Acting director-general of the Department of Health Twu Shiing-jer (
Twu was wrongly accused in early October of sexual harassment and is seeking compensation.
Twu's lawyer, Tsai Mao-sung (蔡茂松), arrived at the Taipei Prosecutors' Office yesterday afternoon and spoke on Twu's behalf.
Tsai said that Twu wanted PFP Legislator Yang Fu-mei (
Tsai has already named Cheng Ko-jung (
According to Tsai, after the case was first made public on Oct. 1, Yang held a press conference on Oct. 3 at the Legislative Yuan and said that a cleaning lady claimed to have witnessed Twu having sex with one of his female aides in his office. Twu was the director-general of the Center for Disease Control at the time of the alleged incident.
Evidence lacking
However, Yang failed to provide any evidence to support her accusations and speculation has been rife that the allegation was motivated by jealousy.
When the media pressed her on the allegations, Yang backpedalled and said the charges were "based on hearsay."
According to Tsai, Hsu is a businessman who sells sports gear. But when Hsu was interviewed by Taiwan Television Enterprise on Oct. 3, he claimed he was a doctor from National Taiwan University Hospital and was at the KTV parlor on Aug. 6 this year, when the alleged sexual harassment occurred.
During the interview, he said that Twu was at the scene but he didn't see Twu doing anything inappropriate.
Hsu was later interviewed by Taipei Chief Prosecutor Chuang Cheng (
"Both Yang's and Hsu's remarks have seriously damaged Twu's reputation. However, none of them apologized and admitted they were wrong, so Twu decided to sue them," Tsai said.
Twu's civil claim seeks a total of NT$50 million from Cheng, Lee and Ding.
NT$1 penalty
However, Twu said he understands that Chen cannot afford his share of this sum -- approximately NT$17 million. Since Cheng has apologized to him publicly on more than one occasion, Twu said on Oct. 9 that Cheng has to pay only NT$1.
Lee and Ding would be forced to share the rest of the sum, NT$49,999,999.
Twu is seeking additional damages from the new defendants.
"The total amount of the civil claim will definitely be increased since we have two more defendants. However, Twu hasn't yet decided how much the difference will be," Tsai said.
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