Growing Up in a Buddhist Sect: An Interview about Ricardo Mendes

Ricardo Mendes, born and raised within the Buddhist cult-like community Ogyen Kunzang Choling (OKC), describes in his testimony how this community, initially founded on ideals of spirituality, communal living, and alternatives to Western society, gradually became a sectarian organization controlled by its founder, Robert Spatz. Founded in Belgium in the 1970s, OKC initially attracted individuals seeking a concrete utopia, interested in Tibetan Buddhism, communal living, vegetarianism, and yoga. Robert Spatz, described by Mendes as charismatic yet manipulative, swiftly established a strict and authoritarian hierarchy based on a personal and distorted interpretation of Buddhism. Under the guise of spirituality, Spatz controlled members’ private lives, manipulated personal and familial relationships, and developed an economic system exploiting members financially through restaurants, organic shops, and various enterprises managed by the organization. Members frequently worked without real salaries and under precarious conditions. A particularly dark aspect was the treatment of children within the community. Separated from their parents from an early age, particularly at the Château de Soleil center in France, these children endured severe physical and psychological violence disguised as religious education and discipline. Mendes recounts how they were deprived of food, subjected to severe punishments, and frequently victims of sexual abuse presented as secret spiritual rituals. He describes extremely harsh living conditions marked by poverty, cold, and lack of parental affection. Children grew up in constant fear and total control, rarely having regular contact with their parents. Official inspections were misled by a façade of model education, while in reality, rigid religious practices, often incomprehensible to the children themselves, were enforced. Mendes also emphasizes the immense challenges former members faced when leaving the cult: loss of reference points, the necessity of reconstructing their identities, and persistent psychological trauma. Today, survivors are organized through the Chardons Bleus association, which aims to provide psychological support, legal representation, and raise public awareness about the abuses endured. Judicial proceedings have been underway, notably in France since 2017, with the objective of definitively judging those responsible and obtaining reparations for the victims. Ricardo Mendes’s testimony calls for collective awareness and engagement against these sectarian abuses, so that the atrocities committed within OKC under the direction of Robert Spatz may never happen again.