Conviction Buddhist institutions and contexts Buddhist institutions and lineages Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam · 2025

Vietnam: self-styled 'living Buddha' convicted of raping women he treated as disciples

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Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

self-styled 'living Buddha' and spiritual healer

Organization

No organization assigned

Archive classification

This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.

The complainants were his self-identified disciples who submitted to his claimed healing authority, having been told the sexual contact was the 'energy transmission' treatment he had prescribed for them.

Spiritual healing or treatment
Guru or spiritual-teacher authority
Threatened spiritual consequence

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2025-09-24 · conviction and sentence

Region 7 District Court, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Nguyễn Ngọc Hải was sentenced to eight years' imprisonment for rape after confessing to assaulting seven women. He had claimed to be a 'living Buddha' able to heal through energy transmission and summoned female disciples to hotels and private homes for sexual acts he presented as spiritual treatment.

Documented coercion mechanisms

sexual acts framed as necessary 'energy transmission' healing
claimed capacity to heal through spiritual power

Cited record

Sources

national newspaper court reporting verdict and sentencing report 'Người làm nghề bấm huyệt bị phạt 8 năm tù vì tội cưỡng dâm', Tuổi Trẻ, 24 Sept. 2025.: Vietnamese court reporting on the eight-year sentence and the healing pretext used to obtain compliance.

Source provenance

Source access and integrity log

This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.

Source and tier basis: https://tuoitre.vn/nguoi-lam-nghe-bam-huyet-bi-phat-8-nam-tu-vi-toi-cuong-dam-20250924160208467.htm Corpus classification: national-newspaper-court-reporting; evidentiary role: verdict-and-sentencing-report. SHA-256 dce49db48356ce445d919eeecdc22cc0e6a6589bce72b5c886b02da40177f38e
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

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