Priest 'couldn't control lust'
2006-03-10 16:22
Tokyo - A Japanese Buddhist priest who was arrested on suspicion of having paid sex with a teenage girl said he was under stress and had given in to lust.
A police spokesperson said Itsushi Ehara, 73, chief priest at a temple in the western Japanese prefecture of Hiroshima and also head of a nursery school, paid the 15-year-old girl 80 000 yen ($675) to have sex in a hotel in downtown Tokyo.
Ehara said: "I could not resist my lust. A lot of stress built up from running the school."
Police said Ehara, who was believed to have met the girl through a prostitute-dispatch service, was also suspected of having paid for sex with several other teenage girls for a period of two to three years.
Japan had long had a relatively lax attitude towards sexual exploitation of young people. Teenage prostitution - known as "compensated dating" - was outlawed in 1999, but it still went on, though less openly than before.