Thai police arrest abbot on charges of stealing donations as temple rescues people ostracized by HIV fears.
The former abbot of Wat Phrabat Namphu in Lopburi province, Phra Alongkot, was defrocked on Tuesday after being arrested on multiple charges, including embezzlement, police said. The temple had long been considered a refuge for people living with HIV (PLHIV), a place of last resort for those abandoned by their families and society. Founded in 1992 by Phra Alongkot Thikkapanyo, the temple gained fame as a hospice offering shelter, care, and dignity to those with nowhere else to go. For decades, it relied heavily on donations, attracted by dramatic images of suffering patients and stories of the abbot’s compassion.
However, the temple has recently found itself at the centre of controversy. An embezzlement investigation launched against Seksan Sapsuebsakul, better known as “Mor B the Ghost Hunter,” a fortune teller and former fundraising assistant, soon escalated into allegations of corruption within the temple itself. The abbot, once celebrated as a humanitarian, now found himself under intense public scrutiny.
The Bangkok Post investigated the temple to assess the post-scandal climate and listen to those living in and around the temple. While much of the discussion has focused on financial abuse, a more profound, more troubling truth has emerged: the scandal is not just about money.
It is about stigma, and the marginalization of people living with HIV in Thailand creates conditions in which Wat Phrabat Namphu is both a haven and a place of exploitation. Locals have mixed feelings about the scandal surrounding the temple. One shop owner recalls hearing rumors about financial irregularities at the temple for a long time. According to her, people were whispering about the sudden enrichment of the rector’s relatives. Despite the disappointment, many still sympathize with PLHIV living on the temple grounds.
Most of the temple’s residents earn between 100 and 200 Thai baht a day for assisting with household chores, in addition to free food. Their material needs are modest, but their desire for dignity and acceptance runs deeper. As of mid-August, Wat Phrabat Namphu housed 140 patients: 133 people living with HIV and seven older adults who are HIV-negative. Some, relatively healthy, live in small rooms and help with housework.
Three nurses care for bedridden patients around the clock. Many suffer not from HIV itself, but from opportunistic infections that develop due to lack of timely care. The temple receives calls from all over the country, 15 to 20 requests a day for beds that are rarely available. Some patients have lived there for more than 20 years, effectively exiled from society. Caregivers, who often work grueling 12- to 24-hour shifts, describe the same picture: families bring patients to the temple when they can no longer or do not want to care for them. Employers sometimes abandon workers after learning of their status. Migrant workers without access to state healthcare are left with no alternative.
One caregiver who has worked at the temple for 10 years said the temple was her last stop. “If Thai society really accepted people with HIV, these calls wouldn’t come. Families wouldn’t abandon their children here,” she said. The suffering at Wat Phrabat Namphu is not due to a lack of medicine. Thailand’s universal health care system provides free antiretroviral therapy (ART). With the proper treatment, people living with HIV can live healthy lives every day. Yet countless people still arrive at the temple in desperation.
The reason is stigma. Despite decades of progress, HIV remains burdened with outdated fears and moral judgments. Families feel ashamed. Employers fear infection. Communities whisper. And so, instead of supporting people, they hide, sometimes until it’s too late. The psychological toll of this stigma is severe. Caregivers tell of patients who feel worthless, withdrawing from the world, and yearning only for family acceptance that rarely comes. Some contemplate suicide. Others resign themselves to life in hospice.
According to one of the caregivers, what PLHIV want most is not money, but the return of their families and human contact. But once they are left here, very few receive visitors. Civil society representatives claim that it is precisely the systemic rejection of PLHIV that has allowed the temple to become a powerful institution that lives on donations.
Health Opportunity Network director Thissadi Sawangying explained that the temple has long used images of suffering patients to raise funds, which reinforces the stereotype of PLHIV as helpless victims. “People donate out of pity, thinking they are doing a good deed, but this reinforces the stigma, suggesting that PLHIV’s place is in the hospice temple and not in mainstream society,” she said. This cycle—family abandonment, hospice confinement, and pity-based fundraising—kept the temple financially strong but left it socially unaccountable.
The scandal shows what happens when compassion becomes commercialized. Practices like displaying the bodies of dead PLHIV to teach Buddhist impermanence may have started as spiritual lessons, but they also heighten public fear of the disease and deepen stigma. Science has already outpaced stigma. With ART, people living with HIV can suppress their viral load to undetectable levels, meaning they cannot transmit the virus. The disease is no longer a death sentence. Yet public perception lags. For many Thais, HIV is still viewed through the lens of the 1980s epidemic – deadly, contagious, shameful. This outdated fear ensures that discrimination remains entrenched, from barriers to employment to family rejection. The temple remains full not because of a lack of medical care, but because society does not accept PLHIV as equals. Experts say that the fight against HIV requires more than just free drugs. It requires social, psychological, and economic reintegration. PLHIV need jobs, mental health support, and community acceptance.
Without these, they will continue to be marginalized, no matter how effective their drugs are.
National educational campaigns are needed to debunk misconceptions about HIV, targeting not only high-risk groups but also the general public. The scandal at Wat Phrabat Namphu is not just about missing donations or alleged abuse by an abbot; it also encompasses broader issues of corruption and mismanagement within the institution. It is about a society that has pushed PLHIV into the shadows and then allowed an institution to exploit that marginalization for decades.
As long as PLHIV remain stigmatized, they will remain vulnerable to abandonment, exploitation, and cycles of corruption. Breaking this cycle begins at the most intimate level: the family. If parents, siblings, and children can accept their loved ones with HIV, the need for “last resort” shelters will diminish. From there, acceptance must spread to communities, workplaces, and the nation as a whole.
The embezzlement case may have made headlines, but the heart of the story lies elsewhere: in the voices of PLHIV yearning for dignity, and in outdated beliefs that continue to frame HIV as shameful. Wat Phrabat Namphu was both a symbol of compassion and a mirror of social failure. Unless this stigma is addressed, the pattern of marginalization and abuse will continue. The challenge is not just to prevent corruption in charities, but to build a Thailand where PLHIV no longer need such institutions to survive, where they can live openly, healthily, and with the same acceptance as everyone else.
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