. And parents, however thoroughly they may have been manipulated, can also be encouraged to ask harder questions — not to deflect blame, but because awareness can prevent abuse. Those who grew up in other high-control religious communities, such as ISKCON, have made exactly this point: they hold the institution responsible, and they also wish their parents had asked more questions.
What Now?
The ongoing investigations — both the FPMT’s external review and the federal court proceedings in North Carolina — warrant continued attention. It remains to be seen whether the FPMT will give real substance to the structural reforms it committed to following the Dagri Rinpoche case, or whether we will once again see statements of good intention without accountability. The FaithTrust Institute’s investigation after the Dagri scandal already concluded that FPMT’s culture made it very difficult for complainants to feel supported, that leadership failed to recognize its responsibilities, and that where information existed, no swift or effective action was taken. Nothing in the current situation suggests that has fundamentally changed.
Sunitha Bhaskaran explained her decision to go public this way: she had long hesitated, not wanting to damage the Dharma. On that concern she now writes: bringing these things into the light helps Buddhism, it does not damage it. The Dalai Lama himself has said that Buddhism has survived for 2,500 years — there is no need to worry.
That is a mature perspective. The institutions that enabled or concealed these abuses cannot simply borrow that same confidence in the resilience of the Dharma to exempt themselves from accountability.
The full articles by Sophie Peel at Willamette Week are available here:
- A Buddhist Leader in Portland Is on Leave After Allegations of Sexual Misconduct
- Allegations of Sexual Misconduct Have Roiled Buddhist Organization Headquartered in Portland for Years
See also
- Sexual Misconduct Allegations Against Buddhist Leader Trigger Investigation at Maitripa College by Denise Miller
- Yangsi Rinpoche and the Recurring Shadow of Abuse in Tibetan Buddhist Lineages by Tahlia Newland
¹ Stafford v. Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition, Inc. et al — [PacerMonitor] | Stafford v. Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition, Inc. [CourtListener] | Stafford Complaint (PDF) | FPMT’s response to Stafford’s complaint (PDF)
Last revised: une 5, 2026 @ 04:19:15
Tibetan Buddhism – Struggling With Diffi·Cult Issues 