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The president of a Buddhist meditation center in Southeast Portland has resigned following an allegation he was in a sexual relationship with a student.
It is not the first such claim against Robert Beatty. Allegations of an inappropriate sexual relationship cost Beatty his license as a clinical social worker in 2008. Now, over a decade later, it’s cost him his job with the nonprofit he founded.
The board of the Portland Insight Meditation Community, which Beatty incorporated in 2001, issued a statement on its website yesterday saying Beatty had violated its code of ethics for having “a sexual relationship with a longtime student and member of the community” and was no longer affiliated with the institution.
The revelation comes following the student’s death last weekend, the board said. The board did not name the student and the circumstances of the student’s death are unclear.
Beatty did not respond to requests for comment on this story. “There have recently been some very challenging events in my life,” he wrote in an email announcing his departure from the center and later obtained by WW. He said he plans to continue “morning meditation sessions” with followers over Zoom.
According to his website, Beatty has Masters degrees from Portland State University and York University in Toronto—and “is a member of the first wave of Theravada Buddhist teachers who brought Mindfulness from Asia in the 1970s.” Aside from running the Southeast Portland meditation center, he leads retreats across the Western United States and Canada and offers one-on-one “guidance and invaluable company” for spiritual seekers, the website says.
The Portland Insight Meditation Community is a religious nonprofit which has operated out of a 7,500-square-foot meditation center located in the Brentwood-Darlington neighborhood of Southeast Portland since 2004. It’s unclear what the church’s annual revenue is, but a budget posted on its website in 2016 said it brought in just over $100,000 a year in revenues.
This is only the latest instance that Beatty has come under scrutiny for allegedly intermingling sexual and professional relationships while leading the nonprofit.
According to a “final order” obtained by WW from the state of Oregon’s Board of Clinical Social Workers, Beatty surrendered his license as a clinical social worker “in lieu of revocation” in 2008 after admitting to having a sexual relationship with a former client. He’d held the license since 1992.
The relationship between Beatty and the client, referred to as CH in the document, began a year after their final therapy session in 2005. The state rules prohibit such relationships within three years, “because of the great risk of severe harm to the client,” the document says.
Although Beatty lost his license, he did not lose his leadership role at Portland Insight Meditation Community. He remained its president until Monday, when the organization’s board learned of his recent relationship with the student, according to the statement posted on its website by the five-member board.
Asked why he previously kept his position, the nonprofit’s board directed WW to its code of ethics, which is posted on its website, says sexual relationships between students and teachers are “never appropriate” and can be pursued only after “a minimum time period of three months or longer from the last formal teaching between them.” (That’s a much shorter window of time than the three years distance required by the state’s social work licensing board.)
The board is co-chaired by Shane Dixon Kavanaugh, a journalist at The Oregonian, and Dan Leif, a former editor of trade publication Resource Recycling. In response to questions from WW, including whether the board was aware of the Beatty’s prior misconduct, Leif responded with a short statement pointing to the center’s code of ethics. “We are continuing to work to understand the circumstances around the tragic events that have unfolded,” the statement said.
“We will be working diligently to determine how best to move forward as an organization,” the board wrote in its online statement. “In the meantime, all PIMC programming is on pause until further notice.”