A sexual tryst gone awry threatened to become an international incident yesterday, after a local newspaper ran a sensational story involving a Taiwanese woman and a US West Point cadet.
The Chinese-language United Daily News, a pro-unification newspaper, printed front page coverage of allegations by an unidentified woman who said she had sex with a visiting student from the US Military Academy at West Point. In the article, the woman did not make any specific claims that the man raped her, but said she felt "uncomfortable" after the hotel room tryst.
The United Daily News reported that a student surnamed Chuang (
The West Point cadet, who will be not identified because he has not been charged with any crime, was in Taiwan on a three-week exchange program.
According to the United Daily News report, Chuang invited several women to the club, including one of his elementary school classmates.
The woman, a 24-year-old college student, drank with Chuang, the cadet and others until Chuang left late in the evening, the newspaper reported.
The United Daily News report said that the West Point cadet then took the woman, who said she was "half drunk" at the time, to the Evergreen Hotel in Tainan and had sex with her.
However, a source who spoke to the cadet said that the woman's story as reported in the United Daily News misrepresented events.
The source said that the cadet -- who speaks no Mandarin or Taiwanese, and has been in Taiwan for only a week -- asserts that the woman accompanied him into a taxi, gave the driver directions to a hotel, booked a room, and took a shower before voluntarily engaging in intercourse.
According to the United Daily News report, the woman said that she was still "considering" whether she should say no when intercourse began and ended in less than one minute.
She told the United Daily News that the West Point cadet had then said "I am sorry" to her.
The next day, the United Daily News said, the woman felt "uncomfortable about what happened" and reported the "incident" to the academy. She also talked to a United Daily News reporter.
When the paper hit the streets, politicians quickly turned the matter into a political issue.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Nan-sheng (
He blamed the Ministry of National Defense (MND) and, more specifically, Vice Minister of National Defense Lin Chen-yi (
"Shame on you, vice minister!" Lin Nan-sheng said.
Echoing Lin Nan-sheng, KMT Legislator Lin Yu-fang (
"So, is this how you treat West Point cadets? Maybe it is also the same way you treat any soldier from one of our allies?" Lin Yu-fang said. "This is absurd! This is a shame! This is a disgrace!"
Meanwhile, the military said it would investigate the allegations to determine if any criminal act had occurred.
Lin Chen-yi said that if it were determined that the West Point cadet had acted criminally, he could face prosecution.
"The alleged victim in the case and the West Point cadet told us different stories about what happened that night. If the result of our investigation decides that the cadet must take certain legal responsibilities, we will indict him," Lin Chen-yi said.
Yesterday afternoon, the ROC Military Academy Spokesman Colonel Lin Hsieh-hsiang (林協詳) said that the woman had contacted the academy by telephone on Sunday, but added that she had not claimed to have been raped at any time during the call.
Lin Hsieh-hsiang told her that the academy would handle the case by the book.
The woman said that she wanted to remain anonymous.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats
RSS